Can Microsoft Flight Simulator help me learn to fly or make me a better pilot?

I'm an airline pilot and an instructor. If you spend thousands of hours in a flight simulator, you're probably the type of person who will try to absorb all the information you can about flying airplanes. This kind of person will probably do well when learning to fly the real thing. There will be a lot of bad habits to break, not the least of which is a fixation on the instruments.

I do not recommend somebody go and spend time on a simulator to do their VFR training, it's a waste of time. You will learn far faster in the real plane and your time not flying is better spent studying the books.

Just one (not so humble) pilot/instructor's opinion.

EDIT: for IFR flying, the simulator is very useful, but I would recommend using it under the guidance of an instrument instructor. It's easy to pick up bad habits otherwise.

What's IFR and VFR?

chrisandchris described it perfectly. I will just add some additional info. (Funnily enough my name is Krisz :) so you will have info from chrisandchris and Krisz ;))

VFR is the type of flying everyone starts at first with, and then later in your training you learn IFR.

There are generally 3 big “problems” a pilot has to solve. They have to keep the plane flying straight and level, they have to keep from hitting things (other airplanes, terrain, buildings, etc), and they have to get to where they want to go.

The two types of flying differs in how these 3 big goals are achieved.

With VFR you look out the window and see if the horizon is level, and that you are not sinking or ascending to keep level and straight flight. You sometimes crosscheck this with your instruments but the windscreen and your vestibular system is your primary instrument. You avoid flying into things by what is called “see-and-avoid”, which is exactly what you imagine. You see things and you avoid them. You use your radio to be aware of other airplanes around you, but your primary means of avoiding them is still the fact that you see them and steer away from them. And finally you get to where you want to be by looking out finding landmarks and flying to your destination based on that. For example you might spot a river, or a big road and follow it to your destination. This is what we call visual flight rules, or VFR for short.

This is all great and very intuitive. But the problem is that none of this works if you can’t see out of the airplane! And that happens more often than you would like. Fog and clouds and mist and darkness has caused many accidents before more advanced piloting techniques were developed.

So what do we do if we can’t see? We fly using the instruments in our cockpit, and this process is called instrument flying rules or IFR for short.

You keep the airplane straight and level by scanning the instruments and integrating what they say in your head and reacting accordingly. This is harder than it sounds. One tricky thing is that your inner ear in the absence of visual inputs lies to you! You might feel you are ascending when you are actually banking . The other tricky thing is that there is a certain amount of lag on the airplane’s reaction to your inputs and there are random noises like tiny gusts of wind, so if you yank the controls every time you see the instruments change immediately then you yourself might induce oscillations in the airplane. And then you react to those oscillations and if your reactions are in phase things might get worse and worse. So you have to learn to not do that, and also to trust the instruments more than your own internal sense of orientation. Which is very non intuitive and therefore hard.

Then you also have to avoid hitting things. The way you avoid hitting cranes, buildings and terrain is by flying above a certain minimum altitude. As you might guess this minimum is higher where the ground is higher and lower where it is lower. And then you also have to know about tall towers. There are maps which advertise how high you have fly to avoid hitting obstacles at any point. Avoiding other airplanes is harder, so you use the help of the air traffic control. They clear you to fly certain directions at certain elevations and they make sure every airplane they control stays far away from each other.

And of course both of these depend on you knowing where you are and where you are heading. Having a map of minimum safe altitudes is nice but if you don’t know where you are it is near useless. Having clearances is nice, but if you don’t know which way you are flying they won’t help you. So you use a compass, and radio navigational instruments to keep track of where you are.

This is a lot of hard work and you have to do all of the above and more simultaneously at the same time and without major errors. So if you are not good enough at each of them you might become what is known as “task-saturated”. Too many things to do and keep all in your head. Or if you are not processing all of this in your head fast enough your internal representation of what is going on with the airplane and around the airplane might lag behind reality. This is also known informally as “flying behind the airplane” which is for obvious reasons very dangerous. So IFR is much harder than VFR, but also because it is less about your internal feelings and your ability to look around it is also much easier to simulate in a simulator. This is the reason why it is generally recommended to start with VFR training in a real airplane, while in the later IFR training simulators can play a bigger role.

"your vestibular system is your primary instrument"

This was a big no-no during my training. You are very prone to spatial disorientation and vestibular system illusions like leans, somatogravic illusion, etc. I was always taught (in the books and during flights) to trust the aircraft instruments.

(I trained in the UK)

They're talking about flying VFR. You can't get the leans or somatogravic illusion flying in daytime VMC.

An attitude indicator is not required for VFR-only aircraft.

You are right, but I believe gkedzierski is right too. It is indeed common for trainers to start telling these things to student pilots early on during their training. I think the reasoning behind that is to instil the right instrument scan practices while people are fresh in the cockpit before they even consider IFR training.

You can't get the leans or somatogravic illusion flying in daytime VMC.

You are 100% correct on that. Just to explain to others reading us: VMC means visual meteorogical conditions. Roughly and informally that is when you can see. While IMC would be instrument meteorological conditions, that is roughly and informally when you can't.

Just to illustrate how dangerous these "leans" can be there is this NTSB report about such a case: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

People might also know this one as the tragic helicopter accident which killed Kobe Bryant.

The pilot had 8,577 hours of total flight time, and he was the chief pilot of the company. So you would count him as an experienced pilot. Yet as he flew into thick fog, according to the NTSB report, he got the "leans". That is he had the illusion that he was ascending while in reality his airplane was banked and turning. Sadly they flow into a hillside and all 9 people aboard died. A tragic case.

It is hard to know exactly when the pilot lost all visual cues but according to the report there was about a minute between the pilot reporting to ATC that they are climbing to get over the clouds and them impacting the terrain. Things unfortunately can go sideways very fast in IMC.

I was always taught (in the books and during flights) to trust the aircraft instruments.

I'm just saying this for other readers, you probably know already, but the word "taught" is doing a lot of work here. Training for IFR requires many hours of being put into many situations designed to fool your vestibular system to get you to forcefully override it and just use the instruments. Many people crash because they ignore the instruments (due to task saturation) or in a panic, think they are faulty and trust their body. IMC is no joke.

Chrisanddhris and Kris. Is this some kind of Xmas riff? Reading this on 12/24.

It's a Chris mass

Bloody marvellous, and I know I should just upvote to express how bloody marvellous I think this is, and I’ve done that, and it didn’t feel like enough, so here I am. It’s Christmas, shoot me.

Simply put: VFR, Visual Flight Rules, you can see outside, you must stay outside clouds, it's your job to not hit other planes and the ground. You do this primarily by looking out the window.

IFR, Instrument Flight Rules, you are in the clouds and can't see outside, it's air traffic control's job to keep you away from other airplanes and the ground. You keep the plane under control by using your instruments only. Looking out the window yields no information. :-)

Is ATC really responsible for terrain separation? I was under the impression they can advise you when your altitude looks odd, but you are still responsible for avoiding terrain by following procedures and sticking to minimum altitudes, etc.

They will provide “clearances” which avoid terrain - if they ask you (for example) to fly direct to LAX, they need to ensure you are told an altitude to fly which keeps you at or above the minimum for whatever is between you and that waypoint.

As the pilot you are required to follow the instruction but ATC aren’t responsible for you not doing so.

There are situations where you may inadvertently lose communications, so ATC can’t tell you to climb for some future higher altitude requirement. In this case the pilot needs to climb and fly the minimum for the area they are in or airway they are following.

The pilot is in control. But ATC will provide an altitude they want you to maintain. When you are cleared to land, ATC isn’t doing anything to keep the plane from hitting a building on final approach.

Instrument and Visual Flight Rules; flight using basically only instruments, or relying on visual sight of things

I have flown gliders when I was younger and occasionally thought about PPL. And I have thought sims as well. Given the glider backcround, am I going to learn bad things on a sim?

I genuinely had no idea that a license wasn't required to fly a glider (or "ultralight" based on my reading). I'd imagine there is very high overlap anyway -- most glider pilots being pilots, etc.

At least in europe there is a separate licence for glider flight.

Same in the US. "Airplane single-engine land" and "glider" are two possible private pilot ratings (others include rotorcraft, balloon, multi-engine, seaplane, etc).

Same in US, they are separate.

Weirdly often not! They’re quite different recreational activities.

Flying powered is a “go to the airfield and takeoff” whereas gliding is more of an all-day team sport at most clubs as there’s a lot of ground handling required for towing, winches etc.

But a pilot's license is generally required to fly gliders.

Stuff like winch-launched paragliders excluded.

Yes, a private pilot's license (PPL glider) is required to fly gliders. OP probably meant that they were considering adding a rating for powered airplanes (PPL ASEL - airplane, single-engine, land).

Alternatively perhaps they mean that they took some lessons in a glider as a student pilot and considered going further and getting the license.

Glider is widely recommended as an entry to powered flight. You'll be better prepared and will have better stick and rudder skills than most student pilots.

it also wont be such a shock the first time you lose engine thrust.

What's your opinion on seats with haptic feedback and VR for flight simulators?

Airline training takes place in a multi-million dollar simulator, which is a 1:1 replica of the flight deck in a room on hydraulic struts. The struts provide feedback and the sensation of acceleration... to a certain extent. They are the state of the art for training, you can get your whole type rating for the airliner in a simulator without ever having touched the real jet.

Even in this case, I would say the simulator has specific strengths, and that is to teach instrument flying procedures. Landing the simulator is pretty different than landing the real thing, there is some negative transfer (the bad habits I was referring to).

Retail flight simulator flight models are just toys. They don't do a good job of simulating the behavior of the airplane close to the ground (e.g. during landing), nor are even the expensive ones necessarily accurate at the edge of the flight envelope (near/at stall).

