What is the most popular flight simulation software? How many are planning to get the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator? How much do flight simulator enthusiasts spend on hardware and software every year? These were some of the questions that we set out to answer in this year’s edition of the FlightSim Community Survey. The turnout was better than ever and we are very happy with the results.
The survey consisted of 93 questions and covered demographics, relation to aviation, simulator habits, consumption habits, the simulator platform itself, some questions on media and community participation, and of course questions on aircraft and addon software. We dare to say that this is the most comprehensive survey of its kind both in terms of questions and number of respondents. Obviously we can’t cover all of the results in this blog post, but if you are interested please download the full report here.
The report is shared openly with the community for everyone’s benefit. The primary purpose of the survey is to provide the participating partners with information about the flight simulation community so that they are better able to:
- recruit new pilots to the flight simulation community
- develop products and services in response to pilots’ needs and requests
The secondary purpose of the survey is to provide all members of the flight simulation community with information so that they are better able to:
- find resources to develop their flight simulation interest
- maintain and develop the community
We only ask that you credit Navigraph and keep the CC BY-SA 4.0 license of any derivative work.
Who are the respondents?
To be sure to get as representative of a sample as possible from the flight simulation community we asked a group of partners to join us. 29 addon developers, media outlets and interest organizations helped distrinbute a link to the survey among their customers, users, and members using social media and newsletters. Over the two weeks the survey was live the partners attracted respondents from all parts of the flight simulation community. The biggest contributing partners were Navigraph, OrbX, FSElite, Carenado and Infinite Flight.
The first thing we noticed is that flight simulation is really a topic which interests people of all ages. The age distribution ranges all the way from 15 to 85 and is quite evenly spread out, with one exception - in this histogram you can see a peak in the bin of 20-year-olds. Actually we noted the same result in last year’s survey. Could it be that the interest in aviation is at its peak before you continue ínto work life, university studies, and other adult life chores?
98.3% of the participants are male. Only 0.7% of the respondents were women - and unfortunately this gender distribution is consistent with last year’s survey as well. As an interesting comparison worth mentioning is that in the real world about 5% of all airline pilots are women, according to International Society of Women Airline Pilots.
We also see that more than a quarter of the respondents come from the United States. Other big countries in the survey were the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and France.
Relation to Aviation
22% of the respondents report to work within something related to aviation. More specifically six percent are airline pilots. This is both interesting and a little funny. Imagine an airline pilot just getting off a long haul, coming home, kissing the missus, or the husband in 0.7% of the cases, only to immediately go down in the basement and fire up the simulator. Talk about dedication! But I guess there are perfectly good explanations for this - maybe airport familiarization or something like that.
10% of the respondents have a Private Pilot License, six percent have a student pilot license, and 13% have some other type of pilot license. Among those who said that they had some sort of license we also asked if they started with flight simulation before or after studying for their pilot license. 73% said they got their flight simulator before starting with their aviation studies. It is probably not a stretch to say that flight simulation is an activity which in many cases leads to a real world pilot license or even a career within aviation, and this is what we wanted to investigate in this question.
Nine percent of you are currently enrolled in flight school and 27% of those not enrolled are considering taking real-world flight lessons within the next year.
Simulator Habits
In the section on simulation habits we could see that most of you had about five years of experience flying flight simulators, but the distribution was actually quite even with a curious peak at 20 years. What’s interesting is that this peak was also present in last year’s survey. Some respondents also reported having as many as 35-40 years of experience and that’s quite impressive.
The respondents preferred to fly short/medium haul regional jets, single engine airplanes, or long haul airliners - in that order. Most of you fly five to 10 hours a week, primarily IFR.
Simulation Platform
Alright, alright! Ok! Enough with the numbers! Let’s cut to the chase - we know what you all have been waiting for. Which is the most popular flight simulation software? Last year it was a tie between Laminar Research’s X-Plane 11 and Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D. While there were slightly more respondents who preferred the X-Plane there were more respondents who replied that they used Prepar3D on a more regular basis than X-Plane. However, for all practical purposes, one could say it was a tie.
This year, the result is exactly the same! A few more of the respondents prefer X-Plane, but when comparing the two, Prepar3D has more frequent users.
We know that each simulator has a very dedicated fan base and there were some pretty heated discussions online about these results. We completely understand that if you have put a ton of money towards one simulator, you only want to hear reassuring things about your commitment to that simulator. Emotional reactions aside - these discussions were actually good and we used them to improve the survey.
One topic which was brought up in the discussion was selection bias. Some readers of the survey were concerned about the fact that the respondents which participate in the survey were not randomly selected. Because the respondents were invited to participate, and not picked at random, the concern was that respondents could be biased to answer in a way not representative for the bigger population of flight simmers. It’s pretty challenging to make an interesting blog post on the topic of statistical sampling methods, so we’ll spare you the details and refer to the method and summary chapters in the survey, but consider this: Last year we had 15,000 respondents. This year we had 17,800. Only 39% of this year’s respondents also participated in last year’s survey. This means that 61% of this year’s respondents did not take last year’s survey. Still - most of the distributions are roughly the same! We are not going to draw any definitive conclusions from this - all we are saying is that from two huge pools of respondents we get comparable results.
Well, what does it matter? you say. When the new Microsoft Flight Simulator arrives, everything is going to change anyways. Almost true! 56% of the respondents will replace their current flight simulator software with the new Microsoft Flight Simulator once it becomes available. 40%, however, say they are happy with their current setup.
Spending Habits
There is tons more to cover in the survey, but we going to wrap up this summary by saying a few words on spending and consumption. The median software spending was estimated to 245 dollars per year. That’s the same as last year.
However, hardware spending dropped to 111 dollars per year.
Why this is we don’t know, but 43% of the respondents also stated that they are postponing purchases in anticipation of the release of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator. 48% of the respondents think it is very likely that they will buy the new simulator. Conversely 7% are pretty sure they won’t buy it.
That’s enough numbers for now. If you want to read the whole download the PDF document here. It covers combat and helicopter simulator preference; what people look for in a flight planning software; which chart format that pilots know and prefer; how Virtual Reality has developed over the last year, and much much more.