In case you missed it, Navigraph recently published the results of the annual flight simulation survey, which has historically been taken as a sort of litmus test of the direction that the broader industry is headed. This year’s survey revealed several interesting trends and user habits, some more expected than others, which tell a story of how the average simmer currently enjoys their flight simulator experience.
MSFS 2020 Still The Predominant Platform
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 remains the community’s most widely-used platform with a plurality of respondents indicating that the older simulator remains their go-to option for most flying.
This is despite the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 last year, which at the time of this survey had 4 months on the market to establish itself. The platform’s less-than-ideal launch into the sim world has likely contributed to the fact that it is used by approximately half as many users as its older sibling. The survey showed that 52% of respondents are still booting MSFS 2020 as their flight sim workhorse, with only 24.9% opting to place their faith in Microsoft’s latest tech.
That still leaves a considerable 23% of respondents opting for alternative platforms, though. A combined 13.9% of respondents are using X-Plane 12 or 11 as their go-to simulator, and 2% of simmers are still opting for Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D.
Users Have Dabbled in MSFS 2024, But It Still Isn’t Where They Want It
Despite only 24.9% of simmers daily driving MSFS 2024, 58.5% of users report having tried the new sim at least once. This would suggest a lot of simmers have purchased MSFS 2024 (either outright or on a game pass subscription), tried it, decided they didn’t like it and migrated back to 2020. However, this statistic also indicates that there are a lot of simmers presumably who want to get into MSFS 2024 once some essential features and stability improvements have been added – this author included among them.
A separate question on how MSFS 2024 meets users’ expectations confirms this theory. Of users who have tried the new sim, over 50% of respondents reported 2024 as either “below expectations” or “far below expectations” in the following categories:
- Air traffic control
- Backwards compatibility
- Missions
- Simulator stability
- Weather radar
In fact, the only categories where the sim exceeded users’ expectations on the whole were graphics and default aircraft quantity. If Microsoft are listening, the message coming from the community seems to be clear; fix the issues in MSFS 2024 and you’ll be onto a winner.
Fenix A320 Remains the Community’s Favourite Addon
The survey results showed that narrow-body airliners remain the community’s favourite type of aircraft to fly within their chosen platforms, and of the options available within that category, the Fenix A320 leads the way with an impressive 55.7% adoption rate. This is followed in 2nd place by the PMDG 737NGs (46.6%).
Long-Haul and Widebody Flights Up
Interestingly, results showed that more users than ever are now electing to fly long-haul routes within their simulator. While still a small segment of the community as a whole, the proportion of simmers who reported flying an individual session over 10 hours increased from 3.5% to 5% of respondents – an increase of 43% within that niche.
Widebody flying is also up from 60% to 67.2%, which is likely a reflection of the fact that the community now has a wider range of widebody options on the market compared to last year.
Simmers More Engaged than Ever
The stats also show the average user is now flying more sessions in their simulator per week than they were this time last year. The proportion of simmers reporting more than 10 sessions within their flight simulator per week increased from 11.6% to 13.0%. Interestingly, 1.6% of survey respondents report flying more than 10 sessions a week with an average session length of more than 10 hours. That’s at least 100 hours a week in the sim, or 59% of the entire week spent within a flight simulator. Are these people trolling, or do they really exist?!
Simmers Want Immersive Avionics Hardware
In the section asking about what setups simmers are using at home, the results show that a lot of simmers are looking to pick up advanced peripherals. 22% of respondents said they are looking to pick up avionics hardware in the next 12 months. One can only assume this is down to WinWing launching a number of affordable product offerings in this market segment, which judging by this data will be flying off the shelves like hot cakes.
NVIDIA is the Preferred GPU Architecture With RTX 4090 The Most Popular Choice
Simmers clearly aren’t short on cash for their PC builds as the NVIDIA RTX 4090 remains the most popular GPU for systems running flight simulators. 16.9% of respondents are currently running Team Green’s flagship card in their system, an increase from 14.5% in 2023. Interestingly, not a single AMD graphics card ranks in the top 15 GPUs among survey respondents this year, indicating a strong user preference for NVIDIA silicon.
FSElite Remains the Industry-Leading Source of Flight Sim Media
41.8% of respondents reported consuming media from FSElite.net in the past 12 months, almost double the share of our nearest competitor. Thank you to our amazing audience for your continued support!
You can view the full results from Navigraph’s annual survey by downloading the report here.
