how many flight sim fans inhabit the earth

[WildBillKelsoe]

I often think we're just a handful of book-reading, stick-buying, fidelity-chasing, head-tracking, teen-adult aged people compared to the vast majority of lights you see on a server map for say call of beauty.... :cry:

 

so in terms of numbers, those of us who, at the airport, smirk when a pilot in uniform walks by, starts to think "what's the cost index", what's his speed schedule, etc..., or just love the sounds and looks of birds, you know, the shades of gray that separate us, and yet we're united and glued to eagle dynamics, xplane, fez-ex, etc...

 

how many of us do you think we make worldwide. enthusiasts/fans/nuts wise?

 

I think maybe 100,000 from all the continents.. I'd love to be wrong and the number be alot more, a whole lot more..

[GeorgeLKMT]

I think maybe 100,000 from all the continents...

 

54k users registered here.

653,867 members on flightsim.com forum, 97,077 listed as active.

FSX Steam Edition sold about 200k copies in a year.

MSFS series got into a guinness book with 20 millions copies sold wordwide....16 years ago.

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[AG-51_Razor]

Whatever the actual number is, it pales in comparison to the other genres out there. We're just a handful of folks in a crowd of millions. :pilotfly:

[StandingCow]

I wonder... if our genre were more popular and big AAA studios were involved...I think they would be dumbed down for the most part.

[Scarecrow]

Probably the same as hardcore racing-sims or tank-sims or sub-sims. Games have always been more popular as they have broad appeal.

I'd say the DCS numbers must be growing as I've noticed lots of WWII fans and civvy fans coming in over the last few years.

 

The numbers for this genre will never get to AAA numbers because a sim gives the user a steep learning curve to overcome which is attractive to some but off-putting to most. We know this, part of the appeal is the knowledge that alot of your friends and family wouldn't have the patience or commitment to undertake the learning process. :smartass:

 

DCS is especially difficult to break into as a newb

1) Learn to fly

2) Navigation

3) Weapons

4) How radar works

5) How the RWR works

6) How countermeasures work

7) How missiles work

8) How AAA and SAMS work

9) Beaming, Notching, Cranking, Kinematics and energy loss.

10) When do I use flashing Nav lights.

 

And thats just for a FC aircraft, when you throw in complex systems management and I pity anyone climbing that hill all at once.

 

Hardware requirements play a factor aswell especially in DCS. Having a fairly good PC and then having to buy a fairly decent HOTAS can be a huge barrier to entry in alot of countries.

 

It also really depends on what you consider a flightsim.

 

I would not play it but WarThunder has great numbers and I think there is a flight-simmer in the heart of every WT player. :)

[hansangb]

Interesting, I think better hardware prevented more users. Back when F19 was around from MicroProse, most people could pick it up and play it. Same for Gunship. Then the era of Falcon 3.0 started. Bigger. Badder systems were needed for full fidelity and it started to leave legions of people behind. I kind of miss those old days but wouldn't give up DCS A10C for anything.

 

Microsoft Flight Sim is different as well because it mostly catered to civvy side of the house. I would *never* fly a Cessna for hours on end, but to each his own. Considering the aftermarket of FSX, I'm sure there are a lot of people who like it.

[AG-51_Razor]

Very well said Scarecrow, however, I would disagree with your statement that "Games have always been more popular as they have broad appeal"

 

When I began to get interested in simulations/combat flight sims, they were actually quite popular. Almost every gaming magazine had front page spreads on what was the latest coming out of Microprose studios or Jane's, or Microsoft. They had whole sections of their magazine devoted to simulations. They were everywhere! Any software store you went into had isles and isles of simulation software. That was 20+ years ago. Now, go into a Frys and see what is on the shelves in the way of flight sims. NADA! No even FSX!!

 

You're absolutely right though. It's a very steep learning curve with a fairly expensive requirement for peripherals and the more into it you get, the more expensive you habit becomes!

[Bucic]

I tried asking WolframAlpha.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=flight+simulators+popularity

No luck :D

[BFBunny]

I used to play War Thunder.

 

Testament to my many rage flame posts about the game not being what I wanted although it did get me into tanks and I ended up going to the fantastic tank fest event in the UK followed by the Flying legends display where I got to see the real version of the games mustang which was a pretty unique link to be honest.

 

I could have stared at the gigantic f-15 all day.

 

In my mind I thought I've flown that mustang. I wonder... naaaa.

 

I'm currently waiting on new parts for a computer build that is influenced mainly for the desire to play DCS and having seen the progress on the Spitfire I decided I'd like to get better at the game before it comes out.

 

How many people play? Probably not enough.

[Aginor]

I vaguely remember an article by a big german gaming magazine years ago, which put flight sim enthusiasts at below half a percent of the gamers out there.

