What bad habits does MSFS encourage for real world pilots?

Yes, I’d like ASOBO to use a plane like Piper Cub J3 - a simple one, without flaps, ADF, AH and other gyro instruments for their first flying lessons.

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Not using the rudder pedals! In real life there is a constant need to adjust the rudder to compensate for power changes / keep turns coordinated. In the sim its like flying on rails :wink:

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I started my reply before the others commented and had to interrupt it as I was at work :rofl: so yep, everything‘s clear after reading the rest :grimacing:

Never flying above 500’ AGL, Im sure the FAA would love to see me doing that in real life.

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Crash without dying

Mowing down push back tugs when starting my taxi

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In a real plane you relieve the pressure by trimming until the yoke/stick stays where it is when you let go of it. It’s not supposed to center.

In the sim you must reduce the pressure yourself while trimming to simulate the effect.

Therefore, properly implemented force feedback would enhance realism considerably.

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:open_mouth: The perfect answer to the Topic’s Question

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After a ten year flying hiatus, I just completed my flight review in a Cessna 172, which consisted of doing a couple hours of maneuvers and pattern work with an instructor. I used the Flight Simulator 172 extensively to practice beforehand.

Where the sim helped enormously:

  • Getting into checklist and procedure habits. Being able to just drill those lists over and over writes them into your brain’s memory.
  • Area familiarity. I knew exactly where I was on a large airport and rather empty rural midwest landscape thanks to Flight Simulator’s scenery.
  • ATC communication. I used PilotEdge to get familiar with Class C airport ops and it helped enormously. I have the default sim ATC turned off.

Where the sim didn’t help:

  • So much of flying the 172 is just muscle memory. My landings were really bad, and the hundreds I did in Flight Simulator did not seem to help too much. I could get into the approach following the procedures just fine, but that transition from descent to slow flight to touch down flare is all feel, and Flight Simulator is lifeless in that regard.
  • Again, the way the plane feels when it’s flying. The attitude of the sim 172 is twitchy. In real life, it’s quite stable. The position of the sim 172 is quite stable, in real life, you’re making constant little corrections. And that’s all done with muscle memory. A really bad habit I think I got from the sim was just letting the plane land itself because the approach is so stable. IRL I was quickly getting behind the plane not making all those corrections.
  • Sight picture. Probably the biggest bad habit I’ve picked up from the sim. The view from the monitor doesn’t match the windscreen, and since I fly by looking at that picture, I found my flares were late, or even holding altitude during maneuvers was off. This is probably better in VR.

I should add I didn’t notice any issues with trimming going from sim to irl. I think maybe because I always tried to use the sim trim how I would in irl?

tldr; the sim is great for procedure lists and familiarity with instruments and geography. However, you need hours of real practice irl because the sim aircraft has an entirely different feel than the real aircraft.

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Not looking outside. Too much head down. MSFS is better than previous sims in that regard but consistently using a sim still lends itself to panel fixation.

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I learned flying IRL after having flown in simulators for hundreds of hours.
I had developed a wrong , airliner-like landing technique where I tried to arrive the threshold at stall speed while still sinking, which is unnecessarily hard.

And I almost damaged the plain in a tortoise porpoise landing because I had developed the nasty habit of slamming down the front gear using the ailerons elevator after the main gear has touched down. Big mistake. The tortoise effect of the gear strut bouncing back and throwing the plane into a dolphin motion wasn’t simulated in the old sims so how should I know?

On the positive side, I could taxi immediately (rudder pedals at home) and made very quick progress at the beginning. Later I had a difficult phase and my instructor said he thinks that is actually a good thing because I had been learning much too fast recently, and it had made him nervous.
I had told him about my simulator experience before but he dismissed it as completely irrelevant. Seems it wasn’t so irrelevant after all, both good and bad.

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Why would this be an airliners technique? Its just a bad technique, no matter the aircraft you are flying. An airliner does not approach the threshold at stall speed :sweat_smile:.

Airliner technique would be crossing the threshold at 50ft at stallspeed +30%.

