Interesting chart of FS usage

[ryanbatc 12,775]

Is there an English page?  It's all in  Deutsch 

[tonywob 4,768]

Ryan, you're a pretty good example. You used FSX, now you use P3D/X-Plane. We're all curious about your thoughts?

[ryanbatc 12,775]

12 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Ryan, you're a pretty good example. You used FSX, now you use P3D/X-Plane. We're all curious about your thoughts?

Haha that's a loaded question!

Being that I've been simming for so long, generally the sims have gotten better each release.  I did indeed use FSX from 2006 till roughly 2012.  I then used P3D v2, and XP10 together.  I had a heck of time getting into XP10 - the controls setup was half the battle.  Goran helped me out with settings and after I found how powerful it was I was hooked.  The release of XP11 stole me away from P3D v3 (at the time) - I think XP11 is a fine sim, with some obvious annoyances/limitations (SEASONS and Wx depiction, an AI traffic but getting better with 3rd party addons).  I basically quit P3D when XP11 was stable.  Then when P3D v4 came out, and my OOM misery no more, I started using it again.  I still have the same PC (but with a GTX 970 up from a 570), and XP11 does ok, even with 8GB ram.  P3D is actually sort of rough on my rig but I run Orbx with lots of payware.  For the time being I bet I run P3D v4 and XP11.10b an equal amount of time.  Recently I've installed the Reality XP GTN and GNS units in both P3D and XP11 - and have been tinkering with them (way too much lol).

I fly on Pilot Edge (online service) often and I typically just swap sims after landing at a destination, and making the next leg in the other sim.  I've invested some serious moola into both platforms.  I've come to enjoy both!  P3D v4 is the way FSX was supposed to be, and XP11 is the way a true simulator should be.  I think my bias with the MSFS series dating back to FS5.0 has kept me from going fully X Plane.  I continue to have an obsession with posting pretty screenshots of both sims here at the avsim screenshot forum lol

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

3 hours ago, Henry Street said:

Yes, the title of the post is a bit misleading. This is not a measure of flight sim platform marketshare. The data measures only Navigraph users.

But you have to admit, most people who are serious about flight simulation probably have a subscription to Navigraph. Other measures like those used by Steam, tend to measure casual flight sim users.

The results in this thread tend to match up pretty well against polls on other flight sim websites, with FSX variants and P3d variants having about equal shares with XP variants just a bit behind. The key point that I see is that the rest of the market shares are insignificant. And 3rd party developers have taken notice.

[tonywob 4,768]

P3D is of course popular (on Avsim), but it's not available in general channels (Steam, etc). We have AFS, FSW and X-Plane, and in my opinion, those three sims will be fighting it out in the future. P3D is a specialist sim, not meant for the regular consumer (or gamer). I think the dark horse here is AFS, they may surprise us all.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Just now, tonywob said:

P3D is of course popular (on Avsim), but it's not available in general channels (Steam, etc). We have AFS, FSW and X-Plane, and in my opinion, those three sims will be fighting it out in the future. P3D is a specialist sim, not meant for the regular consumer (or gamer). I think the dark horse here is AFS, they may surprise us all.

I beg to differ. The market in a year or so from now will probably be equally split between P3d and XP with  less than 10% divided among FSX and the rest of the pack. 

[tonywob 4,768]

The hard part is this, what do we base the market share from?. Forums here and Reddit/X-Plane.org are not a good judge, most of us here have been around for years and are loyal to our platforms, but we are a very small percentage of the market. I think you'll be surprised, but check out FB groups, Youtube videos and Steam, lots of people don't even know or care that P3D exists, they can't buy it (It costs too much). Love it or hate it, the future of the platform is not with us old-timers, but gamers and new-comers who buy  these other sims on a whim.

[blocks_off 5]

For me I started with FS98 and actually dipped my toe into X-Plane in 2012. The level D 767 kept me with FSX for so long, then later the NGX and tripple.

I've spent the years since 2012 backwards and forwards however I've noticed that I've been flying X-Plane as my main sim since 2016.

I've got P3Dv4 and this was for a certain aircraft that was released for P3Dv4.1 in October. However the P3Dv4.1 experience hasn't quite done it for me !

