One of the pains of MSFS 2020 is the update and install size of the Flight Simulator, and while still not perfect, things have changed after the latest update.

At the launch of Microsoft's Flight Simulator, the installation could eat up 170 GB, the most recent patch will reduce this considerably. The disk space requirement for Flight Simulator has been reduced to 83 GB with that last update. That's good news for simmers with a smaller SSD for example. Also on console it helps preventing you to free up storage space. 

RELEASE NOTES 1.16.2.0

• Some packages in your community folder may not have been updated and, as a result, may have an unexpected impact on the title’s performance and behavior.
• Please move your community package(s) to another folder before relaunching the title if you suffer from stability issues or long loading times.
• We performed some optimization for the initial full download of the title so the base game is only 83GB instead of +170GB.

The update also makes several gameplay changes including a bug where the AI would sometimes disable the autothrottle on all planes. Also, the weather radar now shows precipitation instead of clouds.

MS Flight Simulator 2020 storage size reduced by 87 GB through update