I’m curious to know from people who may have actually carried their sim experience over to getting a PPL or other license. I read this article on a local flight school website and also saw this hands-on answer on Stack Exchange (here) - the latter is interesting, but also a little dated.
Obviously, there’s a cost-benefit, but it would be interesting to know if gives you enough of an advantage that its worth putting in the hours on a sim.
Physical flying not a great deal - No fixed (Home based) sim will replicate that.
But I would imagine for instrument flying and certain procedures awareness is quite useful.
In some cases could be detrimental and get you into bad habits!
I was simming for quite awhile before I took my first checkout ride. Although I had a lot to learn, I could already fly the plane. I think it eliminated any fear or nervousness I might have had on the first flight. It is definitely worth it.
I was the opposite. I started flying IRL at 17 years old. I am 62 now. I find flying the real thing much easier than using the sim. You don’t get the physical feel of what the plane is doing in the sim. Also I find the controls are much harder to master in the sim than on the real airplanes. As an example I did a flight the other day into KDEN in the PMDG B737-700. Winds were light at 6. In the sim it was as if I was flying in a 60 kt crosswind. Made no sense. For instrument proceedures it’s about the same. But to me it’s much easier to fly the real thing.
We discuss this in my Discord a lot. Real flying is a lot different with all the sights, smells, sounds, kinesthetic sense/proprioception, and control pressures in an environment that’s actually hazardous and can’t be paused.
Most folks can manipulate the controls and fly an airplane through the air with little or no coaching, so in a couple of hours, especially with an instructor, a person with sim experience should be getting close to a “manipulating the controls proficiently” portion of soloing, which isn’t far off from the hours person who began with no experience would need.
Whether or not it can be done proficiently without that instruction depends on a few things: whether you’ve learned how to do things correctly in the sim or not, which maneuvers or phase of flight we’re talking about, and the definition of “proficiently.”
Some common errors sim pilots make when transitioning from the sim world are how to correctly use trim, understanding the relationship between pitch and power (namely, climbing or descending at an airspeed versus a rate (including transitioning to/from level flight), and the biggie, relying too much on the gauges versus looking outside for references, traffic, and obstructions.
A lot people who consider themselves serious simmers haven’t had any feedback as to whether what they’re doing meets proficiency standards. So while a person may be able to steer the plane toward a runway pretty well, that’s a small portion of what we do. Amp it up a bit: can they do the same while safely entering a traffic pattern, avoiding other aircraft (plus obstructions and airspace), communicating, and configuring the plane for landing? And staying within standards the entire time? With a little coaching, it won’t be too long, without, I think you’d be surprised at how quickly people get behind the airplane. Even people who have been flying for a long time, or have been taking lots of lessons deal with this.
In the end, does simming give an advantage? Probably, in a couple of specific areas. Can some things become areas of negative transfer if they were learned incorrectly, which then take additional time to rectify? Probably that as well.
Here’s a link to an old thread where I opine as to what the sim doesn’t do well:
For procedures, communication routines etc it’s okay I guess. Anything else get into a plane.
Flying is easy, not much to it. It’s like riding a bicycle, two hours and you got it. SAFE flying is what takes time and you will not learn that on the ground. And I personally would take my distance from flight schools that advertise and teach with ground flight sims for flight training.
Again, it’s totally fine for procedures, emergency routines, comm training if you wish etc.
I am a low time pilot. I had always wanted to learn to fly but always put it off because… reasons. When I took the plunge, the sim experience helped. It continues to help.
In fact, just yesterday, I got myself into a situation that required me to do something in the real airplane that I had never done before in real life. Nothing serious, but one of those things that an instructor would say “I have control” when you’re a student. I relied on a combination of my training and sim experience to get me through.
The sim experience kept me calm. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. I reminded myself that I had done stuff like this in MSFS, and it felt familiar. (I like to practice “what if” scenarios in the sim.) Emotionally, that meant a lot to me in the moment.
That’s not to say I am over-confident and go looking for trouble; by my age I’ve learned that there’s no need to go looking for trouble because it will find you. But the sim experience did make a difference for me yesterday.
What I see is opportunity and potential in using the sim; there’s a lot of possibility to innovate. The caveat is it’s soooo easy to fall into traps and bad habits in areas you don’t know you don’t know. In the end, would it give a leg up to a new student pilot? If done correctly, yes. If done poorly (inclusive of hardware setups), I’m not so sure, and everywhere in between.
