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Polls. . .and what they tell us. . .or don't!

falcon409

falcon409

Moderator
Staff member
I saw the poll shown below while checking out the videos on the Aerosoft Forum for the recently released AN-2. Mathjis posted it as a reply to questions about why the P3D_V4 version was being released first.
As you can see P3D garnered more than half of all the votes cast (approx 615 total), X-Plane (V10&11) tallied more than all the versions of FSX combines and then there were some stragglers with the other Sims available. I found it interesting because of how the current poll here in this Forum is sizing up. . .basically the opposite of what the Aerosoft poll shows.

image.png.876f0014763e637a8cc5ddcc986a78c4.png


Ironically, it's my feeling that our current poll mirrors what we see in the P3D Forums. . .a lack of participation or at least the desire or perceived time it would take to participate. Our individual Forums prove that out every day. . .the FSX Forum is far more active than the P3D Forum. So is this poll, or any poll for that matter indicative of the true numbers or simply a random "show of hands" from those who happen feel like participating. . .I think it's the latter. I think the one thing P3D suffers from is the constant updates. . .which is kind of ironic since that's the one thing folks complained about not getting from FSX, lol. After a while people sit back and think. . .enough is enough already (some developers certainly have). Consequently people have adopted a "wait and see" attitude about P3D, wondering when would be a good time to take the leap, even though 64bit seems to be running quite well.

Anyway, my 2cents on how I view polls and just how accurate they are despite the numbers shown.
 
With both polls I was amazed how few of us seems to use P3D v3. Is it really so? I have v3.4 and will stay with that for a long time. All my add ons work now with that version, I have no desires to spend money and time for v4. In my years of simming I have spend more time tweaking than flying and I would like to change that...
 
My 2 cents....

It seems to me that a poll by a developer is somewhat self serving and doesn't represent the entire population of flight simmers. Frankly, I don't know how they could reach such a population and it often leaves me wondering where they get their information to direct the development of future products.

Also, our internal poll might be skewed as well. Our recent poll was internal to the FSX General Discussion section. So if a member frequents only the P3D section, how would they know about the poll and vote?

In both cases the total count of those voting were too small (compared to total membership to the specific forums) to warrant any conclusion.

Bottom line is that I don't have the same hardware used by developers, so its unlikely I'll migrate to P3D anytime soon. I'll just continue to put my money where the FSXA products are.
 
I would agree that a survey of FSX forum users is most likely to produce a majority of FSX users in a poll.
It is worth noting that so far no-one has given X plane as their main simulator, but then why would such a person
visit an FSX forum?

I wonder what the question was in the Aerosoft poll.

I remember from years ago, a survey of pensioners from my then work was done and it was concluded that
none of us was likely to live much beyond 70.
Unfortunately for the pension administrators, the survey was only of those who had died and took no account
of those who were living on to a ripe old age.
 
I think the usage of the FSX forum boils down to habits. FSX has become a synonym with Flightsim since 2006 mainly because there were no real competition. The FSX forum covers more and more P3D topics/posts, but since FSX is still so manifested in the average simmers mind they stick to this forum, because many see flightsim not FSX or P3D. I believe in the poll, P3D is gaining ground fast and leaving FSX behind.

My 2 cent.
 
Polling results tend to be dictated by both the manner the question(s) were asked, by vehicle in which they were conducted, and by the audience polled (sample, to use a statistical term). Polls can quite often be reflective of outside factors / influences than in gauging the "truth" (whatever that term means), and are sometimes somewhat self-serving.

That all being said, they are always "interesting" to say the least - though I would not "bet the farm" based on their interpretation...

Bill
 
I'm afraid polls won't tell you much by way of being a dipstick into the market. I think it would be fair to say that Aerosoft's market is different to this one. If PMDG for example, were to run a similar poll, they would achieve a different result again. Regular customers of PMDG product are more "serious" simmers who probably would use P3DV4 and X-Plane far more than most.

If this forum ran a poll on aircraft, it would return a very high proportion of military subjects. That would be because of the site's heritage (and official title). AirDailyX seems more into GA and scenery....and so on.

Proper market research is what is required. If developers really want to know the market status they need to stump up for the fees charged by qualified market research companies. Even then, research can be skewed to deliver the results the client wants to see.:engel016:
 
An Aerosoft forum poll is likely to be a poll of Aerosoft customers, likewise a PMDG forum poll. And an X-Plane forum poll is unlikely to have many FSX users feature in its results. Funny, that.
 
WarHorse47 said:
Also, our internal poll might be skewed as well. Our recent poll was internal to the FSX General Discussion section. So if a member frequents only the P3D section, how would they know about the poll and vote?
Click to expand...

They don't need to know and vote, WH. The poll is about P3D flyers that *do* come in here, not about obedient P3D'sters that stick to their own neck of the woods. :smile: ( if there are any.... )
 
Javis said:
They don't need to know and vote, WH. The poll is about P3D flyers that *do* come in here, not about obedient P3D'sters that stick to their own neck of the woods. :smile: ( if there are any.... )
Click to expand...
lol, lol, Don't hold back now Javis. . .let us know how you really feel, lol
 
ncooper said:
I would agree that a survey of FSX forum users is most likely to produce a majority of FSX users in a poll.
Click to expand...

Certainly, Nick, but that's Ok and expected of course. The survey is to see about 'the others' , flightsimmers that still frequent the FSX General Discussion forum while *not* flying FSX anymore. At the moment being about half the amount of 'real' FSX flyers. Interesting, don't you think ?
 
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