MSFS Demographics

Awe Avsim isnt listed. Bet they feel so unimportant

When Navigraph published the survey results, many of us on the MSFS team naturally read the report with great interest, but we also took their numbers with a HUGE grain of salt. As you said, their sample is biased to only include those simmers who were aware of the survey because they heard about it from sites like Navigraph, Orbx, FSElite, and so on. Thatā€™s going to get you a skewed sample compared to randomly picking a selection of all flight sim players. While the Navigraph survey is interesting, many of its results do not match our own (more accurate) internal data.

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Seems like the developers are all European.

Subjectively looking at the world map in the sim it looks the the US and western Europe have the highest airport density.

Sounds like you guys have more data, would be really fun to see a little update on the MS numbers in an upcoming Q&A stream (hint hint, nudge nudge) :wink:

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Do you know if MSFS was approached and asked to be a partner and distribute the survey to their user group?

Also, do you know if the MSFS information will be made public, also in raw format so analysis can be done on it by individuals (like Navigraph has done).

Itā€™s not that I donā€™t trust a corporation like MS to not massage numbers the way they want, but always nice to see the raw data :slight_smile:

I have run a great number of surveys over the years and I have come to what I know is the logical conclusion ā€œDo not take the results, especially the graphs as trueā€. I only trust surveys I have personally done or have access to the full raw data and the questions asked. Also the demographics, languages it was done in, the method of choosing responders, the reason why it was done (this is the most important), who is paying for it and and who is creating the report.
There are more, but too many.
So you can see, I do not believe any of them.

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Australia is also high on the list, considering their small population.

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Thatā€™s not a valid argument. Look at the size of Canada and itā€™s not been touched at all yet. What about the whole of Africa as another example. Some attention already is better than none at all. If the US needed a few turns which it likely does then perhaps zonal would of made more sense so the expectation was set from the first zones release that more were to follow.

Iā€™m not arguingā€¦ I just expressed an opinion based on facts between the sizes of two countries and prevoius world updates. Which also in fact justifies what Jorge has said that a second pass was due on the US based on its size. Your opinion is just based on want.

Please donā€™t twist what I said. I didnā€™t say you were arguing but that your point is not a valid argument. Thereā€™s a big difference. You made a point that had want to it by suggesting the US was right to get another update before some of the other countries based on its size and I pointed out that other large areas have yet to have any update at all.

You made a big assumption about what my want may be because I didnā€™t express one. I have no yearning for either of the places I mentioned but used them simply as good examples.

When I started MSFS yesterday I had an update and then in Content Manager there were updates for most of the regions I have installed, UK, Europe and Nordics. I have not installed US, Japan or Australia as I only fly around Europe.

ā€¦ And out of the top 15 countries, 12 have received a World Update!!

So I believe we can guess the strategy around those.
Canada wildly neglected as many have said.

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I would expect the US to have a higher number of users; itā€™s a big country.

Thereā€™s also another angle: it being a large country, aviation is pro rata more popular there.

To add some more context to this discussion (especially with regard the navigraph survey) the graph below is from the G36 improvement Project from Flightsim.to. It vaguely matches with the Navigraph results.

Iā€™ve promoted the mod here, flightsim.to, avsim, & discord. Itā€™s been featured across a few youtube videos.

Really interesting discussion!!!

maybe a bit off topic but ā€¦

Jorg suggests the updates are chosen more by the data than any logic ā€˜per sayā€™ :stuck_out_tongue: here in this interview

its a good read btw

so they look at what data has been updated more than where they have been or w/e
they could still add some handcrafted or w/e but if there is not any better imagery (for example, i have no idea what all data they use only that its multiple sources) then the bulk of the scenery would not change (the photogrammetry would be the same every where but the new handmade locations)
thats a small bit of area for an update, in the case of the US there was apparently a lot of better imagery or something i guess

MS knows who has paid for the game. I guessing here but with that information you could make some good assumptions to the country and place folks are living. And btw they do have a good look at the ipā€™s folks are using.

dw

I have to salute the simmers with life jackets under their seat and hot towels!

image

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It will be interesting to see how that holds up this year.

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It would be so cool to get a breakdown like this every quarter or something

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The biggest thing that hit me on the survey was that there are more people flying FS2002 than FS2004!