Personally, I used very old versions of the sim for many years before I got my certificates (we’re talking FS3.0 to FS5.0)
Where it helped me:
Where it didn’t help me:
Keep in mind this was an older version of the sim, so some things possible today (specifically VFR pilotage) weren’t as possible.
Now, can I say this helped me cut hours down? Possibly. Were there things that might have added some time due to my hubris? Possibly, but these factors probably cancelled each other and it came out in the wash. I had incredibly good ground instructors and course syllabi, very good flight instructors, and I was extremely motivated. There’s a lot to control for there. I’d love to see a larger study, again, to take advantage of the opportunity this sim presents.
I will tell you this: finding out what I didn’t know I didn’t know was an extremely humbling experience (and truth is, I still have those). And it was eye-opening and exciting. I do not regret my education and experience one bit.
I get this question all the time. Here is the answer you are not going to like. I have studied and used MSFS since the late 1980’s. Easily 30 years of flight sim. Two summers ago in 2021 I got my private cert. The bad news is, my simulator experience did not help very much if at all. In fact I had developed so many bad habits, it may have actually hindered my learning. It did not cut back my training at all. Took me roughly 60 hours to get my cert. I purposely stopped using MSFS during my training. In fact during my checkride. The DPE told me I need to stop looking at the instruments so much. I attribute that very bad habit to MSFS
I think the biggest surprise to most simmers including me… I went in thinking i can easily easily easily fly a Cessna 172 in MSFS with my eyes closed. You get to the real aircraft and its like you have never seen a plane before, everything feels soooo much different and landings are unbelievably different than in the sim. Its a very rude awakening
Would it be fair to say, though, that part of that difficulty in transition is because you hadn’t been taught any of those things/differences, sim or otherwise?
I agree to an extent. I also stopped flying the sim during the early part of my training because it is different enough that I didn’t want it screwing me up. But where it was useful was later on when practicing checklists and “dry running” my upcoming lessons.
My instructor (and also another friend who flies in the airforce) advocated strongly for “chair flying”, where you imagine scenarios and work through them while sitting in your favourite chair at home. I found that useful, but there was still a disconnect when I got back into the airplane for real. Doing that “chair flying” in front of MSFS where I could interact with the simulated cockpit was more effective for me.
I also used it to pre-fly all my cross country’s and to work through some lessons (e.g. precautionary landings) ahead of actually doing them. I found it got me thinking about the syllabus and helped me formulate better questions ahead of time.
And lastly, I used it to practice flying while under pressure. It’s easy to fly when you’re not loaded up, but throw in busy ATC in complex airspace (I used PilotEdge), navigation through unfamiliar areas and trying to do calculations on your E6B and it changes the equation. Doing that enhanced my confidence, which to me, was important.
So overall, I would say that MSFS didn’t save me much time or money training, but it did enhance my training. It helped me feel more comfortable in the real thing. That can be worth a lot, as I was reminded yesterday.
This is an important distinction. I agree that from the beginning of actual flight lessons until about the time you’re embarking on cross-countries (so the first two major blocks of instruction), the sim can be detrimental in many ways, especially control pressure and proprioception. Knowing how and where the sim falls short is important and you’re not going to get that understanding until you work with a qualified instructor.
I feel the need to also add that the flight school where I did my training has a strict syllabus and you need to “pass” each lesson before being allowed to progress to the next lesson. If you don’t pass the lesson, you repeat it until you do. I didn’t have to repeat any lessons, including ones where my instructor said most students do have to repeat. I can’t say definitively that that was because of my MSFS experience, but I did make a conscious effort to prepare for each lesson ahead of time, including practing “wax on, wax off” type muscle memory stuff. That certainly made a difference.
Edit: In addition to the strict lessons that I mentioned above, there was also space in the syllabus for practice. To be completely accurate, I did do a few extra of those practice sessions, over and above what was in the lesson plan that they give you when you start out. I also asked for a couple of extra practice sessions along the way to deal with weaknesses that I myself was aware of (e.g. I had lazy feet). I mention this because I don’t want to give the impression that I cruised through. I didn’t. It took a lot of hard work to get it done in between work and family commitments. MSFS helped, but it didn’t make it “easy”.
From personal experience (which for real aircraft is limited) I did find my many previous years of flight simming to have proven more beneficial than negative, but there certainly were some negative elements.
