Whats the average age of our community?

[WarpD 824]

Primary roadblock to getting younger individuals into becoming pilots is cost.  A PPL is prohibitively expensive these days when you consider that due to cost of living how many younger individuals still live with family.

[yidahoo 365]

I was interested by this survey but wondered if it would be skewed by the fact that forums are generally an older crowd and social media attracts a younger crowd. I run a big XP11 Facebook group with close on 9000 members and decided to do a similar poll there. The results suggest there is a much higher percentage of younger users than the poll here shows. In my experience of running the group we have a huge number of young enthusiasts. These are the results, although its an X-Plane group I would expect similar results in a P3D or general flight sim group on social media. 

10-20  - 68

21-30  - 101

31-40  - 101

41-50. - 117

51-60  - 49

61-70  - 28

71-80  - 5

81-90. - 1

Edited May 29, 2018 by yidahoo

[Leen3131cs 107]

Its a Facebook-group and that explains more youth.
I am confident a P3D Facebook group will give the same lower average age.

 

Fact is regular fora like AVSIM have much more visiters than Facebookgroops as they tend to go deeper in  into detalis.
So the fact the Facebookfora give a lower everage age will not mean the average age will be lower than the outcome of this poll.
Almost all Facebookgroup visiters visit sites like AVSIM too.

People over 50 are significant less using Facebook.

Its hard to get a real good impression of the situation.

Collecting reactions on a forum is a slow process , its the visiter who comes by and has to notice the poll , to react.

[avi8tir 24]

I think an interesting question as well is what age did you start and which sim was your first. Also, what system? 

For me, I had a sim on my Apple IIc.... I think it was Sublogic FS II. The year was 1985 and I was 5 years old. 

 

[Bobsk8 12,586]

On 5/29/2018 at 9:21 AM, yidahoo said:

I was interested by this survey but wondered if it would be skewed by the fact that forums are generally an older crowd and social media attracts a younger crowd. I run a big XP11 Facebook group with close on 9000 members and decided to do a similar poll there. The results suggest there is a much higher percentage of younger users than the poll here shows. In my experience of running the group we have a huge number of young enthusiasts. These are the results, although its an X-Plane group I would expect similar results in a P3D or general flight sim group on social media. 

10-20  - 68

21-30  - 101

31-40  - 101

41-50. - 117

51-60  - 49

61-70  - 28

71-80  - 5

81-90. - 1

I would agree, most of the younger people are on the Facebook groups involved in aviation simulation. 

[Wise87 1,275]

You also have to look at the fact the older crowd can afford to pay the price when it comes to this hobby when it comes to software and hardware. Flight Simming is not cheap. I stopped counting after awhile, LOL

Check out the Facebook pages when a high price Addon is released. 😛

Edited June 9, 2018 by Wise87

[Leen3131cs 107]

This poll is about the average age on this AVSIM-FORUM.
Fact is the average age of the participants on social media like facebook is much lower.

The moment flightsimmers want to discuss technical things and looking for explanations , manuals and things like that the tend to come to the forums like AVSIM.
On  fora like AVSIM its more easy to find thinks who have been discussed and explained in the past, than in a Facebook-group.
Its not possible search in the past on Facbook..
The moment a flightsimmer gets real interested in flightsimming , not just playing with an airplane-game, he will turn to the traditional fora too.

I thinks its very hard to determine the real average age of the whole sim-community.

A poll on Facbook-groups give a much lower average age.
I have done several polls on tratditional fora like Avsim and X-Plane org and the outcome is an average age of around 50 years.

I visited flightsim events and noticed the avarage age of active participants, demonstrating, showing and explaining, to be................... around 50 years .

The average age is about he same at all platforms.

 

[Jim Young 2,356]

On 6/9/2018 at 3:35 AM, Leen3131cs said:

I visited flightsim events and noticed the avarage age of active participants, demonstrating, showing and explaining, to be................... around 50 years .

The average age is about he same at all platforms.

Previous AVSIM demographic polls, that were set up by Tom using expensive commercial survey tools, showed the same results when it came to the age question. Believe the last major AVSIM Demographic poll was conducted in 2014.  Interesting to see the average age has not changed too much but recall 56 being the average in the past.  The average age may increase or decrease as this polling question gets more responses.

[FalconAF 213]

Well, I just got back home from the FSExpo18 here in Las Vegas.  If I hadn't known the topic of the get-together was a flight simming convention, I would have thought I was at my 45th year high school reunion.  Seemed like all the under 30 crowd was either working the display booths or providing convention support.  Most of the people wandering around looking at all the cool stuff were within 10 years of my age.  I was half expecting the water dispensers to dispense prune-shooters.  😂

Edited June 11, 2018 by FalconAF

[MartinRex007 390]

Also just returned from the FSExpo18 and was surprise by the large number of RW pilots or students working on their PPL among the attendees. Good to see that!

[Leen3131cs 107]

Thank you all for your reactions.

I dd a survey about the age of the flightsimmers  on an exclusive X-Plane oriented forum too.

The outcome there  50 years.

Its possible the score on Facebook and other media might be a bit lower average age.

So I do NOT say the average simmer is 50 years old.

A survey about the average age on fora gives us  50 years.


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