 

I think they mainly used sold copies as a base for their estimations though, so the numbers may even be lower. Back in the 90s it was significantly higher.

 

So if I had to make a guess I'd say between five and ten million people or so worldwide that regularly play flight sims, perhaps twice the number if you count everyone who has played such a sim.

EDIT: Also most people probably play offline.

 

Asking hardware manufacturers such as thustmaster might provide more interesting numbers.

Edited February 6, 2016 by Aginor

[King_Hrothgar]

A lot depends on how you define a flight sim. If you consider P3D/FSX, X-Plane, RoF, IL2:BoX and DCS as the only flight sims currently in existence, then we're probably at around a million players world wide. If you consider War Thunder and similar arcade flying games as flight sims too, then it's a whole lot more. I do remember flight sims being a mainstream game type back in the 1990's. I even saw a Falcon 4.0 TV commercial when I was a kid (how I heard about it). But in the early 2000's, the flight sim market collapsed. I think it can be traced to a simple matter of difficulty.

 

In the 1990's, even the hardest of the hardcore flight sims were less realistic and easier to learn than War Thunder is today. The strive for greater realism is what killed the genre as a mainstream genre. I do not regret the change as I was always a hardcore aviation fan, but that change did make it a niche market. Incidentally, the more arcadish ones like WT do have fairly broad appeal. Last time I logged in, they were pushing 50k+ concurrent users pretty much all the time.

[Toxe]

The problem with sims today is that they are just that: Simulations. And nothing more.

 

Any of ye older folks remember 25 years ago? Sims back then were more like games with campaigns and stories. Some told a story, some were more like a war dairy, some had dynamic campaigns, some showed old newspaper articles.

 

Basically you knew why you flew. There was always context for your actions. And back then sims or sim-like games had some of the most amazing presentations in terms of graphics that you could have at the time.

 

And all of this drew people in. Not just the fancy simulation aspect.

 

Nowadays it's mostly either "play multiplayer against other people" (World of Tanks et al.) or "you can really, Really, REALLY learn how to operate this plane". But for single players sims miss the "Why do I fly?" aspect. There is no context. No campaign, no story, no war. Just flying.

 

And that is just not enough to make the sim genre big again.

 

Honestly, if a part of the industry rediscovered games that are comparable in complexity and story telling to for example TIE Fighter I would be totally fine with that. At the moment I don't fly any sims at all because a) I have other games that interest me more and b) sims are just plain boring these days. Yeah sure, it's great to learn how to operate this or that plane in detail but what do you do once you are done with that? There is no interesting context in which you can play with that thing that you just learned.

 

The most interesting thing I found over the last couple of years was actually Air Hauler in FSX.

[Boris]

Exactly... Sims just weren't really simulations in the golden age flight simming at the end of the 90s.

Most were all round entertainment products with storylines and music.

 

I started my combat simming when I was 10 years old with US Navy Fighters. I featured amazing graphics for the time, full motion video cutscenes and a Top Gun style vibe that was sure to resonate with many people.

 

Most of the really popular sims such as the novalogic series were really just arcade games.

 

The increasing realism of sims has caused an exponential learning curve and a requirement for ever more expensive hardware. You're not going to get the most out if DCS without a Hotas, pedals and a head tracking solution.

 

I wouldn't want it any other way though.

[King_Hrothgar]

The problem with sims today is that they are just that: Simulations. And nothing more.

 

Any of ye older folks remember 25 years ago? Sims back then were more like games with campaigns and stories. Some told a story, some were more like a war dairy, some had dynamic campaigns, some showed old newspaper articles.

 

Basically you knew why you flew. There was always context for your actions. And back then sims or sim-like games had some of the most amazing presentations in terms of graphics that you could have at the time.

 

And all of this drew people in. Not just the fancy simulation aspect.

 

Nowadays it's mostly either "play multiplayer against other people" (World of Tanks et al.) or "you can really, Really, REALLY learn how to operate this plane". But for single players sims miss the "Why do I fly?" aspect. There is no context. No campaign, no story, no war. Just flying.

 

And that is just not enough to make the sim genre big again.

 

Honestly, if a part of the industry rediscovered games that are comparable in complexity and story telling to for example TIE Fighter I would be totally fine with that. At the moment I don't fly any sims at all because a) I have other games that interest me more and b) sims are just plain boring these days. Yeah sure, it's great to learn how to operate this or that plane in detail but what do you do once you are done with that? There is no interesting context in which you can play with that thing that you just learned.

 

The most interesting thing I found over the last couple of years was actually Air Hauler in FSX.