Just as a bit of background, my real world flying has been restricted time wise, but fairly varied in terms of aircraft. 2 one day introductory glider experiences. An bit over an hour in a Piper Warrior - introductory flying lesson. About one and half hours in Cessna 150, this was the same day as the Warriror - the instructors own plane. More recently (about 12 months ago) 2.5 hours in a Robinson R22.
I also think the benefits and drawbacks will also vary from person to person and possibly by a noticeable amount. From my personal experience…
Pros…
Absolutely on doubt on this - familiarisation of the cockpit environment. I knew what all the gauges were for. Understood the use of all the controls.
Instinctively understanding how an aircraft reacts in flight and why.
Ultimately, the pros amounted to feeling relaxed and in no way daunted by being at the controls of a real aircraft, albeit knowing it is “real” and so are the related risks of doing something silly.
Cons…
Certainly some level of flying by the gauges too much - I noticed this more flying a helicopter initially. Unfortunately, I think this is the nature of flight sims and the lack of fell they provide so you become a bit too familiar with checking gauges to compensate.
You build up muscle memory with computer controllers that can be noticeably different to real aircraft controls. I noticed this quite a lot in the R22 helicopter. On my sim I use MFG Crosswind pedals which are considerably wider than the R22 anti torque pedals - this took a little while to adjust to.
Overall I think it depends how you approach it as an individual. If you can be open with yourself and accept you may have developed some bad habits through sim use then I think you can adapt and change how you fly in the sim rather than keeping those bad habits going. I know I have certainly changed and improve how I fly helicopters in sims now.
I think CharlieFox has said it very well. From my personal experience, I find that the sim can teach you a few things except the “aviate” part of aviate, communicate, navigate. It does very little for stick and rudder skills especially when it comes to landing. Same for any of the maneuvers like stalls or steep turns.
I have actually been limiting my sim time during training, especially pre-solo. It’s not very helpful at that point.
I had answered this in a similar thread, but the short answer to me is they are very useful, as long as you are aware of the pitfalls and you have an instructor that is also aware of them or familiar with what FS can and can not do.
Mine actually tried out my sim rig at one point just to feel the difference first hand. But not every CFI will be inclined to do this sort extra curricular activity.
Lastly, as great as MSFS is visually and in some ways at least physically, the old versions I found a lot easier to fine tune aircraft to match a real world counterpart. Nowadays I am not sure I could tweak a PA28-161 or 181 to be a virtual twin to the real one.
My advice is always to treat the sim (and each individual aircraft within) as a different aircraft from any other, sim or real. No, the replica in the sim is not going to fly exactly like the aircraft, but it will fly like an aircraft, so folks shouldn’t fall all over themselves to compare apples to apples. Once you have a frame of reference, it’s close enough.
There are only a few areas in which the sim isn’t realistic enough in simulating light trainers, outside the aforementioned proprioception and control force:
Other than that, it’s really not that bad at all. I’ve successfully practiced a lot of maneuvers, saving myself time when I go practice them in the real plane. The key is knowing the differences - I have the training and certificates to understand where the sim falls short and I certainly don’t treat the control forces in the sim Archer like the real thing. But I can hit the numbers and the visual with a head tracker is good enough to use outside cues instead of padlocking on the gauges.
It’s like driving a car. Until you sat behind the wheel and turned it and FELT the car reacting, no software will teach you that. However, it’s great for practicing certain things. Checklists, etc… just not the feel of it.
That’s well said and I agree. I’ve rambled on a bit in this thread already but you’ve put into words some stuff that I tried to say:
Flying the sim is different from the real thing and not entirely transferrable in the early stages of training.
Counterintuitively, it becomes more like flying the real thing as you gain experience flying the real thing. As you say, it flies like ‘an’ airplane and that’s enough to breed familiarity and to practice some things (within limits).
The sim affords learning opportunities that can supplement training, such as “chair flying” when memorizing emergency checklists or when practicing procedural aspects of flying (e.g. precautionary landings).
The sim can be used to gain “muscle memory” for some flying tasks (e.g. remembering to pull on the carb heat when the rpm drops below the green arc)
Hours in the sim probably won’t save you that much time and money on your training. Learning to fly takes work and you’re probably not going to cruise through that work just because you’re a sim pilot. It might make you a better student, though. (i.e. You still need to take the course and do the homework, but you’ll get a better grade.)
Hours in the sim may occasionally help give you an emotional boost when you need to calm some butterflies while flying. (e.g. You can push the anxiety down and tell yourself “you can do it; it is just like the sim”.)