9 minutes ago, Henry Street said:

I am just trying to continue the emphasis that none of these surveys cannot be taken as good indicators of 1) the total number of simmers out there and 2) a reliable indicator of relative platform adoption among those unknown number of simmers.

Sure. But that's not their purpose.

Kind regards, Michael

9 hours ago, pmb said:

This is plainly wrong. Aerosoft has been the one single all-round flightsim company (except a few XP-only makers) targeting on XP before all the others jumped train. They made the XP10/11 tin boxes, provided for e.g. German translations of the manual, integrated some of their addons into the tin box and delivered airport and plane addons. They have been marketing it via their flyer as the "Flight simulator of the future" on the title page and on the first pages, ahead of even FSX, for years.

Aerosoft has been disregarding Prepar3d for several years in relation to XP and even been hostile towards it over the first years. If you don't believe me make a glace through their older forums threads which I have been following closely for years. Only now did they discover it's the market leader.

I would clearly state the Aerosoft results are biased towards XP and not against it.

On the other hand, the ORBX figure is certainly biased towards Prepar3d as they promoted it from the very beginning, providing free upgrades over all versions so far, which has been a high level of support encouraging folks to make the switch.

Kind regards, Michael

I am not sure this is true at all. There are about 9 pages of products for XP11 on Aerosoft`s webstore and about 33 for P3D (66 if you count FSX). Also, besides sceneries, I am not aware of any airplanes developed in-house by Aerosoft (such as their Airbus flagship) for XP. How could they be biased toward XP??

At the moment they have a banner saying that Aerofly FSII is the flight sim of the future. Does that make them AF biased? It is just marketing.

Aerosoft was always FSX focused. P3D came out at a later stage, but they are closely related.

The only XP "biased" stores out there are the ORG and XA. 

1 hour ago, tgcbraun said:

I am not sure this is true at all. There are about 9 pages of products for XP11 on Aerosoft`s webstore and about 33 for P3D (66 if you count FSX). 

As I said, they just discovered Prepar3d as the market leader this year, and the current flyer reflects this. The 2017 flyer (from the end of 2016) had pp 2-3 for XP11 advertising ("The future of flight simulation"), and pp. 4-13 for XP products including Jardesign A320, several Alabeos, and friends. (Aerosoft produces very few titles in-house those days for all simulators and consider themselves mainly as a distributor.)

There were NO separate pages for Prepar3d at all, only FSX/P3D (mostly without mention of the P3D version!) but under the headline" FSX Add-Ons".

I should add, while most of their forum support personnel works cross-simulators, they installed a dedicated X-Plane-only supporter and promoter for the forum several years ago already.

Kind regards, Michael

12 minutes ago, pmb said:

As I said, they just discovered Prepar3d as the market leader this year, and the current flyer reflects this. The 2017 flyer (from the end of 2016) had pp 2-3 for XP11 advertising ("The future of flight simulation"), and pp. 4-13 for XP products including Jardesign A320, several Alabeos, and friends. (Aerosoft produces very few titles in-house those days for all simulators and consider themselves mainly as a distributor.)

There were NO separate pages for Prepar3d at all, only FS/P3D (mostly without mention of the P3D version!) but under the headline" FSX Add-Ons".

Kind regards, Michael

Which kind of proves my point that they were always FSX biased. I am based in Germany (home of Aerosoft) and every time that I go to the big tech stores here, I see Aerosoft boxes. 90% of the times they are advertised as FSX producs (with a small Prepar3D printed below). I agree that they perhaps were slow to detect P3D`s rise, but FSX and P3D still originate from the same source. I would rarely, if ever, see XP boxes from Aerosoft on retail stores, even though XP DVDs were always very easy to find. 

I also wouldn’t say that FSX:SE users don’t purchase add-ons.  They just do it through the Steam Store, which doesn’t list ORBX products. So that will skew their results as well.

Every developers customer base is different and can't really be used to identify a dominant simulator (at least not yet).

For us, our customer base was mainly P3D v3 and v4, which led us to the decision of developing for v4 only, back in June.

