He’s not the first person to return from a flight like that with the interior of the airplane and everything in it covered in Grandpa. And doing that to the pilot is not kosher…
Aside from the obvious (the worst thing that can happen in the sim is that you fall off your chair), the biggest thing for me is the mental side of it. I don’t spend any time while simming listening to the engine. In the real airplane I am constantly listening to that thing. Does it sound right? Was that a little cough? And then when you get, “Cherokee 125, traffic 11 o’clock and 3 miles, type and altitude unknown”. Pucker! It’s just hard to describe. It’s one of the reasons I don’t believe in using sims (approved sims/FTDs) for instrument currency.
The physical/mental side of actual flight cannot in any way be recreated through simulation. Don’t get me wrong, sims are great procedure trainers. But as far as the comparison to actual flight, that’s all they are. Procedures trainers.
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lol thanks for diminishing the last Idea I had from my grandpa
Fly long enough and that will happen. Been there done that!
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This right here. Irl flying im constantly listening to the harmonics of the engine. The day before my ppl checkride as my instructor and I were climbing out, we hit around 1700ft for 3000 to go do one more round of practice maneuvers. I noticed the engine seemed off and remember looking at the tac and noticing no issues. Somewhere around 2000 feet all of a sudden the engine sputtered and rolled back to about 1900 rpm for a few seconds and then normalized. I remember saying well ok, I think we’re good on maneuvers, and we headed back to the field. Turns out a bad spark plug wire caused the issue.
I will say after that I had no issues with nerves for the checkride lol which I passed the following day.
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Pilots don’t stop for a picnic on the runway before taxi to gate in real life. 
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The two biggest things I miss is the feeling when leaving the runway and actually getting airborne. The other is when you are doing a crosswind landing and the wheels finally touch the runway. It is just not the same in a simulator.
My best friend went with his son-in-law to Texas for the son-in-law’s check ride in a simulator. (The son-in-law is a corporate pilot for a large corporation). After the check ride my best friend was asked if he wanted to “fly” the simulator. He said yes and for the next thirty minutes he “flew” a six million dollar simulator. At one point the person who was programming the simulator switched from a landing at JFK in New York to flying over the Alps in Switzerland. That is when my friend almost lost his “cookies” it was that real. I doubt that FS2020 will ever be that “real”. FWIW
this gotta be the BEST THREAD on the entire forum !!! 
Probably happened to all of us… Only after such an incident, the importance of a pee bottle became apparent.
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I notice 2 big differences:
1- G-forces are not in the sim, if you do a 45º turn you will feel sick in the stomac, like when you ride an attraction.
2- If you fly bad in real life the plane will loose control pretty easily, but in the sim the limits of these planes are quite benevolent compared to real life. Some payware planes like the DC6 do a good job at this though.
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Difference between sim and reality?
In reality, no one in their right mind would let me any where near an aircraft’s controls.
In the sim I am allowed to fly drunk, but in real life I fly drunk.
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Thanks for that very complete description of a simulator! I did bite my nails a bit when I read back the topic.
Autoritys do make a distinction between a Sim and a FTD which you clearly explained in your post.
I also want to add this though:
In the tp12863 (Transport Canada) they say:
Some research has shown that, for novice pilots, one hour of simulator exercise, at the first stages of training, can be equivalent to as high as four to six hours in the plane.
I personally think that simulation is flowering through msfs with graphics and flight physics that will change a lot of our beliefs in simulation/Flight training device
One thing will always remain … the unpredictable human factors we have to deal with to get these planes flying around
So one day, flying a real airplane through a screen will be a thing, but we need to start using a sim the way we use a plane.
This is really a great comment and a glimpse into the intensity and demand of real life airliner flying. Makes me appreciate much more what the two people up front are doing.
MSFS is a fun game and like any home “sim” there are no consequences so that stress felt in the RW can never be replicated.
On the ground only those complex full motion Level D sims they use to train airliner pilots can get close to replicating those things.
I’m a 30 year Private Pilot ASEL with an instrument rating and some complex time, and roughly 3,000 hours.
It’s the same as watching Saving Private Ryan, versus having actually landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. You get a sense for the experience, but you don’t have the same life and death consequences or the need to maintain the same situational awareness.
I’ve been using MS Flight Sim for 35 years and the last 20 (since FS8) to review procedures and airport environments before actual flights. I used to have to add hundreds of dollars of photo scenery, airports, and planes, but with MSFS2020, I can use that default application with little tweaking. The environment is as close to reality as you can get in a 2D world without G forces, etc.
One thing that always stands out to me is the way trim works in the sim is nothing like real life (for aircraft with mechanical linkage that is, not fly by wire. I think. Never had the privilege to fly such a thing IRL). In the sim your joystick always returns to the same point, in a real aircraft the trim changes where the yoke stays put. So if you want to climb you pull up then trim until the yoke stays pulled up. In the sim you have to return the joystick to neutral as you trim. I’ve always hoped this would be solved with some kind of force feedback yoke (well, I’ve seen one out there, but it was out of sight expensive).
Also, many memories of flying are just visceral, and I don’t really get that with the sim. Like the smell of avgas instantly brings memories of calm, cold, crisp, early mornings out on the tarmac doing pre-flight. And knowing, when the air feels like that, that its going to be smooth as glass up there.
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Great post, Ken. A similar but far safer (well, mostly) situation exists in training people new to flying r/c model planes. At my club we use a computer in the club room to familiarise students with using a radio transmitter and coming to grips with flying a model by line of sight. Often the most difficult students are retired pilots, who believe they know what to do, but have never stood on the ground and tried to land a plane coming towards them.
Regardless, the r/c simulator, although fun, and these days quite sophisticated, is hopeless compared to a student and instructor flying a real model in real wind, using a buddy box transmitter who can take over at the flip of a switch and (hopefully) get the club trainer aircraft under control before it goes splat…especially if it’s going to go splat into areas where club members or guests are relaxing.
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A simulator that simulates a simulated aircraft. Interesting
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