LOL, the number is 10 to 15% of all players, as Jorg as said. Now do the math… 10k yeah, in your dreams…
And if they gave more attention to VR there wouldn’t be so many problems with it…
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The simmer community and especially the core simmers do not speak with a unified voice, so how can you really expect Asobo to be able to make use of it? I can think of many examples of this and they are all over the topics in this forum.
“We want to have historical weather so we can fly with the day’s weather at our local nighttime” vs. “We have to fly with the current weather even though it’s local nighttime”
“We need more realistic procedures like a walkaround and accurate cold and dark condition” vs. “We need to be able to skip the preflight and just fly”
“Night lighting/clouds/terrain don’t look good for these reasons…” vs. “Night lighting/clouds/terrain don’t look good for these other conflicting reasons…”
“Descending to land, I get too many stutters and poor performance” vs. “The ground doesn’t have enough detail and I want to see crisp details for miles”
You get the picture. The solution is not to add more settings to the menu because the other voices are “there are too many control settings and it’s confusing”. There are so many posts here where I just shake my head and feel that there is no possible way for Asobo to thread the needle and find a solution that satisfies everyone.
That is the core challenge with a sim of this size. By being more inclusive to more players, it is doomed to be mediocre to all. It’s the same with any popular media. The only saving grace is that unlike other forms of media the sim is highly modifiable by third parties and over time I believe this will prove to be the key decision that will cement this sim into history as one of the greatest comeback stories.
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I think you can build a strong core and then add features step by step and have 3rd Party developers care for some parts. They went way too fast introducing too many features at the same time, introducing new Bugs and even reintroducing old bugs. As a consequence, they didn’t get into depth.
You can add a walk around and still make it part of a strategy on how to handle flows/checklists. They just didnt think about it. Add it to the EFB to load the aircraft in any state - done (not a new idea at all). Let the copilot handle or autocomplete this step with one click like on 2020… Just bring the parts together!
But with with the new EFB they even deleted options, like that the Copilot can handle checklists, read, evaluate and even autocomplete them. But hey, now the copilot is visual!
Their development seems inconsistent to me. There is a lot of software today thats aiming at different target groups from beginners to experts. That can be solved.
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yes, maybe even disorganized
too many hands on the plate, too much compartmentalization
everyone says hey my bit works,
it needs more cohesion
indeed
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Try reading comments from the Xbox users. There are lots here. It wasn’t designed for Xbox (or medium level PCs) don’t even think they’ve even tried playing it on one.
More likely, they wanted to introduce some DLC for core simmers by adding a career mode that they could monetise.
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Its awesome in free flight mode
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I’m diligently working through the Xbox Achievements so I must be a “Core Simmer” 
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This makes sense. With so many features, compromises creep in as a necessity to launch a finished sim and the result is good but not spectacular. I can see many very good choices and well thought out features but also many “good enough for the masses” choices as well.
Just last night, I did a 2 hour soaring flight that was nothing less than amazing. And this is an area of the sim that doesn’t get the attention that other areas do yet it seemed perfect. So somehow a rare corner of the sim that few will care about was well executed but other parts are lacking. I’m not sure what to think about that.
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Wow, I’d have honestly never guessed. Just goes to show… That’s counting Xbox players and all, I suppose?
You can’t VR on XBox.
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Yes, it’s a very elitist club… and no, of course you are not a member. The council of the core simmers have their seat in a tall ivory control tower which oversees the whole virtual world and every aircraft in it. Only those aircraft which can fly the highest are piloted by the core simmers and they are all controlled by the almighty ATC. All the lower flying aircraft are seen by them as gamers, especially those who use their aircraft for any other means than for transporting passengers only in the most complex aircraft. Then there’s the wannabe core simmers, they pilot aircraft which look a lot like the core simmers marvelous aircraft, but they are very arcadish replicas, toys in the eyes of true core pilots. Some of those simmers try to hail the almighty ATC just like the core simmers do, hoping to be noticed by the council one day and be accepted into the core simmer club. But not many are accepted as the expectations are high, so high that not many pilots can climb to those altitudes ever in their lives. So please forget about even thinking about how to qualify as a core simmer and accept it’s just not meant to be for most of us.