 

That is a very important factor that has often been overlooked in flight sims. IL2:BoS/BoM is a prime example of this. RoF, their previous product, has all those great things from the 1990's sims that were lost over the years. It has newspaper clippings, famous aces in game that can be fought and killed as well as your own virtual squadron with individual pilots (with their own stats, medals, status) and planes. It's amazing from a gameplay standpoint, never mind simulation. And then there is BoS which threw all that away in favor of a randomized quick mission builder. I don't think there is a single person who actually likes BoS's campaign, and yet its campaign along with DCS's static campaigns are characteristic of modern flight sims. It's an unfortunate turn and certainly hurts flight sims in general.

[cichlidfan]

Keep in mind that the other sim's campaign generator never made it beyond the beta stage and still requires server side support to work. Although, there is an excellent offline and free campaign generator for that same sim.

[BlackLion213]

Any of ye older folks remember 25 years ago? Sims back then were more like games with campaigns and stories. Some told a story, some were more like a war dairy, some had dynamic campaigns, some showed old newspaper articles.

 

Basically you knew why you flew. There was always context for your actions. And back then sims or sim-like games had some of the most amazing presentations in terms of graphics that you could have at the time.

 

And all of this drew people in. Not just the fancy simulation aspect.

 

Nowadays it's mostly either "play multiplayer against other people" (World of Tanks et al.) or "you can really, Really, REALLY learn how to operate this plane". But for single players sims miss the "Why do I fly?" aspect. There is no context. No campaign, no story, no war. Just flying.

 

And that is just not enough to make the sim genre big again.

 

Honestly, if a part of the industry rediscovered games that are comparable in complexity and story telling to for example TIE Fighter I would be totally fine with that. At the moment I don't fly any sims at all because a) I have other games that interest me more and b) sims are just plain boring these days. Yeah sure, it's great to learn how to operate this or that plane in detail but what do you do once you are done with that? There is no interesting context in which you can play with that thing that you just learned.

 

The most interesting thing I found over the last couple of years was actually Air Hauler in FSX.

 

I agree with much of what your saying and the context/story in DCS has not been a priority (so it would seem), but I think things are changing. There have been five very high quality campaigns released over just the past 6 months or so. I think that a solid campaign rectifies a lot of the above mentioned issues and is essential for maintaining interest in DCS (beyond all of the new modules on the horizon). I have several of the new campaigns (NTTR campaigns) and I've barely scratched the surface. That said, my early exposure is that there is a HUGE difference between an instant action/quick mission and one of these campaign missions. The campaign missions are much more interesting and captivating.

 

I see a few problems that I think would be easy to address for DCS. Firstly, a lot of aircraft are in Beta and don't have training or campaign missions. This makes the perceived learning curve feel much steeper and also gives the aircraft and it's mission no context. I don't have an answer for the best way to balance "early access" with the need for complete features, but I want the developers to certainly finish these items - they are really important for keeping the player's interest. The A-10C, for example, has excellent training missions and an excellent introduction. This really transforms the process of learning the aircraft and captures the feel of the in-game overview movies from the sims of the 1990s. I really hope that Eagle Dynamics and 3rd parties try to create training missions like those for the A-10C - I'd love to see a similar overview for the Hornet.

 

Also, it would be great to have more media "in-game", mainly as part of the intro for missions and campaigns. Past sims from the 1990s needed this, because the in game experience was so much more limited - they needed the player's imagination to fill in missing visuals/drama. Hornet 2.0 was a pretty impressive game when I was an early teenager, but they couldn't capture much the real experience with tools like this:

 

 

Clearly things have changed a bit:

 

 

Still, these movies are still created for DCS and some of the recent ones have been very exciting. This recent one by Glowing Amraam totally revved me up for the A-10C:

 

[ame]

[/ame]

 

 

I actually started learning the A-10C this weekend and got the campaign simply because of this video. It's really well done IMHO, but why not add things like this into DCS itself. Now that the sim is nearly photorealistic (again IMHO), why not us it to create awesome intro videos like sims of the past:

 

[ame]

[/ame]

 

 

Glowing Amraam's videos at every bit as good (much better I think) than the intros of the past (except that this Jane's videos includes some VF-213 footage...maybe some day GA will do that too):

 

 

[ame]

[/ame]

 

 

The Mirage 2000C trailer was also rather awesome:

 

 

[ame]

[/ame]

 

 

I really think these videos should be part of the DCS GUI. If they exist, why not wrap them into the encyclopedia for example? Or create a way to watch them before choosing a plane to fly, or campaign, or build them into the module manager (might improve sales).

 

I feel like it's a much better opportunity because you can create these amazing movies using footage from real gameplay, that's much better and more engaging. In the sims of the past, there was sort of a let down in that you watch the movie, then start gameplay - often they bear no resemblance to each other. That would not be the case today.

