Ah, now I’m with you! I’ll try to fill you in the best I can. I may not be an exact substitute for a manual, but hopefully I can get you on your way with some good resources to get in the air.
We’ll start off simple - starting a flight. MFS can be a bit particular about how you do this. The best way (that is - for the most freedom) is to launch from an airport. It is possible to click on any spot on the map and set it as a departure, but as you’ve figured out, that’ll result autopilot being on. Once you’re more familiar with the aircraft, that won’t be an issue - but for now, perhaps better to avoid it. Picking an airport is pretty straightforward - find one on the map and select it or start typing in the text box to search for one. If your departure lists a runway, that means you’re starting on the runway, cleared to take off, all systems on. Parking brake may be on, and flaps I think are not deployed automatically. If your departure lists parking (which you can select either by clicking on a spot when you zoom in close enough to an airport, or through the drop-down where it would say which runway you’re departing from), you start cold-and-dark - meaning you have to turn everything on.
In the ribbon up top where the active pause button is, there is also a button to open the checklists. This will tell you exactly what needs to be done to start the plane. When you mouse over a step, there will be a little icon that looks like an eye on the right side of the checklist - if you click that, it will focus on the part it’s talking about. For example, if you’re looking for the battery master, you can click that button to focus the camera on it. If you click it again, it’ll go back to the normal view. There is also an “Auto-complete” page on the bottom - that, as you’d expect, allows you to just have the computer go through the checklist. It’s handy for when you want to start in parking, but are running into issues with starting it up or just don’t feel like doing every step.
As for the instruments, this looks like a good resource to explain what they are. Note that a glass cockpit (a plane with screens instead of gauges) will look differently - but once you’re familiar with what the gauges mean, it won’t be too hard to adapt to a glass cockpit.
For the keyboard and controller mapping list, if you go into settings, then controls, you’ll find a whole list of all the mappings. It’ll show only controls that are currently mapped, which should certainly be enough for you - but if you get curious, there’s an option on the left I believe that allows you to see everything that can be mapped.
For ATC, it’s pretty guided - you can only say the things listed on the ATC screen. If you’re at a towered airport, you’ll want to tune to ground to request clearance to taxi. Ground will then say something like “(your tail number) cleared to taxi Alpha Hotel to runway 13.” Alpha and hotel are names of taxiways - honestly, don’t even worry about this part though, as taxiing in MFS is a pain. Once you’re lined up on the runway, an option to tune to tower will pop up. Once you tune to tower, you can request take-off. They’ll probably give you some initial instructions and say that they’ll “call you next when you leave my airspace.” Once they do say you’re leaving their airspace, they’ll give you a new channel to tune to - all done once again at the touch of a button in the ATC screen. If you don’t want to deal with ATC anymore, just hit that button to tune to the new channel, but don’t hit the button to talk to the new ATC. Also, when they say “(tail number) please acknowledge” all you’ll have to do is open the ATC menu and hit the “acknowledge (contact)” button. That’s a pretty general overview because there can be a lot of ATC options depending on where you are, so feel free to ask if you’re wondering about a specific procedure or something that they’re telling you to do.
I covered the start and landing checklists already, but I think I forgot to mention one thing - different aircraft have different levels of checklist implementation. In some aircraft, they barely tell you anything. In other aircraft, such as the Cessna 172 (not the G1000 version, this one is only in Premium Deluxe version), there’s a more-or-less full set of checklists that’ll guide you all the way from starting up the aircraft to shutting it down at the end of your flight. A lot of the checklists are just start up, taxiing, taking off, and maybe a little bit of landing - and they’re usually missing a lot of helpful info.
If you’re not in an aircraft with a detailed checklist in-game, you can find the normal what-to-do stuff by just googling the real-life airplane flight manual - called an AFM. These have a lot of information, most of which you won’t have to worry about in the sim. Performance data can be helpful, although MFS doesn’t always mirror real-life performance - so that can be hit-or-miss. The checklists will probably be the most helpful part in a real-life AFM.