Thanks,

Russ

I've been a flight sim user since 98 on and off, now only use FSW tracking the development and with my new flight sim PC P3Dv4 for the first time due to the 64bit, as I'm unable to run 32bit with the detail Scenery and Aircraft I would like, and at the moment 32bit vrs 64bit will have some impact for a year or two.

I now only purchase 64bit FSW or P3Dv4 software as this is the future for me.

PS most of my FSX:SE addon`s were purchased on the web not steam very few steam addons used, and at the moment there are more products for FSW outside the steam store which blows the DTG and steam DLC thing wide open.

 

Ray Fry. 

1 hour ago, ralinn said:

Every developers customer base is different and can't really be used to identify a dominant simulator (at least not yet).

For us, our customer base was mainly P3D v3 and v4, which led us to the decision of developing for v4 only, back in June.

Thanks,

Russ

Hi Folks,

Yep - that's true and while ORBX doesn't add XP into the equation - they are the giant in the room when it comes to payware... I'd contend - out of all the FSX/P3D people buying payware - that the likelihood of them owning something ORBX is probably higher than any other product out there... I recall a post on FlyTampa's forum stating that - FlyTampa - FSDT - and - Flightbeam - would be following suit...

Regards,
Scott

I don't own anything from Orbx... so... your statistics are skewed. LOL 

4 minutes ago, WarpD said:

I don't own anything from Orbx... so... your statistics are skewed. LOL 

LOL..

Regards,
Scott

40 minutes ago, WarpD said:

I don't own anything from Orbx... so... your statistics are skewed. LOL 

I take care of this. I own everythink by ORBX.

Kind regards, Michael

2 hours ago, WarpD said:

I don't own anything from Orbx... so... your statistics are skewed. LOL 

 

1 hour ago, pmb said:

I take care of this. I own everythink by ORBX.

Kind regards, Michael

LOL....The Orbx equilibrium remains balanced.

I too was a long time non-Orbx user....but was seduced by the dark side.  Now I have the must-haves, and slowly adding  more as time goes on.

Scott, I love seeing the numbers posted by vendors as they only confirm to me that any statistic can be skewed when parameters are omitted or data fields are selectively chosen, either innocently or with specific intent in mind.  

It would be similar to a thick insulated glove maker posting that 99% of people use insulated gloves.

Of course we’d be curious as to the location of those people…and only then would they divulge Vostok, Antarctica.

I think the stat that holds the most weight as others have mentioned is the actual percentage of simmers who actually buy AND use the high-end addons.

I’d propose a short survey to determine who’s really into simming by asking a few basic question anyone here (us serious simmers) should know:

1.      What is A2A, could it be an abbreviation for when a cyclist falls off his bike (A** to Asphalt)? If not, what is it?

2.      Who is Pete Dawson…is he a member of the Dawson’s Creek family? If not, who is he?

3.      What is a DRZEWIECKI DESIGN, is it a famous fashion design group in Europe? If not, what is it?

4.      Is an Affinity mask what you wear when you want to buy an Infinity anonymously? If not, what is it?

5.      Is a Carenado a Tornado that cares enough not to hit popular areas? If not, what is it?

6.      Is Couatl the courage it takes to connect through the Atlanta airport during the holiday season? If not, what is it?

7.      Is Virtuali a virtual bowling ally?  If not, what is it?

8.      Is RAZBAM what happens when you razz a huge, hulking drunk at a bar too much and BAM, he hits you?  If not, what is it?

 

If you can answer all those questions correctly, then you're probably the person they are looking to count in a real survey. 

3 hours ago, pmb said:

I take care of this. I own everythink by ORBX.

I'm impressed. Very nice. 

blaustern

3 hours ago, WarpD said:

I don't own anything from Orbx... so... your statistics are skewed. LOL 

 

You Sir need your head examined :) 

5 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

If you can answer all those questions correctly, then you're probably the person they are looking to count in a real survey. 

That was AWESOME!

 

Scott