 

I think if Eagle Dynamics continues the wise decision of producing DLC campaigns and integrates their existing media into the DCS GUI, it would address most of the concerns you mentioned. At least it would for me. :)

 

It's nice to a have a little window dressing here and there. ;)

 

-Nick

[DieHard]

I often think we're just a handful of book-reading, stick-buying, fidelity-chasing, head-tracking, teen-adult aged people compared to the vast majority of lights you see on a server map for say call of beauty.... :cry:

 

so in terms of numbers, those of us who, at the airport, smirk when a pilot in uniform walks by, starts to think "what's the cost index", what's his speed schedule, etc..., or just love the sounds and looks of birds, you know, the shades of gray that separate us, and yet we're united and glued to eagle dynamics, xplane, fez-ex, etc...

 

how many of us do you think we make worldwide. enthusiasts/fans/nuts wise?

 

I think maybe 100,000 from all the continents.. I'd love to be wrong and the number be alot more, a whole lot more..

 

How many DCS simmers out of the total purchasers fly in (MP) Multiplayer?

 

I bet it isn't even half.

[King_Hrothgar]

I'd be surprised if it's more than 15%.

[WildBillKelsoe]

If you consider War Thunder and similar arcade flying games as flight sims too

 

 

No, I don't. I mean guys with passion for eyeballing a jeppesen chart, study sim, F4 type of guys. or after lectures with no one looking, drawing a CCIP triangle and doing maths with feeble minds (or strong minds).

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[WildBillKelsoe]

How many DCS simmers out of the total purchasers fly in (MP) Multiplayer?

 

I bet it isn't even half.

 

 

You are right but lets say the internet in a few years time got more advanced, cheaper, you can talk like real time over phone without lag, optic fibre, and we had dedicated dcs server, I think all might switch to online play.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[NeilWillis]

Some very good points raised here.

 

It has become a very cut down, subject oriented genre, because resources are I think limited. Maybe it is a vicious circle? We would all love DCS World and other sims to become more slick and have deeper immersion when it comes to dynamic campaigns, story lines etc.

 

I have a feeling that when the environment is complete, the graphics within the game are polished, and when the module choices are far far wider, then there will be more attention paid to campaign content, intro screens etc. It could certainly add a whole new aspect to the genre if it was done well.

 

We have seen flight sims become more sophisticated, far more real in both graphic terms, and in the way the aircraft behave and are manipulated. The whole process has taken years to achieve. It is a natural progression, which is ongoing, and naturally appeals to fewer and fewer people due to the complexity.

 

What we have is a polarisation of interests. One side is the casual gamer, the other is the dedicated person who is interested in having an environment in which aircraft behave like aircraft, and not like sprites in a cartoon world.

 

The question is, are there enough of the dedicated people for the genre to continue, and grow? How far should developers go into a story-board style intros if that will cost resources needed elsewhere?

 

Campaigns will continue to appear, and I presume AI will become more sophisticated and plausible. We do definitely however need that outcome/branch aspect to campaigns, and the more dynamic and re-playable they can become the better. If there is always an unexpected unpredictable outcome, then they will become more absorbing. Back stories giving a depth to things is always a good thing too. Right now however, I suspect other aspects have a far higher priority, and we will wait some time before all the aspects of flight simulation are covered in their entirety - especially in DCS World.

[Toxe]

You are right but lets say the internet in a few years time got more advanced, cheaper, you can talk like real time over phone without lag, optic fibre, and we had dedicated dcs server, I think all might switch to online play.

Never. Going. To. Happen.

 

What we have is a polarisation of interests. One side is the casual gamer, the other is the dedicated person who is interested in having an environment in which aircraft behave like aircraft, and not like sprites in a cartoon world.

No, we don't have polar opposites. What we have is lots and lots of shades of gray between these two extremes. And a lot (most?) people don't fall into one camp either and instead can enjoy different aspects of the spectrum depending on mood, time and current interests.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Toxe

[NeilWillis]

How can you possibly have shades of grey in philosophy regarding game design? You are either in one camp or the other. I don't see any game that is slightly game like, but also slightly accurate. The two are diametrically opposed. You compromise one for the other, but you simply cannot have it both ways. If it is accurate, it is complex, if it isn't complex it isn't accurate.

 

People don't fall into one or other camp, very true, but that is an entirely different matter.

[ineth]

Probably millions.

Us who print a Yellow pages sized Quick Guide till we get to the minivan sized manuals are probably under 100k

[Toxe]

How can you possibly have shades of grey in philosophy regarding game design? You are either in one camp or the other.

No, you are not. Just because you love Baseball doesn't mean you can't enjoy the occasional game of Basketball. Same with games. People might prefer the dryest of hardcore sims yet they can still enjoy a game of IL-2 from time to time, depending on their mood.