State of the Simulator 2019

Overview

In December 2018, Navigraph in conjunction with several Flight Simulator Developers performed a survey of the Flight Sim Community. This survey resulted in roughly 15,000 members participating in what is reported as the largest sample survey to date. Navigraph released the data in a results PDF available from their website here. At the end of the paper, they perform some analysis primarily focusing on demographics. This isn’t surprising given that the majority of their partners are payware add-on developers.

I’m going to do some of my own analysis here on some items that I think are interesting. Full disclosure I lived primarily in the Microsoft FS and Prepar3D platform worlds, so all opinions will be from this perspective. My comments will mostly focus on

Section 1: The Big Sim on the Block

Depends on who you ask and how you frame it. On page 42 is the chart of installed simulators of participants. Raw installs indicates that X-Plane 11 is the leader. I would argue though that Prepar3D/MSFS platform is larger given it fractured nature and the cross use nature of the Microsoft FS derived platforms.

Of the Prepar3D platforms, Version 4.x is the by in large dominant version having more people using it just in the most

Section : Death of Freeware