I don't think haptic seat and VR change much, you are still better off getting into a real plane and just flying. You can probably do quite a bit of flying for the cost of all this gear.

Note that struts do not provide acceleration directly, but by rotating you in relation to the existing gravity. This means they can generally only simulate 1 g situations, unless I'm misinformed.

You’re not misinformed, but perhaps underinformed.

The hexapod both provides acceleration and rotates to use gravity to simulate continuous acceleration.

The brilliant part is that it trade between these two modes below human vestibular thresholds. So you can’t tell whether your sense of acceleration is coming from movement or orientation.

I took a flight physiology course with Larry Young who modeled the human vestibular system as a set of feedback loops with known gains. And an awesome graduate course entirely on flight simulation.

Exactly, for example accelerating down the runway on takeoff is simulated by tilting the whole room so you're actually reclining slightly.

How much flying are you going to get for the cost of a $300 Quest 2, a $200 chair, a $400 joystick, and $40 for Microsoft flight simulator? Throw in a gaming PC for $4,000 and round to $5,000. How many hours, and where, can I get flight time for that price, and will I have a PC to continue using after those hours are over?

You'll get about half way to a third of the way through a PPL, depending on the kind of plane you rent and where you live.

I don't think haptic seat and VR change much, you are still better off getting into a real plane and just flying.

Indeed.

And unlike your haptic seat and VR, you can't hit pause on a real plane whilst you go have a shit, eat dinner or answer a phone call. :)

> not the least of which is a fixation on the instruments.

Haha, I was having some trouble getting my speed right - either just starting decent or on base - my instructor turned the brightness to zero on the Garmin and said to look out the darn window. Everything got smooth, I turned final and landed fine.

Flying is a visceral experience, not a video game. You become one with the airplane in the same way to do with a bike. Can't get that in a sim.

Back in signals and systems class we actually formalized the difference in controlability between continuous time with X ms delay vs discreet time at Y Hz. The specifics escape me, but the summary was obvious: always prefer continuous, minimize X.

Could you expand a little on this? It sounds interesting. Thanks!

You have inertial sensors in your inner ear. There is no fixing a signal that's not even there ;-)

Which is why Sublogic Flight Simulator on a 4.77MHz PC/XT was such a miserable experience prone to overcontrol. 3.5fps is not okay.

What about x = 1000 ms and y = 1000 hz?

I used XPlane with purchased high quality maps for scouting the routes before my cross country flights during my PPL training and found it very useful.

The lack of the real feel of flying, and that the cockpit is not 100% usable (so you can't even follow your checklists completely) makes it, like you say, pretty unsuitable for anything else.

Slightly off topic, a sim i found a while back that went wild with usability, was called "Reentry". Its a very realistic spaceflight sim using real world launch vehicles, capsules, etc. Every gauge, button, and dial actually works, and "does" what it says. The game even includes checklist books in game.

It was very overwhelming for me, and ultimately didnt continue playing it, however, if youre the kind of person that likes super in depth flight simming, its worth checking out.

Looks like a good way to lose a weekend.

Just like the maps, you can purchase high quality planes where you can follow IRL checklists and procedures. You probably know this, but someone not into simming might not.

There could potentially be some application for VR. I know a lot of the VFR scan is checking visual landmarks relative to wingtips, etc. I wonder if a good stick and rudder setup with a VR headset and working out of an actual private pilot's manual might represent a more helpful experience.

That said, I don't even know if VR is supported by Ms flight simulator.

It's. And it's really fantastic.

My brother has gone ballistic on Microsoft Flight Simulator with VR over the past year, he does streams to YouTube:

https://youtube.com/@eggsdooley?si=35FIH-C5eNPuMITR

Agree on the absorbing info bit. I got MSFS when in between things during COVID and have flown exclusively in VR. It let me escape and go anywhere when I couldn't in real life. Then I found myself watching hours and hours of videos on IRL procedures, how to use avionics, etc. I picked up stick and rudder and can only describe it as a book that seduced me into wanting to fly IRL with how it broke down what was actually happening.

Did my first discovery flight on New Year's Eve a couple years ago out of KPAO in a beautiful little DA40 almost like the one in the sim (though it didn't have fadec). Experiencing landing at KHAF during a beautiful sunset was subliminal. And so. Eerily. Familiar. I also was able to easily locate my house and do a steep turn circling over my home so my family could spot me. Landmarks from the air were familiar already.

However I definitely succumbed to staring at my instruments despite knowing that would likely happen. I also wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of sensory overload from the physical sensations and what I'll call "better graphics" of real life (better fov, frame rate, resolution, color range, model quality). It literally almost had me dazed driving home afterwards.

Since then I've gone on a few more flights and have over 200h in the sim. It has helped me get comfortable-ish with comms through vatsim, and I nailed my first day of landings by the numbers according to Cloudahoy data and my CFI. I fully attribute that to the sim as I already had somewhere internalized pitching for speed, power for altitude, and had some semblance of a sight picture and knowledge of how to fly a pattern. Though I wasn't prepared for the stick force needed to push the plane down on downwind after the first notch of flaps.

It helped me prep for an amazing flight tour in Kauai as well where I grabbed the flight plan of the tour plane and realized I needed to sit right seat if I wanted any good photos. Got to cloud surf for the first time then and the sim has nothing on IRL clouds. Or rainbows for that matter.

All in all, I attribute my desire to learn about flying to the sim. It is accessible and more affordable than flying, despite my Virpil hardware. I don't know if I'll go for my PPL with a growing family. Maybe if MOSAIC gets finalized and I can get my SPL in a safer than LSA trainer like a DA40 I'll do that.

EDIT: for IFR flying, the simulator is very useful, but I would recommend using it under the guidance of an instrument instructor. It's easy to pick up bad habits otherwise.

I am not an airline pilot or instructor, but I am an instrument rated private pilot and I agree especially about using a home simulator for IFR training. What my instructor suggested when I was getting my IR was learn first in a real plane, then use the sim at home to practice what I learned. That helped avoid learning bad habits since I learned the "real" way first. I'd definitely recommend that approach (no pun intended) to others doing IR training, as long as your instructor is also on board.

What are some bad habits you can pick up?

You mentioned some good and bad things acquired from flight sims. Overall would say you net negative or net positive?

Fwiw, I spent a good amount of time with the flight sim and pilot's edge for IRA and I think it saved me a ton of money. The flying was the easiest part

Yes for instrument flying, but I would avoid it for your private pilot's license (PPL - first license).

Your PPL is mostly about "feeling" the airplane and looking outside the window, not inside the plane at your instrument cluster. You'll pick up more bad habits than good from flying in a sim for your PPL. It's not that these bad habits can't be fixed, but it'll likely actually _add_ time to fix them.

After you have your private license, by all means, use a sim to help you get familiar with an unfamiliar route/airport/etc. I'll often even watch YouTube videos of landings at airports I'm not familiar with.

For your instrument rating a good sim can actually be quite helpful. You're exclusively looking inside the plane, setting up radios, approaches, VORs, GPS, etc. Having an intimate familiarity with how your various automations work can help.

I'm no expert myself but recently I did see a flight instructor on youtube with the opposite opinion, saying that people with a lot of flight sim experience were his best beginner students, and tended to get their PPL in the fewest hours.

They’ll have explicit knowledge (what the takeoff speed is and where the speed dial is), but probably lack tacit knowledge (what that speed feels like, or what ground effect feels like). Acquiring a PPL in the fewest hours isn’t necessarily the best metric if it means they’re finding shortcuts with their explicit knowledge.

“Their knowledge letting them complete the test earlier is bad” is an interesting take.

If you don't understand why that's bad, look up the 2009 crash of Air France 447, when a pilot made an error that should have been impossible to make with any kind of flight training and killed 228 people.

Certainly, by the time you are piloting for Air France, you'll have had so much training and experience that whether you used a flight simulator before getting your first pilot's license is irrelevant.

Not to mention that the flight simulators for large passenger aircraft are far more advanced than anything you can buy as a consumer, let alone download to a PC. Their physics simulations are advanced enough to use in crash investigations to simulate possible failure scenarios. Their use in training airline pilots is mandatory, not detrimental.

This is what a full motion flight simulator for the aforementioned A330 looks like: https://www.afgsim.com/wp-content/uploads/A330_CEO_Madrid_-5...

It costs at least $1.5 million. It's ~150x cheaper than the plane and since zero lives at risk, US airline pilots are required to train emergencies in simulators while being accessed by an examiner every six months (IIRC).

I’m fairly certain most of the cost there is in the machinery. The software should be more or less comparable (there’s no reason for it not to be anyway).

> I’m fairly certain most of the cost there is in the machinery.

Why are you so certain?

While the hardware isn't exactly cheap, neither is the software. Gathering feedback from a bunch of pilots and incorporating it into the simulator isn't cheap. Renting out an A330 and a couple of pilots to run experimental validation isn't cheap - it costs >$50k an hour and you'll need hundreds if not thousands of hours. Validating each software release isn't cheap.

*> The software should be more or less comparable (there’s no reason for it not to be anyway).

I'm working on second hand info but AFAIK it takes over a dozen modern networked server systems to provide the fidelity the simulators need (with multiple GPUs no less). The software isn't comparable simply because a consumer machine isn't powerful enough to run the real stuff and the quality of the simulators has absolutely sky rocketed in the last 20 years. The've been constantly upgraded to the point that a 747 simulator now costs more than the plane itself.

[Airline-level sim] costs at least $1.5 million.

That statement isn’t exactly wrong, but I’m pretty sure the airline simulators are closer to $10M than $1.5M.

