Microsoft Flight Simulator marks anniversary with sale, stats, more

August 18, 2023

3–4 minutes

August 18 marks the third anniversary of the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator. It burst onto the scene at the end of the summer in the northern hemisphere in a turbulent year that had is pining to do a bit of travelling and MSFS delivered. The sim has come a long way since then and Microsoft is marking this third anniversary with a sale and some really interesting stats. Let’s have a look!

News

Microsoft Flight Simulator is 12-million sim pilots strong. Some of those have only flown the sim casually but even if a small percentage are regular flyers like I am, this sim is unlike anything that has come before in terms of sheer scale of the numbers of people that it has touched. Even casual flyers like a friend of mine who played it on Xbox and flew over his house in a Super Hornet are experiencing flight simming and that is just fantastic in my mind.

Meanwhile, the most dedicated simmers are currently testing the beta for Sim Update 13 which includes a litany of fixes and some new features. Active Pause has finally been fixed, various fixes and features have been worked on for avionics such as the G3000/5000, G1000 Nxi, and default aircraft such as the 747-8i and 787-10 have had additional updates including SimBrief related options in the settings for the first time. A full list of release notes on this latest beta are here.

Interesting stats

I love seeing some flight sim stats and so when Microsoft releases these info-graphics I can’t help but pour over them to see what people are doing with the sim. Information like the top three most popular aircraft is fascinating.

While we see a lot of people talking about airliners, its the humble Cessna 152 that is the one with the most number of flights taken – no doubt in part because its the tutorial airplane. The A320neo comes in second and while the default model may not have deep systems fidelity, its accessible to casual flyers who may want to just sit in the cockpit and fly one around for a few minutes. Fun! The F/A-18 Super Hornet is third and has proved a popular choice too.

Top 10 more popular airports is fascinating too with US hubs KLAX and KJFK being ranked one and two. London’s EGLL comes in third. We also have a nice top 10 breakdown for departures and arrivals too with other hubs in San Francisco, Tokyo, and Frankfurt making the list too. People like to fly out of the big airports that they know (and that have custom scenery in the sim).

The team themselves have some stats for themselves too with 24 hosted developer live streams (via Twitch) and 500 hours streamed on the channel in total. They have hosted 131 community fly-ins too.

The above info graphics were posted to the MSFS Facebook page today.

Marketplace sale

Between August 18th and 25th you can take advantage of the Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace sale with discounts on 65+ items. Those items include everything from the Premium Deluxe upgrade to the many aircraft that Microsoft have collaborated with over the last three years.