The results of the Navigraph FlightSim Community Survey, 2019, are available here: https://download.navigraph.com/docs/flightsim-community-survey-by-navigraph-2019-final.pdf.

There were 17,800 respondents, so the survey should give a fairly accurate snapshot of the flight sim community as a whole. Oddly, considering the apparently increasing popularity of VR, the numbers who reported using it for flight simulation only increased by 1% over last year's result - 11% in the 2018 survey compared to 12% in 2019.

11 hours ago, vortex681 said:

Oddly, considering the apparently increasing popularity of VR, the numbers who reported using it for flight simulation only increased by 1% over last year's result - 11% in the 2018 survey compared to 12% in 2019.

thats possible, VR is used by much more people at online racing competitions,

compared to Flightsims where there is almost no competition (beside DCS or War Thunder).

On 2/5/2020 at 11:14 AM, Nedo68 said:

thats possible, VR is used by much more people at online racing competitions,

Sim racing is my other hobby. All of the organised sim racing esports events I've seen use monitors. I've yet to see an event with competitors using VR headsets - it would automatically exclude those who, for whatever reason, couldn't use VR. Whilst VR is probably more popular in sim racing, I'd be surprised if the percentage of racers using VR was too much larger than those in the Navigraph survey.

Edited February 6, 20206 yr by vortex681

I didn't expect such a high number! 12%, great!

It already surpassed home cockpit and also multiple monitors (used as external views).

It will not be long before it will surpass the declining head trackers.

4 hours ago, vortex681 said:

All of the organised sim racing esports events I've seen use monitors

esport, no i meant just the standard competition, online racing from home, 24/7. Things changed much more compared to flightsim.

5 hours ago, Nedo68 said:

Things changed much more compared to flightsim.

Where is the evidence for this? At least for flight sims we've got a substantial survey to give us an idea of numbers.

Edited February 7, 20206 yr by vortex681

5 hours ago, vortex681 said:

Where is the evidence for this? At least for flight sims we've got a substantial survey to give us an idea of numbers.

Evidence? Just look at the forum here and how VR is handled, and avsim is not a small local forum.
now check out any racing forum out there, or watch some known youtube racers racing,
people deal completely different VR, People with VR race against non VR Racers too,
(like we do on our small racing server) its much more accepted and used normally, from iRacing to Asetto Corsa.

 

Edit: since both racing games are on steam too,

check this analysis: Analysis: Monthly-connected VR Headsets on Steam

The Trendline shows where its heading,

and this is only Steam not counted Oculus Platform or Playstation VR.

Edited February 7, 20206 yr by Nedo68
added the Steam Analysis

On 2/7/2020 at 7:24 AM, Nedo68 said:

Evidence? Just look at the forum here and how VR is handled, and avsim is not a small local forum.
now check out any racing forum out there, or watch some known youtube racers racing,

That’s not evidence. It just shows that some people are very vocal about VR. If you look on both the flight sim and racing forums, there are plenty of posts about VR but many of them are posted by the same forum members. The number of forum posts doesn’t directly translate to real-world user numbers. Similarly, a few YouTube racing channels are not representative of the whole community.

The trend for VR usage is definitely on the rise, but it’s still makes up a very small proportion of gamers overall. The Navigraph survey gives a reliable indicator of flight sim VR usage but there’s no actual data available for racing sims.

I'm very confident that VR will come to MSFS.

 

Those of you that don't want it - don't worry about it - just don't use it.

For those of us that want VR, it's essentially a "must have" in a way that might be hard to understand for some of you.

 

I'd literally rather not Sim at all than do it without VR (over the long term I mean)

3 hours ago, irrics said:

I'd literally rather not Sim at all than do it without VR

Well said.

Try as I might, I have not been able to find any other simulation genre, including warsims, that seems to be pushing back quite as hard against the relevance of vr.

Other genres seem to be taking it pretty much in stride, but in some places, it's like locking two strange cats in a box.

I suspect this will continue until the writing on the wall becomes so obvious that we'll eventually go through the familiar sea change usually only seen when holdouts finally update their OS, or finally with great reluctance, switch from fsx to p3d....

The only thing I wonder is if by the time that happens, the general vibe will have habituated enthusiasts to primarily share thier passion on the growing number of perhaps more welcoming specialized venues out there, where cultists and fanatics can share their eagerness to explore this new way of experiancing the hobby with perhaps a bit less pushback and controversy.

3 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Try as I might, I have not been able to find any other simulation genre, including warsims, that seems to be pushing back quite as hard against the relevance of vr.

Who, in this thread, is “pushing back against the relevance of VR”? The thread was about the data in a major survey. It’s about the real world. I can’t imagine that MS wouldn’t want the new sim to VR compatible. However, as much as some would like it to be different, at present, VR usage makes up just a small part of flight simming.

The present state of VR technology is like that of 5g cellular networks. Eventually, the masses will embrace VR in some form. But in the interim, the typical user is waiting for that blockbuster reason/app before committing to buying new hardware. Do you see a 5g iPhone for sale? Or even rumored? That's because the technology is still in flux. Who's going to shell out a sack of money on a new 5g phone, only to find it doesn't meet some artificially high expectation?

2 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

The thread was about the data in a major survey. It’s about the real world.

And I don't believe so, anymore than many chose to believe the various VR surveys here.

To me, navigraph, and people answering the navigraph survey have always been a self selecting subset of sim users, and hence not truly representative of the many, many people who care not a whit about navigraph or its survey. I've never, since I first became aware of it a few years ago taken it all that seriously as an accurate measure of anything except navigraph users.

I much prefer statistics drawn from non-self selecting groups of users, like the steam stats, and even those are inaccurate as they don't really take into account people not using Steam as their platform of choice.

21 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

And I don't believe so, anymore than many chose to believe the various VR surveys here.

The difference is that whilst the surveys here have had a few hundred respondents, at best, the Navigraph survey had many thousands.

21 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

To me, navigraph, and people answering the navigraph survey have always been a self selecting subset of sim users, and hence not truly representative of the many, many people who care not a whit about navigraph or its survey.

How are they “self-selecting”? As far as I’m aware, anyone, not just Navigraph customers, can take part in the annual surveys. It was widely advertised through forums and on developers’ web sites so there’s no reason to think that it’s not representative (especially considering the large number of respondents who took part). Just because it doesn’t seem to match your personal opinions/wishes, there’s no good reason to think it’s not representative. It is, after all, the only large-scale flight sim survey so there’s nothing else out there which you could use to dispute the figures.

 

 

Edited February 10, 20206 yr by vortex681