So I was thinking...

[antic81 57]

I have a standing offer to actually try this scenario in a level D NG sim (I've never flown a transport category aircraft or sim in my life outside of FS)... I will do a write up when I finally get to do it. I'm guessing the answer will be yes, but maybe not as smooth as some pax would like on the landing... I'm positive I could do it autolanding, but I'd rather see if I could actually hand fly the landing.

Now thats a slightly different scenario Ryan and I am sure you will do a great job mate! In fact I think that any of the hard core users of Flightsim and quality, hi fidelity addon aircraft would do and have done (if they're lucky enough to get to have a go) really well in a Level-D full motion training simulator.Whats the difference? Well it comes back to stress levels. For example: I can train someone in all the correct control and restraint techniques in the world and I can teach them of the dangers of sleeper holds and neck holds and extended use of the prone position (and believe me, I go on for a good four hours about it!) - and yet when it all kicks off and they have to use it outside the classroom in the real world I've seen people freeze up or use all the techniques that I told them never to use! All because of the stress of the event.All I am saying is do that same sim ride with a gun to your head...and performance may drop a bit! :(

[TedG 1]

I just hope my co-pilot wouldn't be an IL-2 only junkie.

I remain a proud IL-2 junkie and as your co-pilot will be more than happy to handle visual checks out the windows and radio communications.The only thing I need to know is where the cannon triggers are to illuminate your descent path with tracer fire. The 737NGX is equipped with cannons right?:Whistle:And if you are forced to make an ahem "water landing" my years of driving submarines around the Silent Hunter realm will sure come in handy too!Heck once you land the aircraft I'll take over the steering as I feel fully confident in parking us hull-down thanks to Steel Beasts.**edit**Chuckles aside I have had the opportunity to spend many hours in a variety of full-motion Level-D certified simulators for my previous work (including FSI and various military organizations globally) and the three thing they all have in common with our home-based sims is a "pause" button, a crappy crash graphic, and a "reset" button.

[xender 459]

There's NO WAY IN HELL i can do it. I will be so nervous that i will forget what the throttles are for... I will be like "Pasengeeeeeerrrs!!!! Tonight we land IN HEEEELL!!"

[Chock 17,769]

I think it was a Helios 733 maybe not an NG

Yup you are correct, my mistake, Helios 522 was indeed a Classic, was thinking it was an 800 because Helios had a couple of those in the fleet too.Al

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

When it comes to automation, FS will get you up to speed on how to use it. That's not to say that you will be fumbling around at the start of a flight in a simulator. Why? because, the actual location of the knobs and switches is not programmed into your brain. You will have to look around to find somethings. In FS, the VC is all nicely laid out for us on a monitor. Flying the airplane will be different and challenging all at the same time. Why? Because you wont be used to how heavy the airplane feels. Our joysticks and control yokes are totally different than the yoke and the actually resistance you will feel in the aircraft. The biggest thing that would screw someone up in a sim or in the real aircraft is the speed at which things happen. FS offers us the luxury of sitting at a stationary seat. The real aircraft will give the true perception of speed because you can feel the airplane and see things moving by you. In FS the desk tricks our minds into thinking that things don't happen as quick. Why would they anyways, you aren't even moving. In a nut shell, we all can fly through clouds and do approaches to minimums in FS all day long. Its easy. Why? Because we don't get hr true perception of speed. Try flying an approach all the way to minimums in IMC and see how easy it is. Better yet, do an approach with a broken layer of clouds, when you see how fast you are flying through the clouds, you will get screwed up really quickly. Long story short, FS does nothing to get you ready to fly a transport category aircraft. IT only works with automation and systems. I have experience in an erj-145 sim......quite a bit actually. I could fly the thing pretty easily but I seriously think it was because I already had real world experience and a pilot cert. In some peoples defense, using fs for pleasure did help my in basic stick and rudder skills when I first started my training because I knew what to expect. I still had to learn how to actually fly the aircraft. I had to learn what the sight picture looked like on flare. I had to learn how a stall really feels like and how slow flight actually worked. FS is just for familiarity.....nothing else.

