One very important thing that must mentioned about PMDG reality is this.If you are looking for as real as it gets and you are ready to spend up to weeks reading plane manuals before you can make a complete flight, then PMDG is for you.

Actually, there is a step-by-step tutorial that will get you through an entire flight right from the beginning. Agreed about Wilco being decent and not too hard to learn, although their Ejets are a little tricky. Fun, too.

From your posts, you should go to the FSX Learning center and work through the various lessone and pages. Stay with the default planes until you have mastered them, then decide on what addons you want. The biggest difference between the two are the complexity of the systems, but the basic rules of flying apply to both. There is no reason to beat yourself up trying to learn complex systems while at the same time trying to learn the basics.The default planes are much easier to learn on, then move up...... my .02 as a lifetime simmer and real life pilot.

FS is basically just a platform for add-ons. No serious flight simmer is flying the default aircraft.

Second that fully. MS could have left out the planes completely. Flying the default planes is like playing with Fisher Price...Andreas

Compared to some addon crap from companies like Abacus, the MS default planes are not bad, plus you hardly ever have any issues with them.Even though i ahve payware, the MS defualt planes are alright too, escpecially the 737. and some of the props too.Plus better frames

Some of the default aircraft are very good in my opinion, and even if they are not the best, there is absolutely nothing wrong with them for learning the basics and indeed more complex stuff.The default Cessna is not as bad as some might think; it is certainly usable for practicing circuits and bumps and learning the basics of navigation and the flight model is not a million miles away from the real thing either, the Mooney too is good for more complex IFR stuff in a GA craft.The Grumman Goose is very good indeed (and is of course now a lot better courtesy of the recently released freeware HD treatment it has received), even in its default state it could easily be mistaken for a payware offering.The 737 is okay and can be made into quite a usable thing for even hard core types with the addition of an FMC and a few better gauges.Although the DC-3 has a fairly simplified cockpit in comparison to stuff like the MAAM DC-3, it could in no way be described as poor and its flight model is a fairly good representation of the real thing.The Learjet is about the only game in town if you want one, and with a few cockpit tweaks it becomes very good fun to fly and is reasonably accurate even without such tweaks. The CRJ too is not bad.The DG808 glider is actually a pretty fair representation of the real one in terms of performance, as indeed is the Maule which can tow it.In fact, about the only default FSX aircraft I would say was really desperately unrealistic, is the Airbus.It's very fashionable to slag of MS, so of course it's also de rigueur to have a pop at the default aeroplane offerings in FS, but let's not forget that we were more than happy to get at their controls when FSX came out, and despite having a good many add-on aircraft, I still have occasion to crank up one or two of the default aircraft. Lots of add-on aircraft are better than the default stuff - I would not pretend otherwise - but they are certainly not hangar queens.Al