For general aviation though, nothing that powerful is available, but you can log training hours on an FAA-certified simulator running the pro version of X-plane.

That pilot pulled back constantly on the stick, costing him speed, eventually stalling the plane. He kept pulling back on the stick as the plane fell like a rock despite maximum thrust. He actually overrode the input of the other pilot that tried to pitch down to regain speed and recover from the stall. By the time the captain showed up and diagnosed the situation, they no longer had the altitude to trade for the necessary speed to recover.

Look I'm no expert but even Ace Combat taught me not to do that. To say nothing of simulators where you actually learn concepts like energy management. Planes are not rockets.

While he did do this, the UX of the plane was just asking for disaster. Averaging the inputs of the two sticks when they disagree is an... interesting decision, and the fact that the stall warning could go off when they had stall prevention on, desensitizing pilots to the warning when it was actually warranted, was a disaster as well.

A worryingly similar incident happened last year (AF011) on a Boeing 777, where two Air France pilots were fighting each others’ yoke inputs.

Not to say the Airbus UX isn’t a problem, but one of the most basic things in dual pilot flying is being explicit about who has the controls. Once that basic level of situational awareness is lost, it’s going to be hard to maintain control.

Exactly, and I don't understand the line of thinking that led to the "well let's just have both pilots have the controls" decision.

Wow that's a tragic story, and it's rather maddening that the junior pilot didn't properly hand over the steering when asked to. 3 minutes of bad decision making and panicking.. ouch.

You can do it if you have enough altitude, speed, and go all the way around.

Kind wonder if you could pull that off with a passenger airliner though.

The problem is theory can be detrimental to real world practice. You may not know how to properly integrate the knowledge you have with what are you trying to learn.

Then the test is wrong? Regardless of what your strong points are, when you succeed at the test you are a pilot.

"All tests are wrong, some are useful"

(with apologies to George Box)

What are you actually arguing here?

Not really. Test could be close, bit never replace practical exam.

Not related to aviation, bit to everything: to learn something to use and to learn something to pass exams - are two different paths.

There's no substitute to real flight hours experience.

Except that not every hour is the same. Flying straight and level following a GPS track with no relevant weather or traffic anywhere near accumulates a different kind of experience than other kinds of situations (bad weather, complex airspace, other traffic, ...).

Number of landings is probably more relevant for survival.

That's not really true, or is at least unclear. The FAA allows time logged in approved simulators to be counted toward an instrument rating, for instance, up to a limit.

The US Army make use of simulators when training their helicopter pilots, as it enables their trainees to meet test standards with fewer hours spent in real aircraft. [0]

[0] https://rotarywingshow.com/104-vrsimulator-chris-ryan/

Being able to take shortcuts using your knowledge might lead to not acquiring all the fundamentals you'd usually pick up along the way.

I found X-Plane VR useful for practicing basic traffic pattern work.

But it definitely needed to be VR to be helpful, to see your relative position vs the airport and runway, pattern altitude, etc.

Did not help with stalls or landings, which are more based on the feel of the aircraft.

But it definitely needed to be VR to be helpful

Head tracking (like TrackIR) is another option, perhaps even better than VR for flight sims because you can see your hand and your controllers.

I’d disagree having used both there is a step change in perception between TrackIR and VR. It’s the difference in peering through a window that doesn’t move 1:1 with your head movements versus sitting in the cockpit.

Stalls are very easy to feel in DCS World with Simshaker/SoundModule, and a couple of under-seat transducers.

Some anecdata here. I got to fly in a combat sim for few hours and the operators were surprised at some of the things I knew how to do just from playing videogames in the past. I do agree with the grandparent that it won't help with feel, but I also think that it will help build a knowledge base that can be a useful starting point.

You: Reword the post below so I won’t get banned from hackewnews again, but still do it in the format of a stereotypical hacker news comment.

I wish people would stop using the word anecdata like it is correct just because they saw some arrogant self important reply using it in their hackernews comment.

Firstly it is anecdote so the plural would be anecdotes or if you want to continue with being weird, it’s anecdota.

Do the red squiggly lines not direct you at all to thinking “maybe this is wrong”.

Secondly invariably when someone (wrongly) uses the word “anecdata” they only ever produce a paragraph relating to one specific point of view - their own.

ChatGPT: It's intriguing to observe the evolution of language in tech communities, particularly on Hacker News. For instance, the term 'anecdata' seems to be gaining traction, though its usage diverges from conventional language norms. Traditionally, 'anecdote' is the singular form, with 'anecdotes' or perhaps 'anecdota' as a more esoteric plural. It's always beneficial to pay heed to the cues from our writing tools, like the spellchecker's red squiggly lines, as they often guide us toward standard language practices. Furthermore, it's worth noting that discussions enriched by diverse perspectives are more insightful. While 'anecdata' typically encapsulates a singular viewpoint, embracing a variety of experiences could enhance the richness of our conversations here.

Fortunately, that’s not how language works. When a lot of people use a word a certain way, that defines it as cromulent. Everyone knows the browser spell-checkers are 1) incomplete and rather mid, and 2) sometimes to be deliberately ignored when writing, because it doesn’t have any of the portmanteaus I like to use.

Also, “anecdata” has a dictionary definition, which confirms it as correct: https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=Anecd... It’ll show up in Merriam Webster and in your browser spell checker sooner or later. (Here’s a sample of brand new dictionary words this year, added because people were using them: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/new-words-in-the-di...)

Anecdata is different from the plural of anecdote, it can be used correctly and more aptly than “anecdotes” in situations where the alternative is statistical evidence, which is common here on HN. It can also be used for fun in any situation the writer deems, because that’s acceptable use of English (cf. Lewis Carroll).

Maybe take the last clause of ChatGPT’s prosocial answer to heart, and embrace a variety of experiences. Language, especially English, is really fluid and fun when you learn how to use it. There are almost no language police nit-pick meme talking points that are actually correct. Literally has always meant figurative, myriad can be correctly preceded with “a” and followed with “of”, “less” and “fewer” can be used interchangeably in any situation, etc. etc.. Invariably when someone tries to go edgelord and get on their high horse about their pet English annoyance, they’re actually wrong.

(Valid dictionary words I used that give me red squiggles and/or spelling suggestions: anecdata, edgelord, merriam-webster, OED, prosocial, mid, nit-pick.)

I think this is more a selection effect than anything. People who spend lots of time in simulators are more likely to know what a stall is and how an incipient spin looks than someone who is completely new to flying.

My PPL instructor said he had to unlearn some bad habits with students that had a lot of sim experience.

I did a lot of flight sims before getting my PPL about 15 years ago and I did not feel that the sim hurt my progress at all.

It did not help much either.

For me the first real flying was very overwhelming as so many things were happening and had to be taken into account. Luckily my instructor was good and took the load that I didn’t yet need to handle and then I gradually prioritized and got familiar.

As others have pointed out the feel of the plane is just not there in a sim.

I’d even say that things like trim I did not fully understand until in the plane, what a difference it makes and how much less tired you are after.

I'd even say that things like trim I did not fully understand until in the plane, what a difference it makes and how much less tired you are after.

I have only flown in a sim ut I understand from other activities in life that stick pressure can be a lot if you're not trimmed properly, but is arm fatigue really the main point of trim?

Isn't the main point of trim to configure the plane's pitch stability to maintain the appropriate angle of attack, and any effects on arm fatigue more of a side effect?

I'd say this post is a really good example of the diff between sim and real plane.

Trim feels academic in a sim. Your stick is so light, it feels like a tiny convinience. But in a badly trimmed real plane you arent flying as much as arm wrestling.

A good pilot understands that they-the fallible human-are usually the most important component in a plane. Wrestling with the elevator for two hours on a cross country is one great way to ensure that pilot is not operating at full capability. Hell, its a great way to ensure you are behind the plane from the very first moments of takeoff in some planes.

Its so obvious in real life as to be undebatable. Trim the plane! The academics of AoA are irrelvant to an exhausted pilot.

Trim feels academic in a sim. Your stick is so light, it feels like a tiny convinience.

But to me (a sim user) maintaining AoA stability does not feel "like a tiny convenience". It's critical to maintaining stable flight in a desirable condition.

It's not academic; it's highly practical. Not because it alleviates arm fatigue, of course, but because stable flight is nearly impossible without it -- especially during higher-workload moments.

The idea that you can fly properly without trimming for AoA seems to me like a caricatured view of simulator flight.

Compare it to using a driving simulator before taking actual driving lessons. Yes, it might give you a slight edge, but the real thing is so much different and is so immersive that a simulator's added value is mostly for experienced users and not so much for beginners.

I realise US driving lessons are rather different from driving lessons around here. Around here, the goal of driving lessons is (basically) to reduce cognitive load so that you can spend attention on what's happening outside. A steer, pedals, and stick setup would already help enormously with this. Once the student reaches minimal automation, there's no bearing real-world experience though.

So, basically, your argument makes a strong case that simulation is excellent for absolute beginners.

I see a lot of people mentioning "bad habits" but nobody saying what they are. Could you elaborate on that?

When you’re flying VFR, you need to be able to feel where the plane is going and how your inputs are received. Your eyes should be outside 95% of the time, also because you also need to be looking out for traffic.

Using a simulator doesn’t let you build that feel, so you end up spending a lot of time looking at the instruments. When you step into a real plane that can make things difficult, as you’re supposed to be able to maintain altitude by just looking outside, etc.

What if you train with instruments obscured? Wouldn't a flight sim user then learn to feel the plane just as fast as or faster than someone green to flying?