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I don’t care what Jorg said. There’s 0% chance that 10 - 15% of people who play MSFS are doing so in VR. (And I say that as someone who does play MSFS in VR.) Jorg was engaged in a bit of hyperbole or exaggeration, as he seems wont to do on occasion.
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I’m sure there’s no official definition… my take (as a self-described core simmer)…
An ultra realistic approach, to “simulate” real world piloting. Every flight begins well before firing up the sim; flight-planning by VFR sectional and/or IFR Low altitude charts. Brief weight-n- balance calculations… noting useable radio nav-aids… destination/alternate com/AWOS/ASOS frequencies … then reviewing potential/likely approach plate(s)… enroute weather/winds for calculating needed fuel with reserves.
Preflight walk-around and checklists… waiting for oil/CHT temps to come up… run up, mag-check, prop check etc. Realistic, engine friendly operation… and so on…
MSFS 2020 has long since become stable enough, to not only allow this, and with an add on like the A2A Comanche, make careful attention to detail matter, consequentially… it doesn’t regularly bork frustratingly, mid-flight. 
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Beyond the satire… you ain’t far off. A good chunk of core simmers are/were real world pilots.
Remember the difference between God, and a pilot ? God doesn’t think he’s a pilot … 
The most rewarding aspect of (core) simming, to me… it keeps the piloting frame of mind current, and puts the skill set to use…
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Hello @rgp1942,
The moderators are helpful community members who volunteer their free time to improve the forums. They are not paid Microsoft or Asobo employees, and our team is incredibly grateful to all the volunteer mods who help keep these forums running smoothly. They do things like move errant/misplaced posts to the right forum subsection, merge duplicate topics, respond to posts that are flagged by other forum members, and enforce the forum Code of Conduct.
On the other hand, the Community Managers (@SeedyL3205, @Jummivana, @iinKWest, and @Chewwy94) are paid employees of the MSFS team. Collectively, we do our best to read every post written on these forums (and other places where people discuss MSFS such as Reddit, Discord, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Threads, TikTok, and more), and we regularly share player feedback directly to the developers. We also log bug reports and wishlist requests for the devs to review.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
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As for the ongoing debate in this topic about what is a “core simmer”, I wrote this on the forums nearly three years ago:
DISCLAIMER: I’m posting this solely as my own personal opinion as someone who enjoys flight sims. None of the following should be treated as an official statement from Microsoft or Asobo.
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
-George CarlinPeople are going to have wildly different definitions on what constitutes a “serious simmer”. If someone takes it less seriously than you, then they’re a casual gamer who just likes screenshots and pretty scenery. If someone takes it more seriously than you, then they’re a rivet counter who is unable to have fun because they’re too obsessed over the smallest minutia being accurate.
The prevailing opinion I see posted most frequently here is that “serious simmers” are only the people who fly tubeliners or other complex aircraft on IFR flight plans, usually on a virtual ATC network like VATSIM, IVAO, or PilotEdge, all the while trying to follow real-world procedures and air regulations as closely as possible.
To me, that’s a very, very narrow definition of flight simming. I don’t do any of that. I fly (almost) exclusively GA planes in VFR. I deliberately ignore airspace restrictions and most other air regulations. I almost never start cold and dark and bother going through the full startup checklist. I get a kick out of doing ridiculous things like burning down the Champs-Élysées at full throttle in a Pitts Special, threading the needle through the Arc de Triomphe, rolling inverted and flying underneath the Eiffel Tower, then pulling up into a victory roll. I like zooming through canyons and valleys like I’m Luke Skywalker flying his T-16 Skyhopper. I enjoy competing in the Reno Air Race mode. And perhaps most of all, I really like exploring the world while flying chill, relaxing flights over interesting terrain while marveling at the beautiful scenery in MSFS. In short, I’m quite clearly not a Real Serious Simmer™ but am instead one of those filthy casuals I keep reading about, right?
