Hi,Does anyone at VATSIM know if the number of online flights has decreased since the introduction of FS2004? Would it be reasonable to say that a large number of Virtual Airline members are using "non FS standard aircraft" and therefore pending compatibility patches for FS2004 for most sophisticated aircrafts, the activity on Virtual airlines has dropped? Are any statistics on the type of aircrafts used for online flights? (I tried to compile some stats with Servinfo but it is quite hard to get an accurate picture). The reason for this enquiry is to try to figure out if a less MSFS dependent concept of flight simulation is a viable solution. This mainly, to avoid the frustration of numerous flight simmers desperate to get reliable updates/patches for their favorite aircrafts each time Microsoft get a new version of FS out.Michael

By the time winter hits, hopefully SB3 will be out and watch, VATSIM will have a ton of people flying. SB3 will make things alot easier with new voice channels, intergated inside of FS, etc... and will make those that shied away from VATSIM due to the complicated process of setting SB2.xx up give it a try.

Hi Eric,You just made my point. The issue at stake here is that many addons are dependent on MSFS's trend to publish a new version every two years. Therefore addons have to be upgraded or patched each time a new version arrives on the market.Maybe I did not express myself clearly in my first message. What I am trying to figure out is what is the market share of flightsimmers who regularly use more sophisticated aircrafts than those offered by MSFS. One way to find out is to analyze the usage of the major virtual airline systems such as VATSIM. If the attendance decreases at such time when no upgrades/patches are available a rough calculation can be made. Then it could be interesting to see whether there is a potential for other ways of creating aircrafts less dependent on MSFS's constant evolution.Michael

the percentage of people using addon aircraft like those by PSS and Dreamfleet is no more than 5-10% of the total userbase of MSFS.Given that they DO tend to be the more advanced users of the core product their presence at VATSIM will be higher, but I guess not more than 50% (and probably less).As many of them will continue to connect through FS2002 (and/or are capable of getting their packages to work inside FS2004, I for example now have 3 packages working (after a fashion, they're not perfect but workable) inside FS2004) it is unlikely that you'll see a significant drop simply because (and that's probably what you want to say) addon developers don't release upgrades for their products the very day a new version of MSFS is released.

Thanks for your comments. I came more or less to the same conclusion which, quite frankly is not sufficient to complete the research I am currently working on. Although, even if the percentage of simmers using addon aircrafts is let's say 3-4% of the total MSFS user base, it is a significant number.The general idea of this exercise is not look at the timing of release of new versions of addons but merely to see whether there could be a market for developers interested in a different approach of flight simulation. Michael