Essentially, if the problem is that the instruments are used as a crutch, isn't it "just" a matter of taking the cructch away for a while?

What if you train with instruments obscured?

No can do.

Because whilst during training you should be spending 95% of your time looking out the window, the remaining 5% are spent bashing it into your head how to do an effective instrument scan and also there are parts of training where instruments get combined with the outside environment (such as learning to get a radio fix if you're lost and correlating that with what you see out the window).

Obscuring instruments is sometimes done, but that's much, much, later down the training line.

You still need critical instruments such as airspeed, RPM, manifold pressure, etc. Especially on crystal clear VFR days, it's possible-bordering-on-easy to fly the plane with your head stuck in the instrument panel and being mostly aware of the horizon in your peripheral if, for example, the instructor obscures the attitude indicator.

You can't even "feel" the plane in FAA-certified simulators, so I'm not sure how you'd feel it on a laptop with a joystick and plastic rudders. And of course the big issue - if you're VFR you need to be looking for traffic because nobody is handling separation for you except you.

I have about 2000 hours of flight simulator time starting from when it first came out. I really miss Meigs field.

I signed up for private pilot lessons.

The first day with the instructor I did a walk around inspection, started the plane, talked to the tower, did a taxi and takeoff.

The instructor let me fly for a while then put me "under the hood" so I couldn't see, said "It's my airplane", took control and flipped it all around, and then said "Your plane". The flight controls were all I could see. I could see that I was in a dive with rotation so I cut the throttle, centered the stick and kicked opposite rudder until the rotation stopped then regained level flight.

The flight instructor said that was "pretty good but could be better". I asked him if this was a first-day test for a private pilot's license. He was shocked. He thought I was going for an instrument rating. I pointed out that this was my first time ever in a small plane and first time ever as an actual pilot.

The lessons got easier after that :-)

So, yeah, if you spend a year's worth of time in the sim it will help a lot.

People reading the parent comment should be skeptical. It’s very likely at minimum an embellishment. More likely it’s simply a blatant fiction. Don’t be “that guy”: years of playing desktop flight sim does not prepare a person for even the most basic maneuvering in a real plane, whether on the ground or in the air.

I’m downvoting the comment because I think it’s misleading and potentially encouraging dangerous behavior.

I’m downvoting the comment because I think it’s misleading and potentially encouraging dangerous behavior.

How dangerous is it to hire a CFI to give you flight lessons? They'll take you up with 0 hours of experience. They'll take you up to do your ATP cert.

If the guy was like "I just found an airplane laying around in my garage and I started flying towards Japan and dropped the bomb the won WWII", that's probably dangerous and fabricated. If you know how to do a preflight inspection before, then you probably watched someone on YouTube do it before, which is basically flight training minus the FAA certification. The big idea is that if you do something wrong, your instructor is there to correct it. If you have that, you aren't being unsafe.

It's not dangerous to hire a CFI to give lessons. Arrogance (even if it's unintentional) about one's own competence is dangerous in the pilot seat, even with a CFI in the other seat to monitor and try to take over if/when this person does something dangerous. Imagine a trainee filled with the OP's nonsense in his head thinking he can recover from a spin forcing the CFI having to fight him for control of the airplane, for example. Or maybe he lies and says he has more experience than he does, and the CFI fails to do his diligence (e.g. checking the trainee's logbook): even merely starting the engine can be a disaster waiting to unfold, much the more so taxiing or, god forbid luck get the trainee that far, takeoff.

The whole comment history is suspicious, they portray themselves as an expert in literally any topic

So we can conclude that the user (OP) is probably a programmer!

Ha, exactly. As I was finishing writing that I was thinking "just like the average HN commenter" but figured it was still worth mentioning.

you've got to stop, your beliefs are way overstated. did you read the comments on TFA? pilots saying that they (and anyone) can get useful experiences out of flight simulators and they give examples, preflying a flightplan, IFR, etc.

your examples, "fighting for control with your instructor" and "lying" expose nothing about flight simulators. Instrument flying entails learning not to rely on physical sensations and to rely on the instruments. Practicing things and preflight preparation reduces cognitive load freeing you to better handle unexpected situations that might come up.

people who have never flown before have landed planes in emergencies. but people also get in accidents with their instructors. instructors who are doing it for their own purpose of racking up hours toward their own advancement are especially not incented to cut the number of hours you'll need them instructing you. thinking that any flying is safe, like flying with an instructor, is the type of arrogant attitude that gets you into trouble.

source: i've never even flown a simulator, but I've got many hours in blancolirio, pilot debrief, etc.

I’m not saying simulators are useless. Neither is “chair flying.” Believing that they prepare someone to pre-flight, start, taxi and takeoff and recover from a spin entered while under a hood from training day one is entirely a different matter.

Other commenters are pointing out that MS flight sim alone can't prepare you for flying, and I'm thinking... what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience? Surely they would've known that it was your first lesson and you had no real-life flying experience? I can't imagine them just guessing what you were there for based on your ability to taxi and take off.

what kind of instructor hands you the controls without first checking your level of experience?

All of them? I booked a discovery flight right after high school with zero experience and my instructor handed me the controls before takeoff. He took the controls for the first landing and did all the talking on the radio, but besides that everything else was under my control including the first takeoff and second landing.

That one line ("He thought I was going for an instrument rating") is obviously bullshit, but this is also the kinda stuff I tell my friends when I'm teaching them something new and want them to feel like they're doing great on day 1. So I'm pretty sure GP isn't making up the whole story. He's just naive enough to take the CFI's praise literally

Could you kindly list the clubs/schools these instructors are at? I want to add them to an “avoid at all costs” list.

Again, this is normal at just about every flying club. Taking off is as easy as pulling the stick back and it's pretty much impossible to mess up during flight because training aircraft are all naturally stable. The CFI just needs to look for traffic and work the radio

They key part you're missing is the "without checking prior experience." I taxiid, performed a takeoff, and most of the landing approach on my first training flight, too. The instructor briefed me thoroughly before the flight, inspected my logbook, etc. Every instructor I had after that checked my logbook and the school's internal note keeping system for notes during the pre-flight brief (I'd bet many did before then, too). It is absolutely not normal for a flight instructor to not do these things.

Where did I say this happens without checking prior experience? I'm describing what happens when a student has zero experience and the CFI knows that. His story takes place during a discovery flight so he obviously didn't have a logbook and shouldn't be asked for one

Yeah, nah, no way this can be taken at face value. If you've never flown before, this would be apparent to your instructor before you'd even got in the plane.

I haven't flown for a while, but three things jump immediately to mind - The absence of your log book - Not knowing how to do a walk around inspection (yeah, I'm calling bs on that too) - Banter with the instructor

Sims can be good for some things, especially learning avionics systems. But you can't replicate bouncing around in a single piston engine plane with the noise and sensations. If you haven't ever done it before you're not going to competently instantly fly the aircraft.

Meh, I landed the plane my first intro flight out, just from dicking around as a kid, on sims. There are people with thousands of hours of vr sim experience.

I hate to break it to you, but the CFI was on the controls as well.

The preflight part is glaringly BS. I don't believe sim teaches how to do fuel stick and sumping.

As I was reading this, I was mentally preparing my reply to call BS on your story, as no instructor would do this on your first lesson.

Glad to see the twist at the end - great story!

Almost as unbelievable as a CFII confusing someone who had never stepped foot in a small plane before with someone going for an instrument rating?

Yeah, it’s a cool story but not really believable.

* A student in an instrument flight is doing 99.9% of the work. The instructor is really there as a guide. The instructor will expect a student to do almost everything, from taxiing the plane, to taking off, to the radios. There’s no way that the instructor will pilot the plane into the air for the student.

Even PPL students on their very first lesson can taxi the airplane and be guided through takeoff. Why would an instrument student sit passively by?

* Any instructor worth their salt would review the student’s logbook, and his would’ve been empty or he wouldn’t even have one. I can’t see this happening even as the result of some kind of massive mixup.

* An instructor meeting a new student for the first time, for instrument flight, and instructor doesn’t even ask how many flight hours the student has? What training or experience they have? I’ve trained with a number of instructors, and none has taken me in an airplane without asking these kind of basic questions.

Flying in a simulator also doesn’t generally prepare you for the preflight (walk-around). Anyone going for their instrument rating would know how to do this solo — and the instructor would expect the student to do it most likely (maybe not for instrument lessons?) — whereas someone who hasn’t stepped foot in a plane wouldn’t know how to do it at all. Are you really going to know how to check fuel levels and oil levels from the simulator? I doubt it.

(There are some highly realistic simulator mods that get close though, and can simulate the preflight too.)

* The original story does not use accurate terminology. (A CFII that I asked about this story wrote: “When you give the controls to a student you don’t let them aimlessly wonder under the hood you give a radial to follow or some nav aid - no one aimlessly wanders for instrument training. Dude doesn’t know basic terminology either: Anyone worth two cents would say pull the throttle, rolled out of the bank stepped on the rudder to remove the yaw.”)

I’ve taken flight lessons but don’t have a PPL. I also have a lot of simulator time in DCS/MSX/XPlane.

I’m skeptical. To the point where I’ll happily call BS. Taxiing and flying a real plane is substantially different from flying MS flight sim. The physical responses of the plane to control inputs, thrust, and external forces can only be approximated by an actual physical simulator, not a desktop video game.

There are other problems with the narrative, too. Instructors will generally get a much better idea of where the student is in their training and brief them pre-flight on the maneuvers to be practiced during the training flight. The instructor would have reviewed the trainee’s logbook, which should contain notes from prior training flights as well. Unless this instructor was exceptionally careless, he’d have discovered the commenter’s inexperience pre-flight. Also, the abnormal attitude/configuration the instructor put the plane in and the recovery described sounds dangerously close to a spin. It’s unlikely an instructor would choose this as the first hooded maneuver for a new instrument rating trainee.