Well, not so fast. I earned a Glider Pilot License at age 16 and Private Pilot License at age 17. I reckon I probably have more real world flying hours than over 99% of the people reading this post. When I was younger, I formerly worked at a flying school teaching ground school lessons to real student pilots. I’ve been into flight simulators for over 25 years (since the early-mid 90s). I’ve played every version of MSFS released since 1993 (MSFS 5.0 for DOS was my first entry to the series). I’ve also played pretty much every other popular flight sim that has been released over the past three decades, from civilian sims like Flight Unlimited, Sierra Pro Pilot, Fly!, and X-Plane to military sims like the classic Dynamix games (Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific, Aces Over Europe), Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 1-3, Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, Jane’s WWII Fighters, European Air War, Falcon 4.0, most entries from the IL-2 Sturmovik series, and many more that I’m forgetting to mention.
Since the August 2020 release of MSFS, I’ve spent over $2,000 just on flight sim peripherals (stick, throttle quadrant, rudder, TrackIR, and more) plus the cost of an ultra high-end gaming PC specifically so I can enjoy the new sim at the highest possible graphical settings. I attended Flight Sim Expo in San Diego in September 2021, not on a work trip as a representative of the MSFS team but on a personal vacation as a fan and flight sim enthusiast. In addition to this product being my day job, I also consider Microsoft Flight Simulator to be my primary hobby.
So does that make me a “serious simmer” now? Who even knows. More importantly, who even cares? Enjoy Microsoft Flight Simulator however YOU want to enjoy it. I personally think flying IFR at FL380 in an A320 from EGLL to LIRF with the computer doing 98% of the flying and you spending almost the entire flight monitoring practically unmoving instruments and displays to be super boring, but I know many of you really, really enjoy stuff like that. I absolutely don’t judge you negatively just because you and I have different tastes in how we like to play flight simulators. As our Standard Operating Procedures say:
- The Skies are Open for All - Everyone is welcome to Microsoft Flight Simulator regardless of age, gender, race, sexuality, or creed.
- One World, One Community - No matter how you play – regardless of console, experience level, or reason – we are one community of aviation lovers.
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I believe, a larger percentage of serious (core) simmers, fly light GA… usually something similar to what they own/owned, fly/flew, IRL
Any animosity they might feel, stems from development resources spent on things other than perfecting systems and fight models.
Those of you old enough to be FSX, light GA enthusiasts, might be familiar with some of the freeware I developed, in that pursuit … (an aircraft I regularly flew for real)…Cessna C177RG, Cessna 310, Beech P35…
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According to last year’s Navigraph survey results – and I think we can safely assume most of the people who completed the survey would describe themselves as “core simmers” – the most popular aircraft choices were narrow-body and wide-body airliners. Single engine GA was #3.
In terms of payware aircraft add-ons, airliners from Fenix, PMDG, and FlyByWire were by far the most popular among survey respondents. The #1 GA plane on the list, A2A’s Comanche, is about one-third as popular as the Fenix A320 or PMDG 737.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
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True… I should have provided a disclaimer similar to yours… “my opinion”… 
Regardless, I think it’s safe to assume that the percentage of core simming tubers, who actually fly/flew tubes, is small compared to the percentage of core simming GAers, who actually fly/flew GA.
There are countless, qualifying permutations, defining a core simmer. For me, as stated, it’s keeping the piloting state of mind fresh… right down to pedantic details. …unless there was a fun destination, and perfect weather… flying was more work, than fun… half of it done from outside the cockpit.
Most polite way a mod has ever told someone to stop gatekeeping.
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