When I want to fly it's more a case of what plane do I want - and nearly all of them now are in X-Plane (add on tube liners btw - I've never used default aircraft) 

I think X-Plane also offers superb value for money. I asked a question the other day about setting up defined views in a VC in P3D - answer buy an add on! Hang on what about move your view then ctrl + number and it's saved as we can do in X-Plane. X-P also runs very fluid for me.

Just my 2c - I am hugely great full though for the choice and even more so nowadays, the choice of aircraft.

- Carl

[hs118 707]

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I beg to differ. The market in a year or so from now will probably be equally split between P3d and XP with  less than 10% divided among FSX and the rest of the pack. 

There is another pretty big gap in this data: DCS.

[Murmur 3,941]

7 minutes ago, tonywob said:

We have AFS, FSW and X-Plane, and in my opinion, those three sims will be fighting it out in the future. P3D is a specialist sim, not meant for the regular consumer (or gamer). I think the dark horse here is AFS, they may surprise us all.

The flight sim landscape is fractured again like it was at the end of '90s (MSFS, Flight Unlimited, Fly!, ProPilot...), with the difference that now the development costs are higher (but the customer base is undoubtedly larger as well).

The problem is that each of the current flight sims does a few things much better than all the others, but each of them has important shortcomings as well. This is the reason that there isn't a de facto monopolist anymore, like FSX was.

I think AFS2 shows a lot of potential, but maybe we are underestimating the resources and time needed to go from a basic flight sim to a complete general-purpose flight sim. In the current highly competitive landscape, each competitor won't remain standstill.

 

[tonywob 4,768]

6 minutes ago, Murmur said:

In the current highly competitive landscape, each competitor won't remain standstill.

Agreed, and we can only all be really positive about this. Interesting times ahead

[Pascal_LSGC 298]

13 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Is there an English page?  It's all in  Deutsch 

Sorry, it was .ch, here it is with .com:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2015-11-17 2017-11-16&q=%2Fm%2F0238h5,%2Fm%2F0dwp83,%2Fm%2F0j9mhpy

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now 7-d&q=%2Fm%2F0238h5,%2Fm%2F0dwp83,%2Fm%2F0j9mhpy

[skelsey 765]

40 minutes ago, Pascal_LSGC said:

Sorry, it was .ch, here it is with .com:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2015-11-17 2017-11-16&q=%2Fm%2F0238h5,%2Fm%2F0dwp83,%2Fm%2F0j9mhpy

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now 7-d&q=%2Fm%2F0238h5,%2Fm%2F0dwp83,%2Fm%2F0j9mhpy

The interesting thing about that Google data is that what it really shows if you zoom out (say, to the last 10-12 years, pre-FSX release in 2006 to present day) is that the X-Plane graph is pretty much static: it hasn't changed much at all in 12 years, and if anything it's actually gone down very slightly (just by a couple of points). What has changed is that the FSX line is decreasing significantly and P3D, since its release, is increasing (albeit at a slower rate than the FSX line is coming down).

That would suggest to me that the apparent increase in X-Plane users is actually more likely to be due to a decrease in FSX users than any great surge in X-Plane interest. Certainly in terms of absolute numbers, at my VA our flight logging stats consistently have X-Plane stable at around 10% of flights, only just above FS9 in terms of actual usage (compared to asking people to say what they use), and that hasn't changed ever since we started supporting XP.

[tonywob 4,768]

33 minutes ago, skelsey said:

That would suggest to me that the apparent increase in X-Plane users is actually more likely to be due to a decrease in FSX users than any great surge in X-Plane interest.

I find that very hard to believe. I can't offer hard facts or figures, but judging by the simple increase in comments one can see on YouTube videos or FB groups compared to 2 or 3 years ago would suggest to me that XP11 has attracted a lot of new users and is continuing to grow. Guess there's also a reason LR hired (and could afford to hire) 2 new developers.

 

[yidahoo 365]

I think that those of us that frequent social media groups devoted to the various flight sim platforms have seen dramatic upsurges in the number of X-Plane users since the release of v11. Mainly from P3D/FSX. Thats not to say they are abandoning P3D/FSX but are open minded enough to use both platforms and can see the positive benefits in both.