Microsoft Flight Simulator

[Suyash Kerkar]

Can I run Microsoft Flight Simulator fully offline?

[Chris Pratt]

After the initial 150GB download, I believe so. The features that require an active internet connection like live map streaming, realtime weather and air traffic, etc. can all be disabled. That said, because these online enabled features are what really add to the realism, your experience is going to be highly diminished by being offline.

[TheBahrbarian]

I can't find it at the moment. But I believe in an FAQ the devs said it would require a constant internet connection to verify your game key (although the bandwidth heavy streaming features can be turned off or cached). But I don't believe you can play with no internet connection at all.

[Suyash Kerkar]

Can the entire global map be available to play offline?

[oeci]

No. You would need 2.5 PB of storage

[Harry Voyager]

23 hours ago, Suyash Kerkar said:

Can the entire global map be available to play offline?

Depends on the level of detail you want to cache. As I understand it, it has a base detail level (fsx level, not that great) that's part of the 150Gb install, and you can cache additional areas locally at low, medium, or high detail levels, but it can eat space like hotcakes.

 

So, in theory, if you've got enough disk space, you should be able to cache everything at high detail. But, even in the FSX days, high resolution regions took up quite a lot of space. As in, if you bought, say, TrueEarth's United States package, they would ship it to you on a 4TB harddrive. They would even include a return shipping label, in case you had enough local storage and wanted to ship the drive back for a $100 discount on the shipping.

 

Game pass for PC is $1 for the first month, so if you're really on the fence about it, you can feel free to try it and see what happens, though I suspect your disk will run out of space, pretty quick...