[Jordan 0]

I've been in a 737-800 sim a couple of times and having the experience I gained from MSFS, it does put everything into practice. It seems impossible and sounds rudiculous but hand flying an ILS approach is very possible and incredibly surreal. In fact, I spoke to a captain after a flight I was on once and was talking whether MSFS really does help and he said, and I quote; "Oh hahaha, I can't do flight sim - it's too difficult!!"

[Airbus Commander 563]

I'm a real world pilot, and often enough if I have some time and I'm chatting to an aviation enthusiast, be it before the flight or after, and they bring up the topic of how "I could land this you know, I've done it a thousand times on my sim on the PC, I can program the FMS and all", it almost makes my blood boil. Its disrespectful to my career to think some Joe Blogs, who is really enthusiastic and has read all the books and done all the sims for different aircraft comes as long and simply compares the years of training I have done, the thousands of hours experience I have gain in my 23 years flying, can all be substituted by a year or two playing flight sim and make them believe that they could do our job if it were needed. Most of us pilots will agree that the flying is the easy part, the hard part is making the executive decisions, whether or not to leave a passenger because they're late, whether or not to fly through the weather or to go around it, whether or not to leave the gate or to wait another 5 mins for the WX to clear. The amount of information we learn in our training is vast, and covers some the most advanced principals of engineering, physics and meteorology out there. Being able to do "Smooth Landings in the PMDG MD-11" is no substitute for my knowledge. But your question was slightly different so I'm sorry for my rant. You probably could set up the AP for an autoland, but lets keep in mind that most aircraft aren't actually able to do an autoland, not every airline goes for that option. Would I trust a simmer with my son's life or my daughter's life if it came down to it, that depends, you would be a step up from the rest of the SLF but not by much. I remember as a child I used imagine what would happen if the pilots fainted at the controls and would I be able to step up, and back in those days we didn't have flight simulators. So of course it is natural to imagine one's self in these situations, everybody wants to be the hero, but dont get too ahead of yourself. Flying IRL is totally different to that in the sim, just ask any of the real world pilots on this forum, be they Commercial or Private, you feel the bumps, the accel, the turns, the climbs and descents. The controls feel different to those in the sim, you cannot pause in real life and switch to spot view to see if you are in line with the runway. It is different in that way, but system wise with aircraft like PMDG your getting fairly close to the mark. Didn't really mean to be discouraging there, but thats just the way I feel, I enjoy FS too but just don't take it too seriously... Enjoy it. By the way if I may ask, who here actually knows where the PPT buttons are in the aircraft? PS. If you ever meet a pilot at the airport, DO NOT tell him you can land the plane, do his job, program the FMS ect. Because any chance you may have had to see the flight deck just went out the window faster than a Concorde at cruise speed...Rónán O Cadhain.

[coryb13 102]

I have spent about 50 hours in the PMDG 747 in FSX and I went to the United Airlines training center where they train and certify pilots and got the chance to fly a 747 full motion simulator. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of hand flying it, but once I did, it was a breeze. I knew all of the systems very well also. My instructor did a demo landing which was pretty darn smooth, but when I got my chance, I greased it smoother than him the first try. He was very surprised and had me land twice more, and seemed after the first landing he thought it must've been a fluke. Much to his surprise, I greased it down twice more, each one a little bit softer than the last. Under pressure, I may not have done so well, but man, I can't emphasize how much my sim time helped. Had that been a real 747, chances are I could've hand flown a visual approach and landed just fine.

[Efussander 0]

Flying IRL is totally different to that in the sim, just ask any of the real world pilots on this forum, be they Commercial or Private, you feel the bumps, the accel, the turns, the climbs and descents. The controls feel different to those in the sim, you cannot pause in real life and switch to spot view to see if you are in line with the runway. It is different in that way, but system wise with aircraft like PMDG your getting fairly close to the mark.

