I think it will mostly be Navigraph users that fill out this survey (although you don’t need to be a Navigraph subscriber to fill out the survey).
Maybe this will settle the nonsensical debate that MSFS 2020 has more users than MSFS 2024?
To be fair, less than 15% of respondents use X-Plane. Whatever X-Plane users are anticipating is heavily outvoted by MSFS users.
No it won’t. I’m not even sure what folks mean by which has more users? How are the results of a survey that almost no one sees be reflective of the number of total users in each version or the total time spent in each. Absolutely no correlation.
Microsoft themselves have said that MSFS 2024 surpassed MSFS 2020 in number of users over a year ago. Apparently that wasn’t enough to convince people. This survey is simply more evidence.
The connection I see is that the most common argument against the MS-provided data is that “most of those 2024 users are GamePass users and not serious simmers” (whatever that is) so when a survey taken almost exclusively by “serious simmers” corroborates the story that 2024 is the more commonly-used platform, I think that has weight.
I’m well in agreement as I know no one currently using 2020 because we are all in 2024. I fly a lot of group flights. I read what Seedy said as well. I’m just saying the folks claiming the opposite will never be convinced whatever data you provide particularly garbage data.
FYI, the Navigraph blog about the survey - with a link to a pdf with the full results - can be read here.
Yeah, the 3rd party developer scenery for XP is floundering. XP already lost iniBuilds, but now even Toliss decided to dip their toes into MSFS. It seems like the Aerosoft-Toliss A340 sold pretty well, so it’s likely that Toliss will be back in MSFS for another project.
The 3rd party developer scenery for XP is on life support now, it seems like a bare bones skeleton crew. Meanwhile an entirely new company like Vector, with a significant employee team for a new developer, with financial backing, just popped up out of nowhere for MSFS this year.
I’m completely immersed in flight simulation, yet I can barely relate to the results of this year’s survey.
I think I’ll quote this to sum it up for me:
The 2026 Navigraph Contemporary Regional Airliner Simulation Survey 
Yeah, I get it. Flight simulation is not only one of my biggest hobbies but it’s also literally my day job, and the survey results don’t really reflect how I personally use the sim at all. It makes sense though, since it’s an opt-in survey (not a random representative sample of all simmers), and you have to both be aware of it (typically via email notification from Navigraph if you’re on their mailing list or if you see it promoted on media sites like FSElite). The people most likely to complete the survey are those who have Navigraph subscriptions, which will definitely skew the sample towards one particular type of player (a PC user who primarily flies airliners).
There’s a lot of value in this survey, but when interpreting the data you do have to be really cognizant that the results are innately skewed towards one specific type of simmer, and they’re not representative of all flight sim players.
Thanks,
MSFS Team
8 Likes
“The RTX 4090 remains the most popular GPU”
terrifying
You really have to be careful how you interpret that data point. Yes, the RTX 4090 is the #1 individual answer in the survey, but that doesn’t imply that a majority of survey respondents have an ultra high-end GPU. Far from it, in fact!
If you add the number of people who have a current or previous gen high-end Nvidia card (4080, 4090, 5080, or 5090), they total only 23.3% of all survey respondents. That means that more than three-quarters of simmers who completed the survey have a midrange or low-end GPU (x070 or x060) or a card that’s two or more generations old (3000 series or earlier).
Thanks,
MSFS Team
4 Likes
There are dozens of us non-commercial pilots. DOZENS!!
@KaptenEK
(moving the discussion to this Navigraph topic to prevent going off-topic in the Dev livestream topic)
My Personal Comment & Observation
Quoting from page 10 of the PDF:
“42,332 respondents started the survey. 44% of the respondents completed all the questions. Of the remaining 18,407 respondents, we removed 2,700 respondents who exhibited two or more signs typical of insincere respondents. The total number of respondents, as displayed in the graphs below, amounts to 15,600.”
so when I see, for example, that 7.8 % of respondents are using the NVidia RTX 4090 in their primary FS computer (section 3.4.5, page 43), then 15,600 x 0.078 =1,216 responders. The actual number may be higher if that option was chosen by respondents that replied in the survey but did not complete the survey or were classified as “insincere”.
Whilst interesting, I do not view any of the data in the various charts as absolute, but more of a 10,000 ft level view of a subset of the overall FS community, which is what is commented on in section 2.2 (page 10):
“Since respondents were not selected through a random sampling technique, but instead chose to participate voluntarily, there is a potential for bias in the collected data
…
It is important to emphasize that this survey simply summarizes the data collected rather than drawing definitive conclusions about the flight simulation community as a whole. Because we cannot confirm whether the dataset accurately represents the broader flight simulation community, we refrain from making absolute claims.”
That said, I thought it interesting that whilst
“41.8% of respondents who have MSFS 2020 as their primary simulator have not switched…” (page 108),
the chart on that page does show a clear preference for 2024 over the other named alternatives for users that have switched.
I was somewhat surprised - considering the number of topics about the sugject of weather & aircraft in Discussion Hub > General Discussion, Bug Reporting Hub and Official Microsoft Flight Simulator > Wishlist that:
“Core features like weather and default aircraft also meet or exceed expectations for most users.”
but was not surprised that:
“Air traffic control, weather radar, and missions are the most common pain points,” (both quotes from page 109).