I will never fly a flat screen again, VR is the only way to fly.
Still on Oculus Rift CV1, but tried my son’s Quest 2 and was amazed a the difference that made.
Might wait for the Quest 3, see how that pans out.
Interesting survey but can’t be sure if the numbers reflect total population. There was a similar poll on here which showed 66% use VR… I guess only Asobo, or maybe Steam, would know the real percentage.
One thing seems certain which is vr use is increasing. I’m first time vr user with msfs and am now 100% vr, cannot go back…
The Navigraph survey didn’t ask specifically how many MSFS user have VR, but 66% seems high. Online polls inside a forum are less likely to represent the general population.
I imagine the number of Xbox users is far greater than represented by this survey, mainly because Xbox users don’t use Navigraph or many of the third party vendors also sponsoring the survey, so they don’t even know about it.
That may be true, but consider other data points, like Oculus becoming #1 app on Apple store, and Quest 2 alone might have outsold Xbox according to some estimates.
I would assume flight simmers are even more interested in VR than general public.
It would be interesting if the survey included the number of users who reverted back to 2D, left VR, or tried VR and didn’t keep a headset. I’d be in the 75% of users who don’t have VR, but only because I returned my G2 after using it briefly with Flight Simulator. It’s probably a small number, but could be insightful. I know those users in love with VR like to shout it from the rooftops, but there’s probably a decent sized group that were meh about it, or found it didn’t work with their use case, and they don’t bother posting about it.
Hopefully it drums up more support for VR though. I’d like to try it again, but not until it gets an overhaul by the devs.
“It would be interesting if the survey included the number of users who reverted back to 2D”
and why they revert to flat also. Flying in VR is fabulous but VR is not very good on MSFS. And is worse and worse with the time. Microsobo don’t seem to pay a lot of attention to VR.
Any survey related to VR is likely to attract people that use VR. However, there is no way for end-users to tell for sure how many people use VR and how many don’t. Plus, there are those who purchased VR hardware, tried it, and went back to 2D either because there were problems or it just wasn’t their cup of tea. Are they true ‘VR’ users?
It’d be the same if you did a survey asking about Live Weather. Those that swear by it (literally, around here) would jump to answer, but those like me who don’t really care would move on.
VR getting more popular will motivate Microsobo more to improve it, which will attract even more VR users. The snowball is rolling. It may not take long for you to come back.
I think that’s why most people are “shouting from the rooftops” about it - they hope more people will try it and like it and thus influence more developers to implement it and improve it.
Unfortunately there is a lot of ‘false news’ spread about by influential people on the social networking scene - FB, YouTube etc - about how rubbish VR is, and “just a fad” etc and there are too many people who believe them and pass on those notions wherever they go. If anything that makes those of us who know it isn’t as bad as they say, and would like to see its scope widened and improved, shout even louder!
After trying my Rift CV1 in FSX, P3D and especially DCS World I started a YT channel to promote VR especially for flight sims as well as promoting a VR video recording developer I was beta testing for. It went surprisingly well and bumped up my subscribers more than anything else had done.
I’ll never forget two things on my first VR experiences - turning around in my Ka-50 gunship and leaning to look at the stub wings laden with rocket pods the first time I sat in it in VR, and flying the IRIS G115 in FSX where I was constantly ducking my head so I didn’t “hit” it on the overhead canopy handle. You just can’t compare those things with anything in 2D.
