That makes sense. It’s easy to be cavelier in a flight sim, but with real lives on the line I’m sure a VFR cross-country is planned very carefully with respect to weather.
I’ll have to ask a pilot friend who does a lot of that kind of flying how he approaches it. I remember him saying how much he hates flying IFR because you lose so much freedom.
Honestly, in MSFS I just always fly IFR, but I can also ignore ATC without repercussions!