Yes, I concur. Unlike you, I don't fly heavy metal, but the principal applies for GA too. Think about this common scenario. (This is probably somewhat limited to smaller aircraft do to their lightness in weight, but I'm only a measly PP not an ATP so I can't say for sure.) Anyway, I'm turning from a right base, to final in my plane, and everything is going well. I'm flying into a slight crosswind, but I'm slipping and my glideslope looks good. As I am decending on short final, a very strong gust hits me and I get pushed up and to the right of the approach path. The first thing I have to decide is whether or not I'm going to continue the approach. To do this, I need to evaluate whether I can safely return the aircraft to the correct altitude for the glideslope, and have the aircraft correctly slipping towards the runway once again. (remember that now I'm high and to the right of where I should be.) I determine that I can safely return to the landing envelope without going around. The next thing that I need to do is use the correct combination of pitch, power, and flaps to return to the proper G/S. I also have to return to the correct lateral position of the approach using aileron and rudder inputs. This is a real scenario that actually happened to me. If I was a passenger, I wouldn't want a sim pilot trying to make these decisions and correct the approach, even if they were PMDG simmers. The reason is that you simply haven't felt the way the aircraft moves around in the air, and I doubt that you could manage the controls in the right sequence to get on the ground safely. This is the same reason that in a lot of the FSX utube videos I watch, it astounds me some of the bank rates that people are using. You can't bank a piper like you can a fighter. In some of these videos, the virtual pilot quickly "jerks" it into a bank. You just can't do this irl. (part of this is probably do to poor flight dynamics in the sim)Another thing I notice in utube sim videos is that 99% of the turns I see are not coordinated. When I'm flying irl, I'm not looking at the turn coordinator, I can just feel if I'm slipping etc. and apply appropriate rudder input. Again. I'm not trying to bash anyone, but like Rónán said above, there are certain things that you just can't learn flying in a desktop sim. Quite frankly I wouldn't have a lot of confidence that you could land a GA plane in anything but PRISTINE conditions. No offense.EDIT: Cory, I realize that I posted after you, but I want to assure you that my post was not directed at you in any way. Really neat experience btw.

[fwerff 70]

In a level-d sim, I've proven I can :( Got about 5 hours on a level-d 737NG simulator :(

[Efussander 0]

In a level-d sim, I've proven I can :( Got about 5 hours on a level-d 737NG simulator :(

Sweeeeet! Where? Is it a public one that you can pay to use, or do you have a friend at an airline?

[Tom Wright 438]

Human performance plays a huge role in your ability to land a real aircraft compared to a sim. You may not be a particularly nervous person, but in the real world you will always have that gut feeling of "If I screw this up the consequences could be severe!". How someone responds to this is entirely down to their nature - some people would thrive on it and be able to cope remarkably well under pressure (these people make the best pilots), and others would simply fall to pieces at the thought of people's lives (or even simply their own) in their hands! This is something you just cannot experience in a simulated environment, no matter how realistic it is - at the end of the day if you screw up a landing or even fly it into the side of a mountain there's no harm done! Nothing can prepare you for that pressure other than being at the controls of a real aircraft. I remember from the first few landings I did when learning to fly, the reason I found it harder than Flight Sim was not because the actual skill required was much different, but because I had this fear which developed as I got closer to the ground that I was going to do something wrong and damage the airplane. Of course with practice I overcame this. Some people never do, and some people never feel like that in the first placeRegards,Tom Wright

[Aaron Buchanan 19]

I am sure I could land the plane, just not to sure how many onboard would survive.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

I'll put it this way:Most out there who think they can, probably can't, but I won't discount that FS counts for something. I'd be willing to bet that most who have done something with a PMDG aircraft could at least get by and people would survive, even if the aircraft didn't (don't go off into some "oh, but what if there's no ILS argument - FAA fuel requirements have you up there with enough for ATC to vector you around to a field with one, at least in the States).I will also say that while real flight time counts for a lot, it doesn't count for everything. There are several people I know who have less flight time than some of my friends and I think they fly better, and some with less hours have much better knowledge, because when they hit a cash rut in training, they kept in the books.On the thought of experience, and my normal comment when it comes to the "experience" junkies: I played baseball for 10 years, and I was good, but I didn't try. Experience only got me so far. On a pure experience argument, I'd be worthy playing in the majors now. The experience argument is used way too much out there in jobs, I think simply because there's no clear way to determine who is better than another.The feel of flying the plane comes with time. Knowledge comes with effort. Skill comes from both.

[jbassue 181]

I'm afraid to use VATSIM, I think ATC will shout at me. I've already read the rules. Just not sure where to start >.<I am aware that it will higten the communication ascpect of my flying experience, but I cherish my dignity, I'm also a scarred I'd be made fun of because I can't afford much payware, Oh jeez.