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With the ailerons? HOW?

"porpoise effect, " not “tortoise effect” lol!

I too was a flightsim enthusiast for about a decade before I got my ppl. I now own a C127M and have about 1,200 hours as a private pilot. The sim gives you great knowledge for jumping into flight lessons, and a lot of the preliminary explanations in your ground school you already would have mostly down, so it speeds up that part a bit, and you jump into stick and rudder flying quickly. I think instructors appreciate it if you have a basic all around knowledge, because many who jump into flight lessons know absolutely nothing, so there is a lot of explaining and its a slower learning curve. But then again, the instructor probably makes more money with the extra hours required on a student with no knowledge.

The one habit the sim creates is following the needles and instruments, since you have no bio-feedback. Its a bit like flying a plane with someone else’s hands since you are lacking the sensations of being in a real moving environment.

In the beginning it was a tough habit to break, for me, because chasing the needles lends to erratic piloting and the plane getting away from you. In other words, expect that to be a little bit of a frustrating setback. You then learn to fly like driving a car and incorporating your environment, the horizon and terrain features as part of your sensory input (much like looking further down the road when you are driving as opposed to the road stripes directly in front of you). However, once you get into instrument training and flying, flying by looking at and responding to the subtleties of your instruments becomes an asset, and for me it put me a bit ahead of the curve. So, I would suggest to try to sim fly with a sense of keeping all visual cues as useful, rather than fixating on the instruments.

One last thing, be mentally compliant with an instructor, because although you think you know a lot, you probably know a lot of correct things, and a lot of incorrect things, so don’t cling too hard to your sim knowledge, as the real world is vastly different. Listen to your instructor then ask questions, rather than try to impress your instructor with your knowledge.

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My flight instructor always flew without shoes… he wore flip flops and stowed them away once we were in the aircraft … can’t have loose objects in the cabin can we??? :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I’ve flown barefoot, flip flops, slippers, sneakers and cowboy boots IRL. Its all the same. My main concern about footwear would be if I landed in a swamp or a lake, what would I want on my feet: definitely not flip flops, and definitely not cowboy boots, which would be like lead boots if you were floating around in a lake. But I admit I get lazy and barefoot does feel good on the rudder pedals.

This is why I like the “camera shake” in MSFS. It’s very subtle, but it does give you a sensation of the plane moving under you.

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Same. I use the Honeycomb Alpha and it is very clear to me when I’m having to apply force. I know it’s not the same as IRL (I’ve flown a few GA) but it’s certainly enough for me to know “Am I trimmed or not?”

Like so many things, bad habits in MSFS come far more from a lack of experience. I would strongly suggest anyone who is able to take a discovery flight at least once or twice. It’s usually under $100 USD. You will come back to the sim with a much better understanding of what it is you’re simulating.

I’ve always said some variation of this: Simulation is far more up to the simmer than the sim. The sim handles simulating instruments and some degree of flight. The simmer handles everything else, most importantly “being a pilot.” Pilots do a lot of things that simmers don’t have to. I maybe am a bit of an extreme case but I start even causal GA flights (minus group flights where I have less control) by checking the weather reports on Flight Service. I have a stack of aviation books next to my desk including ones that certainly don’t matter in sim, such as Weather Flying. On top of that, I know a couple of pilots and bounce things off of them to understand if I’m doing it right.

Case in point: I taught a friend of mine who is a student pilot how to navigate using radials.

Some people have mentioned some key things and I’ll reiterate one of them: It’s pretty crucial to have rudder pedals in sim. Even a cheap pair. They are truly fundamental.

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I guess the difference here is that trimming when pulling back on a yoke that is tied to some bungie cords doesn’t actually reduce the pressure felt from the bungie cords. There is no physical connection between my trim wheel, and the bungie cords.

What I would notice is that trimming up would slowly cause my nose to rise a little bit more, so for me that is the cue to reduce some of that back pressure until I can hold that pitch with the yoke centred. Trim up, reduce back pressure until I’m trimmed out for the desired pitch.

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