Your first day of flight lessons? Reminds me of my first day, except I was blindfolded, hands tied behind my back, flying a helicopter in a hurricane. Instructor said, "It's your chopper," and jumped out with a parachute. Managed to land it on a moving train. The train conductor, who turned out to be the President, offered me a job on the spot.

And your real name is... Albert Einstein.

Sounds very fishy.

The instructor let me fly for a while then put me "under the hood" so I couldn't see, said "It's my airplane", took control and flipped it all around, and then said "Your plane". The flight controls were all I could see. I could see that I was in a dive with rotation so I cut the throttle, centered the stick and kicked opposite rudder until the rotation stopped then regained level flight.

That is a weird way of explaining what happened and I find it extremely hard to believe this was written by a pilot. I would have never used the word rotation and dive. They mean very different things from what the author is trying to explain. If I was writing this, I would have said, "I was put in a spin and I did blah to recover". Also, there is a very important piece of PARE missing in that commentary, the "P". It is extremely hard, if not impossible to come out of a fully developed "spin", not "rotation", without pulling power even in training aircrafts.

I call this unadulterated bullshit.

Was that before or after you married Morgan Fairchild?

Yeah, that's the ticket!

100% bullshit. No amount of flight sim prepares you for how a real plane feels or how to handle it. Down-voted for bullshitting people without a warning and potentially endangering people

source: 11 years of flying experience

Someone successfully hijacked, flew, and did a barrel roll on a plane just from learning from video games, though it's not clear if it was Microsoft Flight Simulator:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/video-games-pilots...

Though there's some skepticism here:

Some of Mr. Russell’s actions, such as knowing to be at a certain elevation to perform certain aerial moves, suggested he may have learned them from a flight simulator, Mr. Todd said.

“It’s highly improbable, but not impossible, that he never had a lick of flying except other than in a virtual world,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/us/richard-russell-q400-f...

X-Plane has a professional version that's used in FAA-certified flight simulators. The home version on a laptop runs the same simulation code.

Most flight sim games, including Microsoft's, start with performance data on the airplane. X-Plane starts with the shape of the airplane and physically models the airflow. It's even used by aircraft designers.

In another universe these software were banned after 9/11

In this universe these games are closed source and there's no guarantee that, if someone for example uses them for training to crash airliners, a red flag isn't raised somewhere.

I reserve the right to crash virtual planes into virtual buildings, I dont know what else youd use a flight simulator for.

Given that this is Microsoft i would be very surprised by this. They are too incompetent to be able go think about such a huge details. And even if they were forced to implement this feature it would be poorly done and would probably have a lot of false positives which would make the data almost useless. (I dont know about games from other companies)

One example: the release of Propeller Arena for Sega Dreamcast was scheduled for September 19, 2001. The release was canceled just days after the attack.

The modeling in X-Plane works great on fake experimental aircraft but lookup tables have their place too, especially for real aircraft where every single small performance characteristic is known to several decimal places.

Within the normal flight envelope this holds. But getting into a spin in a glider in ms fs shoes you the limits of lookup tables / their implementation as the behaviours is completely wrong. ( At least ask the way up to fsx)

I was going to say, I've heard that x-plane is supposed to be the better sim between the two. But I don't have the background to make a comparison.

That's absolutely wild and tragic. If not from video games, then from where? I can't see the 2nd article but the first mentions that he had no formal training! Did he mean to crash at the end? Was it some elaborate "going out with a bang"? I have so many questions after reading that, the story is like every idle and intrusive thought come to life at once.

Skyking!

He eventually intentionally crashed the plane in an uninhabited area. Apparently at other times he considered crashing into inhabited areas.

I looked it up after and damn...

Just a broken guy; got a few screws loose, I guess

I wasn’t really planning on landing it

He crashed, more than once, because all he had was gaming experience. He basically learned on the job. It’s impressive, but not so surprising to me.

Richard Russell only crashed once. He did not walk away from it. You are probably thinking of Colton Harris Moore, the "Barefoot Bandit" referenced in sibling comments, who crashed stolen Cessnas maybe 3 times?

Similarly, the Barefoot Bandit, who stole several airplanes (his first at the age of 18):

It is believed that he learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals, handbooks, watching a "How to fly a small airplane" DVD, and playing flight simulator computer games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colton_Harris_Moore

People like this are like those extremely hyper-active dogs that should never bee cooped-up in an apartment -- we need to throw people like that onto a creativity farm and call it an incubator.

Apparently Microsoft Flight Simulator was used preparing for 9/11 as well. Not a testimonial they are slapping on the box art though.

He was suicidal. Took a shot at it without expecting to succeed and almost crashed upon completing the barrel roll. Of course you can get a plane up in the air just by learning from sims, it’s not highly improbable at all.

But that doesn’t say much about wether they are a good aid for learning to fly properly or not.

Just listen to the live audio between controller and Mr. Russell. Yeah, he confesses he has played videogames and such... his dream came true for a little while.

The most impressive thing is he pulled off successful loop in the sky.

Edit: better link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYpaf8WdppM

I've been on a ride in a jet trainer. It took minimal instruction to do an aileron roll, and it was easy enough to fly. My skepticism comes from motion sickness. You can do all the aerobatics you want in a flight sim, but it doesn't prepare you for the world shifting in ways you don't expect, even when you're the one behind the stick.

Some guy wrote a song about Mr Russell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qNi5IFdXaM

I have a VR setup with force feedback rudders and joysticks, and it has absolutely helped with my tailwheel and general stick and rudder skills. Another thing to consider is that you can safely simulate engine-out emergencies on takeoff. It’s quite surprising just how far forward you need to push the nose over!

Another thing that has been very enlightening is to read over accident reports and try to simulate the situation as closely as possible: over-weight, aft-cg, high density altitude, boxed into a mountain canyon with no way out… and you can see just how terrifying some of these situations are and if there was any way to get out of them.

The sim can be as realistic as you want to make it. One huge benefit for beginner pilots is to practice your radio skills with virtual ATC. When I was a student pilot, talking to air traffic control was sometimes much harder than flying the plane!

The big problem for me is the flight model. I can only speak for the Diamond aircraft in the game, because those are the ones I have flown in real life, but their physics model is dog shit. Totally unrealistic behaviour in any non-standard situation. If you want to train emergency manoeuvres close to stall speed (like engine-out on takeoff), I have found X-Plane to be way more accurate. The only thing I would use MSFS for is procedure or instrument training, because they simulate some of the newer Garmin glass cockpit avionics pretty nicely.

but their physics model is dog shit. Totally unrealistic behaviour in any non-standard situation.

That has and always will be the problem with flight sims.

You have always been able to get away with shit in a flight sim that you would never be able to do in real life because you can't defy the laws of physics in real life.

Ultimatley you would need far more than a home computer with a decent graphics card if you wanted to get anywhere near real physics in a sim.

If the simulator would be FAA-certified, would you say that they simulate things accurately enough?

Partners of Laminar Research are selling FAA-certified X-Plane software + hardware bundles, that because of the certification, I'd wager a guess simulate things accurately enough.

If the simulator would be FAA-certified, would you say that they simulate things accurately enough?

There are different levels of FAA-certified for sims, and I think we can agree that X-Plane is very much on the lower end of the spectrum.

My understanding is that X-Plane is based on limited geometric data, meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum, the Level D simulators that the airlines use are formally validated and tested against the real aircraft’s flight data.

So yeah, not accurate enough, ESPECIALLY (as @ inoffensivename pointed out) the sort of things you might want to use it for basic student pilot training.

It depends on what you mean by "accurately enough". To teach a student the interplay between pitch and power, how changes in configuration require changes to pitch and power, etc, they can be useful. They are very good as instrument procedural trainers. For flight at high angle of attack, e.g. slow flight near or beyond stall, the models are not very accurate.

Also a simulator will never help a student overcome the fear they will invariably feel when they do their first power-on stall.

You have always been able to get away with shit in a flight sim that you would never be able to do in real life because you can't defy the laws of physics in real life.

You might think so, but with the Diamond DA40 in MSFS it's actually the opposite: Even with just the pilot and a half tank it stalls like it's completely overloaded with 4 passengers and a full tank. So I can actually see how they might have engineered this on purpose to be on the safe side, so student pilots don't stall the real plane. On the other hand, that also means you lose a ton of options in an emergency. But teaching young people to fly the plane more careful than required is probably better than the other way around.

Is there a comparison between the flight models of X-Plane and MSFS? Are all models better in X-Plane or it depends on the model?

The cannonical wisdom is that X-plane, being based in blade-element theory and actually simulating the plane, can be really very good but also is much less performant and may not completely capture some specific (unmodelled yet aerodynamically significant) edge cases, I think including things like the exact behaviour of sprung trim tabs in low airspeed stalls. MSFS on the other hand is one giant lookup table. In theory more accurate in the well measured region and less so farther away from reality.

I personally have spent a fair amount of time in gliders. XPlane captures their dynamics a lot better than MSFS -- but the really, really missing thing in both cases is your inner ear: the acceleration is a core part of how things feel and you really can't replicate the sensations that well (even in a full motion simulation, I think). Doing practices for failed winch launches (at 3g+!) is easy in a simulation. It isn't in real life.

Both tools have FAA/CAA/EASA approved versions for flight training. Real flight training involves a lot of stick and rudder for a reason.

