Landing probs in RW vs FS - appeal for new addon

[Guest]

I've been reporting my own trials and tribulations over the last two months as I transition to real world flight after about 3000 hours of simulator time. As I've stated, the sim has prepared me in a myriad of ways for flying lessons. Practicing procedures over and over in my home cockpit after each lesson improves my flying to a huge degree. As I mentioned in my last post, though, I seem to be having trouble getting the proper attitude at landing. I don't have the usual student problems - my landings are extremely consistent, I flare at the proper altitude with good speed management, good alignment, and compensate well for crosswind, etc. It's just that I land too flat. Slightly better than the less-than-ideal three point landing and way better than the dreaded "one-point landing" (aka. the wheelbarrow!). Over and over my instructor attempts to drive home the message of getting the nose up just a little higher and it just doesn't happen for me.This month's addition of AOPA's FLight Training magazine has a short article on the use of flight-sims for flight training. While they discuss the many positive aspects, particularly in instrument training, they also mention the often-quoted over-reliance on instruments as a negative. One CFI, however, mentions a student he had with 300 hours of FS time who simply could not land a real plane because of bad habits he or she had developed in the sim. The final recommendation in the article is that students receive 15 hours of real flight time BEFORE transitioning to flight sims!Many of you replied last time that if you fly the sim like you would a real plane then it is a useful tool. I couldn't agree with that more and certainly someone like myself, who has designed almost a complete homecockpit specifically for GA practice, takes that advice to heart. Still, most of us began our flight sim days in a barn-storming kind of environment. We taught ourselves to fly, sometimes hitting the runway but usually not. Many of us read the early Bruce Artwick books that provided some realworld advice (as well as pointed out some of the early "easter eggs", many of which just turned out to be bugs!). A few steps further along, some of us bought real flight training books or surfed the web for free info. Few, if any of us, bothered to bring a real flight instructor along to be checked out on our virtual flights.With all the good intentions in the world, bad habits just get reinforced over and over in a sim, and the aspect of flight in which this is most readily apparent is the landing. Real landings are relatively unforgiving. The sim will never ground loop or wheelbarrow. You can't feel the jarring crunch of a flare done too early. Even after years of practice in the virtual pattern, or perhaps because of it, I'm willing to bet most of you, like me, land too flat - at least relative to the real world.What's my point. Well, short of having online flight instruction (which I've seen mentioned before but never seems to catch on), it would be nice to have a module that could really judge your landings and maybe give advice. FSMaintenance might keep track of your vertical speed, and that is important, but a module that could also monitor angle of attack, airspeed, alignment, distance from the threshold, height of flare, etc. would really help us shake these bad habits, or better yet, prevent them from developing. I'd especially love to see it in the upcoming 152 training addon coming up.Just some thoughts...David