In December 2022 there was a report that MSFS had surpassed over 10 million players. The best estimate of worldwide pilots is only 1.5 to 2.3 million. Even if every certificated pilot in the world all played MSFS they would not be nearly 50% of the total players. Estimates also show a little over 300,000 active airline pilots.
As an active Instructor, I interface with numerous pilots weekly. Based on the population that I work with, pilots seeking a type rating, I would estimate that less than 1% of them use any sort of desktop flight simulation based software.
I think what you are seeing on the forums is an outlier. You have a larger population of highly involved certified pilots who are vocal. I would also caution that I have seen a few members of this forum who have claimed to be real-world pilots yet when they respond they state things that a real-world pilot should know better. Since Microsoft does nothing to identify actual certificated pilots you have to take some of these “I am a real pilot” claims with a grain of salt. In the U.S. you can look them up on the FAA database.
I’d assume the number of RW pilots using MSFS is far less than 50%. Doing some back of napkin estimating:
Consider first there are over 10 million MSFS users.
In the US there are only around 750,000 “active” pilots (including ~280k students), so extrapolating that figure worldwide - let’s say there are 2.5 million pilots worldwide (and that’s probably being extremely generous, as civil aviation in many other countries doesn’t have as many participants, so you’re only talking commercial and military). Needless to say, by far not all pilots are MSFS users.
The Navigraph survey has the number of MSFS users/RW pilots at closer to 27%. That’s the closest thing we have to hard data, however that is likely full of sample bias (RW pilots being more likely to be Navigraph users/survey respondents).
In the end, I’d wager the number is less than 10%, or about 1 million RW pilots that use MSFS. As a proportion of active MSFS users or even number of hours flown, maybe a little more. But no way is it close to 50% in terms of total users.
If the number of real-world pilots that mess with MSFS was as much as one million, I’d be totally amazed outta my socks - one million is a LOT of people.
Using Kelsey from 74 Gear as a prototypical commercial pilot. . .
Do they mess with MSFS? I’d wager a number of them do, even Kelsey has some “I did [something] in MSFS” videos.
How many pilots are actually passionate about what they do as opposed to “it’s a job” or “I’m in it for the Benjamins”? If being a pilot is like any other career choice, I’d say “darn few”.
I would only expect those pilots who are passionate about flying to want to mess with a flight sim after spending all day flying a 12" => 1’ scale aircraft. And even with that, if they’re on any kind of schedule they have to pay close attention to their mandatory rest and suchlike, so they won’t have a lot of time to flaff-around with any flight simulator unless they’re on vacation.
PPL pilots, (or commercial pilots who aren’t air transport pilot rated), probably have more time to spend on flight sims, but I wouldn’t expect a huge buy-in because why buy milk when you already own the cow?
What’s the broad appeal to a flight sim? (Or a train sim, or a [fill in the blank] sim?) It’s people like me who love aviation, (or trains, or whatever), but won’t ever get to pilot a plane IRL. I don’t get what I want, so I have to take what I can get.
I have a PPL and IR and fly fairly regularly in RL but also like to fly in the MSFS. MSFS is great for practicing IFR procedures, familiarising yourself with new places and also emergencies that you can’t easily practice in real life. Out of the pilots I know (mostly PPLs) I’d say about 5-10% have a home sim setup. But those that do are quite enthusiastic about it and will talk your ear off about various sims etc.
Huh, that pinged me. Today I learned that’s a thing. Might as well throw my hat in the ring. Disclaimer in that I like aviation casually but am not in any sort of real world pilot training, and that I’ve seen this discourse in all the simulation games I’ve played (ETS2, iRacing, Assetto Corsa, etc)
Simulation games are practically the adult form of pretend play we did as kids, and we can sometimes really get into it, but at the end of the day it’s an escape. Sure, PPLs can practice phraseology on VATSIM and you can practice patterns and DR and VOR to VOR navigation on a simulator, but at the end of the day you really can’t beat real hours on real planes on real airfields, even if you have a $10,000 buttkicker VR setup.
I feel a lot of this discourse on “this model isn’t right, there are inconsistencies, the FMS is coded wrong” etc etc etc is valid because we do want to be immersed, and MSFS does a pretty good job at giving us an immersive experience, but at the end of the day it’s not the real thing and it’s better to focus on questions like, did you have fun? Did you like flying the plane? Did it feel good flying it (regardless of fidelity to realism)? Enjoy the experience instead of nitpicking it.
Agreed. All simulators have their limits and we have to be realistic in our expectations.
But you really don’t need to be a real pilot to know what the basics are and how a typical training aircraft should behave on the ground and in the air. And sadly MSFS, as good as it is, does have some glaring issues.
I’d disagree. I am a career pilot and I teach career pilots. Those in it for the money usually don’t last long.
It is a very technical career that requires ongoing continuing education. That is a lot of work for a buck.
The initial pay sucks. OK, it is getting better, but it still sucks. You earn a CPL (Commercial Pilot’s License); the only things you can do with it is be an instructor, fly banners, and fly jumpers. (There are a few others but these are the big three.) All three are very low-earning positions and you will be spending a number of years doing that until you cross the 1,500-hour threshold so you can earn an ATP. If you graduate from an aeronautical university you can scrub off 250 or even 500 hours of the requirement and get a RATP but that is $80-$100k extra for the college.
It is not an easy lifestyle. The industry is heavily based on the seniority program. You start at the bottom and guess who gets to fly all the less fantastic routes? Guess who flies all of the holidays? Guess who spends more days away from domicile? You finally put in enough years to earn Captain and guess what, you are now at the bottom of the Captain’s list and you get to repeat being a junior FO. When you have enough Part 121 time under the belt you can make a jump to the majors and guess what happens. Yep, you are a junior FO again.
Every six months your health puts your career choice on check. If the Doc finds one thing wrong during your First Class physical then your career can be permanently over.
The few in-it-for-a-buck guys I have met were military pilots, Army and Marine pilots who thought well it’s better than being an infantry officer. They usually don’t last long in the cockpit.
Being passionate about something does not equal playing a video game about your job. You spend seven days on flying real equipment, when you do come home you have lots of demand for your free time. What little relaxation time you have, most don’t want to push pixels. The people you do see playing MSFS on their off time are the real weirdos of professional pilots.
Private pilot here. To me it’s the joy of flight itself, both in real life and the sim. It’s not about matching numbers in a table, or following lists of rules and procedures to a T. It’s about the experience of flying. The flight dynamics are important, but the graphics and world simulation are at least as important in creating that experience too. Flight Simulator has made enormous strides in both areas of graphics and dynamics, and much work remains in both areas. But I can already recreate general aviation flights with a lot realism.
With the exception of the ground handling, I don’t think we need to massively prioritize flight dynamics over the graphics and world. Maybe that’s because I’m a scrub VFR pilot, or maybe I’m just weird.
None of the active commercial pilots I know have the least interest in consumer level flight sim. They will look at it an say ‘neat’, but really they don’t have the time (most are Captains now at national carrier airlines. One just went from 747 to A350 flying).
Yes, ground handling/excessive weathervane is the big one, as is trim to a lesser extent.
But both can be largely overcome by good Devs with good flight models. It’s not all on the core flight model, although there are aspects of it which sure don’t help.
I love to drift in FH5 so I guess I also would like to drift in MSFS. As long as a bowling ball hits the earth faster than a feather dropped from the same height, I’m cool with anything.
Assuming that old man gravity is the only force involved, the bowling ball with hit earth at the same time as the little feather. Or, will the feather hit at the same time as the blowling ball… oh no… what a dilemma.