Acceleration is one of the biggest parts of simulators that just can't match reality. We can fake most of the visual aspects of speed and acceleration, but the pressure one feels over the body, including the signals we get from our inner ear, is missing. Top simulators can do all kinds of shakes and vibrations. They can angle the body to simulate a dive or climb but acceleration seems to be one of those things that if we are ever going to be able to simulate, will be orders of magnitude more difficult than most everything else. Even smell and taste, minor senses in transportation simulations, can be stimulated for limited situations. We might have to wait until we're able to tap into the brain directly for simulated acceleration to happen.

I just got my PPL a year ago. My instructor did a survey among all students who got the license and among other things asked 1) how many flight hours did it take you to get the license 2) did you play with a simulator in your spare time. There was a clear inverse correlation between the two, meaning that those who did play with the simulator had to use less hours to get the license.

Another 100% (dangerous) anecdote: once upon a time, a boss of mine took me for a flight in his Cessna. As is tradition for him, he let the passenger up front to control the airplane in the air for a minute or two. Apparently, he thought I was good enough when controlling the airplane in the air that I should attempt a landing. As I was young and dumb, I obliged and successfully landed the airplane. Even have video evidence of this happening which is a fun ~10 minute video of me lacking composure while landing my first airplane.

And yes, I attribute this to me spending 1000+ hours in various flight simulators since I got my first computer. And also yes, I know this was reckless and dangerous.

The best part of that story is that at least for small planes, I feel like landing is one of the things simulators are worst at simulating and least useful as a replacement for experience in a real plane. Maybe the whole approach and decent is simulated OK, but I don't think I've ever flow a sim (even the "real" ones) that quite captures the last part settling gently down onto the ground. But trainers can also take some pretty rough landings :)

As someone who’s never flown IRL (but has played around in a few simulators), do you have any idea/reasons why this is so? I’d imagine it partly down to the “overriding” of senses (forces/g’s) in actual flight vs simulation, and perhaps the lack of stereoscopic vision.

Would this also extend to navigation landing?

I don’t think it’s that reckless.

Landing an airplane like that is basically a step by step checklist and there is a lot of indicators along the way if something is going wrong.

Also he has a second set of controls in his hands. He’s basically holding your hand.

Neither reckless nor dangerous, not sure why you would think it was either when there was an experience pilot right there who could have taken controls at any moment if necessary. As a sibling comment points out it's the equivalent of him holding your hand while you're controlling it. It's you would have been able to put in any dangerous control inputs without intentionally overpowering him.

Reckless, dangerous, and AWESOME.

I can concur with personal experience : I learned to fly at a young age (14-15 year old) and was able to go solo and get licensed with the minimum required hours and age due to hundreds of hours of sim. Even to practice every procedure that has to be memorized while piloting, it was worth it.

Flight sims are great for exploring unfamiliar airports, practicing IFR procedures, cockpit orientation (to a point), and other routine tasks. They are terrible for learning to fly, and in fact are detrimental to the task, since it teaches new students bad habits, like keeping their heads down and focusing on instruments.

I fire up the sim occasionally, but I don't pretend it's a digital analog. Instead, I treat it like it's a different aircraft entirely, including simulating preflight checks and running checklists.

since it teaches new students bad habits, like keeping their heads down and focusing on instruments.

I'm very much not an expert on this, but I thought that most of the time, at least for recreational flying, the opposite was the problem: things like running out of fuel or doing that thing where you slowly loose altitude over the ocean without realising and then crash into the water because you're not paying attention to the instruments.

My experience with flight sims is that they weren't useful, but a big part of it was that I had no skin in the game. I could always walk away from a mistake, so I got sloppy.

Most recreational flying is under visual flight rules (VFR). Your primary reference is to everything outside of you. You will check your instruments, but 95% of the time, you'll be looking outside. At least in the US, you usually aren't under ATC direction. Thus, it's your responsibility to see and avoid.

Flying over the ocean for any length of time is not a common thing recreational pilots do, and when they do, they should be a lot more prepared or flying IFR.

I fly ifr nearly all the time with exception of local flights like a test flight after picking up the plane from annual (even then I am talking to tower or approach just in case). The main reason for me is that I like having someone (atc) watching over me, and that I don’t need to think much about airspace’s, tfrs, etc - I just do what atc tells me to do (within reasons ;) ).

since it teaches new students bad habits, like keeping their heads down and focusing on instruments.

The chief cause of pilot error is the pilot trusting what he can see out the window and feel with his body, refusing to use or perhaps even in defiance to the aircraft's instruments.

Having a habit of flying on instruments even under VFR is a good thing because the instruments are generally significantly more reliable than human intuition.

This is just not right, sorry.

VFR flying should be 90% done looking outside, with an occasional cross check of altitude and heading inside. I'm visual conditions, there is nothing your instruments can tell you that your eyes can't, except slight deviations in altitude and heading.

If you need your instruments to avoid hitting things, you are probably in instrument conditions.

Flying a real airplane is easier than flying a simulator, because you have so much more sensory input available. Because of this, you are likely to teach yourself bad habits in the simulator that will be expensive to unlearn in a real airplane. If you insist on doing it, read "Stick And Rudder" first: https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780070362406

As other comments have observed, the most motivated students tend to be the ones who go to the extra trouble to use simulators: it is possible the simulators are useless, and students who would otherwise be successful just tend to seek them out.

From my experience flying and instructing students, the extra sensory input from a real airplane makes it more difficult, not less, than flying a simulator.

It’s easier to get task-saturated, random things such as sun glare on your instruments, a bug-spattered windshield, crummy radios, etc all contribute to a more challenging environment.

Simulators can be a useful training aid and are a good tool for mission rehearsal but no replacement for the real thing.

I think the difference is like you say in the real aircraft you can get a lot more task saturated. A sim feels like being a fly on the wall almost as if in 3rd person. But as far as manual handling goes, the real jet is much easier, runway textures and peripheral cues for landing are far more obvious in reality.

I definitely agree the real environment is more challenging in a holistic sense.

What I meant is that in a real airplane, you have the advantage of things like G-force, force feedback from the reversible controls, stall buffet, the sound of the airstream on the windscreen, complete peripheral vision, etc, which combine to make the actual "manipulating the controls to make the airplane do what you want" part of flying easier.

What sort of bad habits?

Generally an over-reliance on the instruments. Not looking out the front window as the primary means of judging the aircraft's attitude, not navigating visually. Also, not using trim in a realistic way (looking at you, magical set-trim-to-level button...).

Yes. I passed my instrument rating earlier this year by using MSFS and X-plane integrated with PilotEdge and working my way through several I ratings on PE. Lots of additional studying by reading the entire Jepp IR book and using Sheppard for review before the written. Also a ton of flying under foggles practicing everything in the standards and making it second nature. Checkride was gnarly in Kansas noon convection turbulence but passed. Sims with PilotEdge help big time on learning to copy clearance, departure, en route and shooting the many approaches available. Also helps to stay current and to review a challenging approach before doing it for real. And it can somewhat help with G1000 avionics programming but it’s not exactly the same - more of a general guideline.

I’d avoid Vatsim. Sorry fans. I just don’t find it’s up to the same standard in realism and professionalism. Also lots of controllers who don’t know their stuff.

Also avoid getting sucked into the gamer aspect of flight sim. You have to actually be training in real aircraft and studying and supplement with sim.

Active pause is great for avionics programming, VOR nav and more.

You can do it all with a joystick. Pedals and yoke are pointless because sims can’t simulate things like turbulence or crosswind landings.

An RTX 3xxx GPU is plenty. I used a laptop RTX 4090 and desktop 3 series gpu.

Lastly if you actually do an instrument rating, learn how to calm yourself with a slow breath in and a slow breath out and never quit during the checkride, no matter how hard it seems. You are PIC and the DPE is pushing your limits, so assume you’re alone, breath deep and work the problem. Real life single pilot IMC is intense so this is the way.

Simulating cross-wind landings doesn't sound that hard, why do you think current sims don't do it well?

Because I practice them a lot and the dynamics of a real x-wind landing is not reproducible in a home sim. You can practice where to put the controls. But in a trainer like a 172 or DA20 you can’t practice the forces you feel pushing back at you and the other seat-of-pants aspects.

One of the drills I do is to descend to 50ft over the runway and then hold the plane on centerline in a eg 20kt crosswind. The sim just can’t even come close to how dynamic and effective that exercise is. Also the feeling of putting down one wheel first, feeling the bump, then the other. The slight skid and side g forces of you mess it up slightly. Those kinds of things.

There are many things that sims can’t reproduce that don’t matter that much when it comes to productive learning. But with cross wind landings, these things matter a lot.

I’m specifically referring to home simulators and MSFS and X-plane specifically. I have no experience in full motion commercial jet or military sims.

because sims can’t simulate things like turbulence or crosswind landings

Which simulators are you talking about specifically? AFAIK, X-plane is able to simulate both of them.

We are telling you that simulation of those things, particularly their effect on a pilot physically experiencing the physics of them, is so far from what you feel in a real plane.durieg high stress moments of flight so as to be nearly useless to preparing for the real live stress you are under.

The key thing about flying is that you as pilot are responsible, for people's lives. Everyone who flies has sufficient knowledge and skills, but many don't have good decision-making, particularly under pressure.

You're likely to learn some bad habits from self-teaching in simulator, but those mostly can be unlearned. The real problem would be having excess confidence. That's the #1 killer.

Flying a real plane in challenging situations should frankly scare you into being a stickler, and staying well clear of your personal limits.

If you want to be a good pilot, start with 10+ hours of glider training and then train on something other than a Cessna high-wing (which takes almost no skill for stall recovery).

And for knowledge, learn the fundamentals from the FAA books (not the internet or experience in a simulator).

