Interesting data point for the MS/Asobo MSFS 2024 development team from the 2024 Flightsim Community Survey just released by Navigraph . Of the 23,000+ participants who completed the survey, 92.2% fly airliners.
From their post today:
“ Airliners rule the skies: In MSFS, 92.2% fly airliners. Top picks include the Fenix Simulations A319/A320/A321 (55.7%) and PMDG series 737 (40.2%).”
Now, as has been pointed out in this forum, not all MSFS users completed the survey. If they had it would be interesting to know how many of us are out there. While it is not a complete survey of MSFS it is the first I am aware of where flight simmers are asked what they mostly use their system for. I am not aware of any MSFS survey where what we fly most often is asked. If there was one, please let me know.
Regardless, from this 23,000 group 92% fly airliners. Which makes sense as Navigraph provides tools and material to facilitate flight plan preparation and the use of procedures and charts.
So, perhaps the MS/Asobo developers should set airliner usage higher up in their baseline when developing MSFS 2024 whether for PC or Xbox. Rumour has it they use a C172. That’s often been said but I am not aware of MS/Asobo challenging that.
Using low system demand aircraft such as the C172 as the release to market threshold is setting your clients up for major dissatisfaction given that there is a high probability that more demanding aircraft are being used.
Don’t you mean 92.2% of people who filled out the Navigraph survey fly airliners?
That isn’t everyone who uses the sim.
MS knows what people using the sim are flying.
I guess I am part of the 7.8%, ha!
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No, 92.2% of Navigraph survey respondents fly airliners, which makes sense because GA guys don’t need Navigraph as much.
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Remember this was a Navigraph survey, most users that purchase Navigraph fly airliners, so I’m not sure you can make that assumption.
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I would not necessarily equate that to full community statistics.
You would have had to been a Navigraph subscriber in order to get the email with the survey to begin with. That is going to rule out a lot of the community. Not everyone subscribes to Navigraph. In fact until recently, you couldn’t limk Navigraph to anything on XBox.
It had to have been people who actually responded to the survey. I got the email, I just never responded.
So your survey population is going to have to be Navigraph subscribers who were invested enough to respond. It isn’t surprising that it was probably mainly PC airliner pilots.
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I fly GA using Navigraph.
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You’re a freak statistic! 
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There are dozens of us! I used it for approach plates to fly instrument approaches in GA aircraft at first, and then they added VFR charts so I’m a dedicated GA Navigraph user now.
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Yes, I would say a very misleading conclusion is easy to assume here.
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Honestly, these Navigraph statistics should represent at most 5% of flight simulator users. The niche of the niche.
The fact that the RTX 4090 is the most popular GPU, a card that has less than 1% share according to Steam Survey, and 91% of users are on PC, when Jorg himself said that most MSFS users are on Xbox, is a big indication of this.
I wouldn’t take these statistics too seriously as a panorama of flight simulation as a whole.
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Statistics can be used to prove anything, 90% of people know this 
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How many of the ~15 million MSFS users are Navigraph customers? I’ll bet that is a small percentage.
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Clearly airliners are popular and why not?
But the stats don’t prove only 7.8% are flying Cessna or similar.
Many people will fly both.
Not strictly connected to the thread, but I find it amazing how developers who release sims on both PC and console are so desperate to claim that console users are by far the biggest market. I struggle a bit to believe it. Another sim I’m thinking about claims their split is one third split PC / XBOX / PS which seems incredibly convenient.
If these statistics are so stark and one sided, then put them out there officially so they can be scrutinised. I do find it hard to believe that most users of flight sim, a lifelong PC staple, are suddenly on a console that struggles to run the software satisfactorily.
It’s great the XBOX is onboard, but I have a feeling it will only be when we see Gen10 consoles that they will come close to doing the software justice.
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I know that is being said by Microsoft, so it is hard to believe that it isn’t just marketing.
But third party developers have said that a very large percentage of their sales come from the XBox side. XBox just makes support so much harder for them, so I can’t really see them stating that a significant portion of their sales come from XBox if it wasn’t true.
This. 100% this.
There’s a reason why two very prominent airliner developers work their digital behinds off to ensure their products work on XBox and can be distributed through the Marketplace, and it ain’t because it’s easy to do.
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Used to fly airliners (even once had proprietary 737 hardware that cost me over $2,000) but I just find them incredibly boring now. Love flying GA aircraft from Black Square, A2A, COWS, FSReborn, ect. The vast majoirty of users on VATSIM fly airliners. I’m one of the very few that don’t. I too am a Navigraph Unlimited user.
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Did the question ask “do you fly airliners exclusively/most of the time”? I fly airliners, but 90% of the time I fly GA. So, I’m not sure what the statement 90% of the costumers fly airliners really means.
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