Gliders or ultralights are a great way to get your head around the way the aircraft moves and what you feel when it does.

Being a stickler is one of those cultural things that never makes it into the entertainment world. So much more planning goes into even the simplest flight that the sims mostly handwave. I play IL2 a lot and it's funny seeing the missions generate weather that would have grounded early aircraft full stop.

Everyone who flies has sufficient knowledge and skills

In theory, this is true; in practice, a few evenings spent reading NTSB reports or watching Juan Brown (blancolirio on YouTube) will reveal that not everyone who flies/flew has these essentials.

Yes, with caveats.

If you want the experience to be genuinely useful you really need to go all in. Head tracking or VR, charts, pay for an ATC service (not VATSIM, sorry), plane models that are extremely complete and complex, and decent yoke/pedals/throttle setup. Then turn off every single assist and dial up all the realism. And even then you need to take everything you experience with a pinch of salt.

I used FSX while I was learning to fly, with a setup part spec’d with my instructor. Once I was around 10 hours in real flight it became meaningfully useful to augment with sim as well. Especially things like flight planning, leg timing, checklists, etc.

Two other things it’s especially useful for is learning the Garmin (again needs paid addons) and for practicing approaches.

Then turn off every single assist and dial up all the realism.

Maybe for a total beginner this could be done gradually. Would you agree? I'm assuming, as someone who knows very little about flying, other than a lot of flying is automated for the most part, that a total beginner would be overwhelmed.

And even then you need to take everything you experience with a pinch of salt.

Fully agree, though I think they're trying to figure out just how much if any do you learn. I think the best way for anyone to learn might just be to go to a flight school. Your fly hours is what matters more than anything because if shows you are capable.

While most small planes have some form of autopilot, few have the Flight Director-driven "set it and forget it" type of autopilot most people imagine in their heads. A lot of older planes will just have a 1- or 2-axis autopilot which eliminates some of the workload for a pilot but you're still flying largely manually and making sure the autopilot doesn't kill you by.

What would be the most troublefree way to get a decent MS Flight Simulator setup? For example, does it exist on the XBox?

The Xbox Series X/S will run MS Flight Sim. If you pay for game pass its included.

Get the Logitech X52 Professional HOTAS, can be had for under ~250 EUR, probably way cheaper second-hand and will let you have a not-super-shitty-but-not-super-expensive setup to get started with.

If you discover you really enjoy flight simulation, get a proper chair that you can install the HOTAS into, + install rudders and also get a VR headset.

Flight simulation with a VR headset is night and day compared to without a VR headset. Suddenly you can look around and get a feeling of where you are and where you are going.

A person was able to become a professional motorsport racer by fully immersing himself in a simulator, Gran Turismo [1]. Apply the same resolve and can likely do the same with flying!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jann_Mardenborough

GT Academy ("GT Academy provided skilled Gran Turismo players an opportunity to earn a real-life professional racing career with Nissan") seems to have spawned a couple of interesting real-life drivers, I wonder why they stopped doing it after 2016?

Would also be interesting to see a Microsoft Flight Simulator edition of the same thing :)

Ask any flight instructor, they'll all tell you the same thing.

The one thing they hate more than anything else is ab-initio (i.e. zero hours) student pilots turning up who've spent time on the computer flight sim. It always ends up with "the talk" where the instructor politely invites the student to put a stop to their sim career whilst they get some real hours under their belt.

Basic flight training is done VFR, i.e. "seat of your pants", based on visual environmental cues, combined with radio where required. The student learns to juggle the fundamental Aviate, Navigate, Communicate routine ... and its always evident who has come from a flightsim background, because they whilst they might be OK at some parts of Aviate they are scary at Navigate, shit at Communicate and just a complete liability when it comes to combining all three.

People coming from a flight-sim background have too many bad habits ingrained which need to be bashed out of them. Its a waste of everyone's time, and its a waste of the student's money because they are throwing money down the pan which could have been avoided if they spent less time sim.

Now, later on in your flying career. Once you get into instrument flight, then CAREFUL use of a flight sim can be useful. But in the end, there's still no substitute for real-life.

It is not the tool it is how you use it. I used X-plane with VR and I had a yoke and peddles, etc. Cost me a couple thousand. It more than paid for itself. My training flights were about once a week but sometimes only once a month due to scheduling and weather. Whatever my lesson was one day in the real plane I would go home and do that lesson over and over again, radio calls, etc till next lesson; if I knew what the next lesson was going to cover I would also practice that... My instructor thought I was a flight prodigy and turns out I just practiced a lot...but I couldn't have done that without the sim.

Sims can always help build technical knowledge, but usually lack the practical aspect. Sure, you know the ingredients for a takeoff, but can you execute in a real cockpit? Again, great for learning the ingredients.

Spot on, sims build all the technical knowledge but the physical feedback isn't there; it's the somatogravitic illusion that normally sends you into the ground if you aren't prepared to recognise and disregard it.

https://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_Flight_Academy

In FlightGear the checklist asks you to walk around the plane and check the tire pressure.

I’ve wondered the same about flying drones. I ruined a drone once so then I spent a lot of time trying to learn on the DRS app but it feels almost impossible. Is that a realistic simulator?

Not sure about your app, but simulators like Liftoff or Velocidrone are really great if you don't want start by crashing your expensive drone A LOT. Flying an FPV drone (in proper Acro mode) is objectively pretty difficult and requires a lot of coordination. In my case I found being a flight-simmer really helped with getting started with Liftoff — I could take off, make turns and generally fly where I wanted in under 30 minutes. My first IRL drone flight was after ~20 hours of Liftoff, I could go straight to Acro mode and fly around the garden without hitting anything. It felt close to what I knew from Liftoff, the main difference was the ugly analog camera feed in the goggles instead of glorious 4K at home. That made it a bit disorienting. Otherwise it's (IMO) the same thing for just flying around (not pro-level racing or breathtaking precision aerobatics).

I got my PPL. I didn't spend much time in MSFS, but I will say I had a much harder time practicing landing in the sim than in real life. Being able to look out the window, glance around, actually judge distance, etc. for staying in the pattern was much easier in a real plane.

PPL/IFR here. I had a really hard time using MSFS for the first time, mostly because the trim felt so wrong!

In primary training we’re continually taught to pitch and then use trim to remove tension, but with consumer sim gear this isn’t possible. Maddening!

To quote the best Indiana Jones movie: Flying, yes. Landing, no!

I dont remember this quote from Raiders...

Consider this, driving a car on xbox/pc compared to IRL

You mean like this? https://www.insider.com/formula-1-simulator-racing-team-alex...

Not a replacement, but certainly helps.

Here a certified flight instructor compares his experience teaching MS Flight Sim users vs DCS users. Anecdotal as it might be, he notes a clear advantage to the DCS users in the areas of situational awareness, intuitive flying skills & energy management, instrument scan and communication: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztTnzPEyP4

Yes but it is more likely to make you a terrible one without the right guidance by a real pilot. It teaches all kinds of bad habits. My instructor aldus told me off for chasing the instruments in VFR for example.

It can help, especially in VR but only as an addition to real flight training. That's my opinion anyway.

My former partner is a pilot and would train new routes on flight simulator. I thought it was amazing the level of detail could be that helpful.

Learn to fly definitely. After hours with flight simulator a friend once took me up for a ride, the radio went out (not a big emergency) but I was able to do much of the flying while he dealt with the problem. Understanding the fundamentals made it much easier to step right in. As to being a better pilot, there was an A10 Warthog simulator for the Mac long ago. I was a passenger in a small private jet that did the U-turn-while-losing-lots-of-altitude thing and could see out the cockpit window. But I had already seen it and done it in the A10 simulator. Just my experience.

One of the irritating things about simulators (barring FFS) is the amount of lag and lack of feel of air on the controls. MS Flight simulator will probably help you with non flying procedures and communication. Also, it is useful (partially in my books) when doing instrument training.

Otherwise you are better served with a Cessna 1x2 (where x = 5, 7 or if really pushing it 8) and a competent CFI.

Keep the rubber side down.

It helped me know more about the basics of flight, so I found it helpful. That and reading flight training books.

Did it reduce the amount of actual flight hours I needed to get my license? Probably not.

I think it's more help when studying for your IFR.

Yep, I'm a pilot and have been working on getting my instrument rating out of London Southend airport in the UK.

I purchased the London Southend airport upgrade to make the airport more realistic.

I have the exact same Cessna 172 that I fly (with steam gauges, not a modern glass cockpit).

And for the low low price of £FREE compared to circa £250 per tacho hour I can test my heart out on the exact test that I need to pass to get my rating.

Story time, a decade or so ago at one of the Naval Air Stations where they conduct intermediate/advanced jet training. The base did a community outreach event where they invited the aerospace club from a local school (basically an extracurricular program where they played a lot of MSFS) to spend an afternoon in the T-45C simulator. This being Naval Aviation, each guest had the opportunity to attempt a carrier landing. Most of them sucked at it (of course they did--it's hard enough for experienced pilots). The last person to go was a tiny hispanic girl, maybe a fourth-grader. She needed to sit on a stack of NATOPS manuals like a foot thick to be able to get to the design eye height, and was unable to reach the rudder pedals or pretty much anything other than the throttle and stick. She trapped on her first try. No idea where she ended up, but I hope that she's at least had the opportunity to become a pilot by now.

Anyway, I think simulator training is fantastic procedural training (normal, emergency, and instrument procedures in particular, but a good sim with force feedback should instill good habit patterns regarding trimming the aircraft in response to throttle/configuration changes and lots of other things). I've never been impressed with full-motion sims though--lots of stick-and-rudder skills really need flight hours to build still.

It can teach you bad habits more than anything. But at the same time it can teach you proper procedures if you use something like Pilotedge to learn proper ATC procedures.

There are posts of students sharing their experiences using flight simulators to enhance their flight training; they discuss their perspectives on how these simulators have been beneficial in their practice and learning process.

I was aware of one, but couldn't find it. Here's another interesting one: https://fsnews.eu/using-msfs-for-flight-training-helped-pass....

This is the conclusion:

Did my home simulator help me save money on flight training? Yes and no. I passed my Private Pilot checkride after just about 4 months and 68.9 hours in my logbook. According to the FAA’s statistics, the national average is 75 hours, and my instructors at my Part 61 school say that their typical students are generally around 75-80 hours. Therefore, I would put my “graduation” on the slightly low side of average. I think that I can certainly attribute some savings to the sim – learning the Garmin avionics, for example – but it is difficult to tell with certainty. [...]

I’m an instrument rated private pilot.

The things I like about flight simulator:

- it’s great for checking out an unfamiliar area you’re flying to

- you can connect ForeFlight to it, so you can use your digital charts / EFB in the same way you would in the cockpit

- you can get really good IFR approach practice in

- with head tracking (or vr), VFR flight is pretty accurate to the real thing

The purpose of initial training is to teach the pilot how to fly a plane “by feel”. The best PC simulators still lack the details: How does wind sound change with airspeed and AOA? How does wing tell you it’s about to stall? How does the engine sound when you lean it? Etc. I learned to fly in a Citabria with basic VFR instruments (not even a six pack!), and my instructor closed instruments all the time teaching me not to rely on instruments while flying VFR. These lessons helped me a lot over years. I fly seaplanes in the summers that usually have basic vfr instruments only and it is a lot of fun.

Simulators are fantastic for learning instrument flying. I try to practice on a simulator at least once or twice a week - just a quick flight with 2-3 approaches to minimums. But it helps to keeps the scan going and also practice various failures in a safe environment.

I can yes, and we should advance simulations, both AR and VR to be even better.

There's really tiers of simulation, from just reading or watching, playing a basic flight sim, playing a realistic one with joystick and rudder, VR or AR flight sim and then a physical cockpit.

Say what about AR simulations for surgery? Or bring a mechanic. Practice, in a realistic, and most importantly, low cost environment is a marvel of today's world.

I know some pilots (actual licenses, a couple of whom are commercial pilots) who tell me (non-pilot, don't even pretend) they use MFS to get an idea of the approach to an airport they've never been to.

I know some pilots who tell me they use MFS to practice multitasking they various things they need to do to land the plane.

I know some pilots who tell me they use MFS to get familiar with the instrument layout on a plane they haven't flown.

Every pilot I know says something to the effect 'at the end of the day, MFS is a game and not a hard one...you can't be a pilot without flying the plane and MFS doesn't teach that".

When I got my initial initials rating, home flight simulation was of low quality and I didn’t spend any time on it. Things were a little more advanced when I did my instrument rating. It was all good practice but doing holding pattern entries from different courses relative to the hold was invaluable in improving my situational awareness and confidence. Definite plus in staying ahead of the aircraft on instrument approach procedures.

I have a PPL and I recently tested some simulators and I find them way more difficult than actual flying, because there's no sense of distance and no motion. So maybe they're a great way to learn IFR, but for VFR you would need a motion platform and VR goggles.

I think the reality is that the type of people interested in flying will have spent a lot of time in simulators already by the time they start taking lessons and it really helps. You'll already know what each instrument is, how to read it, in what order to do things, running check-lists, how to start the plane, taxi, navigate, etc. You'll probably be a bit clumsy at the controls and be too focused inside the cockpit instead of outside. But that's something that can be corrected in your first few lessons. And btw. focusing on your instruments is something you shouldn't be doing in the sim either; all the visual queues are there to fly proper vfr. MS Flight simulator has lots of pretty scenery, which you can use to fly VFR and learn how to navigate by landmarks. If anything, it's a little too pretty. Real life visibility is a lot more tricky. I fly x-plane myself and while less pretty, the flight model is awesome and it models the lack of visibility pretty well. And with some add-ons the scenery isn't that bad.

And if you are flying IFR, it's actually the opposite: you shouldn't look outside (typically not a lot to see there anyway) and you can't trust your senses. A lot of learning to fly is basically absorbing a lot of theory and knowledge. You don't need a plane for that and simulators are great for putting all that to the test.

In any case, flight simulators are used a lot by actual pilots as well for practicing procedures, instrument approaches, etc. The backstory of X-Plane is actually that the person that created it (Austin Meyer) was struggling with getting their instrument rating and developed it initially as a way to help practice that. That was more than thirty years ago.

These days sims are a lot better and both MS FS and X-Plane are very usable for learning all sorts of things about flying. The trick with both is to stop treating them like games and start treating them like the real thing. It's not perfect obviously but the planes will roughly do similar things under the same circumstances. If you fly by the numbers (speeds, altitudes, etc.), things like landings get a lot easier. You'll get a lot of the same visual queues as in a real plane (too high, too low, etc.). X-plane is actually sold for commercial usage where real pilots log real hours that actually count to their ratings. The difference with the regular version is a USB-key that locks down some of the settings and a lot of hardware that you can buy yourself as well.

Years ago I worked on a flight simulator for the Air Force and talked to a lot of people (pilots, instructors, etc) about them. The general findings are that simulators are terrible for learning the physical skills of flying, and in fact can result in negative learning that must be "unlearned". However, our simulator was a procedural trainer - turns out there's lots of weird and complex procedures needed to learn to fly, and simulators are great for that because you can controls the situations and create really great learning environments.

Someone in the comments mentions that they use it when flying into an unfamiliar airport to learn the terrain.

I often wondered if Special Forces or Swat Teams could use an FPS for a similar purpose to learn the layout of a building they are going to assault or infiltrate. I'm pretty sure you could drop me anywhere in the first level of Doom and I'd know where I was.

The environmental benefit of practicing in a virtual environment rather than burning actual fuel is also a nice side-effect of having access to quality flight simulation software.

I wonder what other industries could benefit from digitisation this way.

I've never played MS Flight Simulator, or flown a plane. However, I am learning guitar and I've discovered there's a whole range of games that are designed to teach you to play guitar. I'm currently working my way through one called Yousician which also does ukulele, bass guitar, and I think singing and piano too.

Rockstar is another one, but I couldn't get it to work well with a classical guitar while Yousician seems to be amazingly good at hearing the notes I play.

It's not a complete guitar teaching tool - it doesn't replace simply practicing songs by myself without looking at a screen, which is probably the most important type of practice for any instrument. It also doesn't teach that much music theory, although it does cover the basic better than I expected. But it does one thing amazingly well. It motivates me to practice, especially at the beginner level where I'm not making any particularly nice music, and it's teaching me a lot of the basic coordination and muscle memory while doing so. It also provides carefully curated challenge levels, which I can pick from depending on my current learning level and, just as important, how I'm feeling at that moment.

I think flight sims would be similar. They can't replace the genuine experience of flying a plane, of course. But we human learn well in a multi-modal manner. We can memorize a route by flying over a virtual map. We can memorize steps to land a plane, or to take off, in a game, even if they are not complete, and then apply what we've learned to learn the real thing quickly in an actual plane.

My experience over the last few weeks with Yousician has made me far more interested in the idea of gamified learning. Besides music, flight sims, orbital mechanics (Kerbal Space Program), and a few small code games like Flexbox Froggy, are there any other good gamified learning games?

While we’re on the subject of simulators, I cannot recommend “10 Steps to Complex Learning” enough.

Procedures and flows is a big one. It really helps for understanding the "flow" of processes and making sure you don't spend too much precious time in the cockpit repeating the same things just to try to get in the habit of e.g., the flow of engine start, going through your checklists, doing crosswind corrections, etc.

For the feel and the mechanics of flying VFR, there's nothing you can do except build that intuition, feel, and muscle memory in the aircraft itself. But I disagree it's useless for all aspects of VFR training.

I was visiting local flight school and checked their FNTP II MCC simulators few years ago. Instructor told me they will not let any students do training on simulators before they have real flight hours.

Bearing in mind the number of times I've crashed - both during takeoff and landing - I've convinced myself that I'm not cut out to be a pilot... so, yes!

Yes.

I say that with 100% certainty based on my own experience. I was using Flight Simulator in the late 80s.

I used it for 10 years, and it inspired me to become a pilot. I ended getting various ratings (private, instrument, high-performance, commecial ...).

I knew how to fly an ILS before I had my introductory flight in a Cessna 172. I knew what I was looking at and not bewildered by all of the unfamiliar gauges.

It's not going to help you land a small plane when the winds are 160/17G25 and it's a crosswind. That you have to experience. But I could fly to the nearest VOR on the first day.

XP12 is better, not least because it can be certified for logging "real world" flight hours.

Looks pretty to:

https://youtu.be/_GzhwJMFDHk?si=IzK8VttO9P58myk-

flight sims in general have come a long way in the last 20 years, VR and XR have completely changed the dynamic, there are even EASA approved VR helicopter sims now (that are actually used for certified training)

Just flying a plane isn't that hard, and just landing it not that harder. Doing it well per specs is hard and requires butt in the seat time. You just can't feel everything in the sim, like the gust of winds as you approach the runway, or the sudden acceleration in falling as you lose too much airspeed when trying to land, or the balloon near the runway. It'll all be simulated and you can see it with your eyes, but that's a long shot from being able to do it all in real life when all your senses are involved.

I'm sure given enough sim practice you can get most of the way there but probably with exponentially more repetition.