I agree 100% that the Katana Da-20 is the best GA aircraft ive ever flown and will take some beating. I could not understand how I missed this little gem 2 months ago when I was looking for a proper GA machine. I got the Orbx Lancair and while its a great aircraft the Katana just blows it out of the water from the "feeling like you are running a real aircraft" standpoint. Today I learned the aircraft can aquire damage to things like the Pitot tubes even if you are not actualy in FSX. Leaving the Covers off the Pitot will give a chance that it will Fail or be blocked!! So your walkaround check is actualy required before a flight! Never seen that before :( I love that you have to check the oil before a flight and clean the aircraft from time to time. Its almost upto A2A standards and thats saying something :(

You can use it as a proceedure trainer, but you can't use it as a flight trainer.Real flying is an different story.Sven

one of the big Differences for me is the pressure on the yoke that you don't get in flight sim with the saitek or ect Michael Moore

how hard is the yoke? The throttles are damn stiff but I always wondered about the yoke on a jumbo jet and how much effort you need to turn it

Fs has been very real for me-but my realities and usage have changed quite a bit since starting to fly in 1989.With fs4 and working on a basic ppl was getting used to steering with the rudders on the ground, xwind takeoffs/landings, and practicing ground reference maneuvers and checking out the results afterwords.The ifr rating it was doing it all on the sim, viewing the results, and perfecting and practicing. Downloading rw on a daily basis and "seeing" what it might look like. Flying every approach in my state...When I bought my first plane and started flying across the US it was flying the routes first in fs, and getting situational awareness-especially in mountain areas I was not familiar with. I'll still use it that way though now I've been almost everywhere in the US...On the commercial rating it was practicing all the maneuvers....When a friend of mine got the first Garmin 430 it was to learn to operate this while flying (with Reality xp).When getting the multi rating it was cutting engines, single engine approaches..Now after 22 years of flying I am using a g1000 equipped aircraft and fs is for learning this while flying-much more useful than a stagnent g1000 Garmin Trainer.As for reality-I think when one does it rw one can fill in the blanks on the sim with imagination perhaps better than one that does not rw fly. Just my opinion.The sim has saved me much $$$$ in real world training without a doubt, and I am grateful to not only save a lot of money by training on it, but know I am a safer pilot from using it to train, visualize, and even try scenerios one would not want to try or be in rw.

One thing I miss in the sim is the feeling for your aircraft!In real world I'm flying ASK21 and LS4 which I can also fly in my simulator. When I'm pulling the speedbrakes in the real aircraft you can really feel the aircraft going down and you can feel every little change in the speedbrakes position. When flying in the simulator I must make sure the spoilers are in use now because there's no way to find out if they are or not exept for looking to the wing (or the lever in the cockpit).Also in reality our grass strip is not really a straight line. It happens often enough that you want to flare and keep the aircraft about 20cm or even more above the ground and then you suddenly touch the ground because it's a little higher here and there.Another important thing is that when you fly in real world you stomach flys with you! In flightsim you can do almost everything you can imagine and in real world you can already get problems when you're flying "only" a looping. Feeling the forces in something which is very different from the sim to real world. Maybe that's the biggest difference from the sim to real world.

In my point of view,, its a whole different world! :(

Even a lot of Level D sims don't replicate the "feel" of the aircraft......I can't think on one that does. Infact part of the first sim is spent learning to fly the simulator. As far as flight sim X goes with the right addon it is pretty darn good.

Let start with two words, " Real Enough" I fly C172, Sr22, and have a few hrs on a Citation 510 and I can tell you if you got the right hardware and software you're willing to read a lot and learn how to fly using your FS it could get very real, now if we compare the physics between the real airplane and the SIM it's a bit different, when you take off the turning tendency , ground effect, wind shear, X-wind, turbulence etc..... is a little different and could get very bad in real life and might get you hurt if you wont know how to deal with it. If you learn how to fly with an instructor and then apply what you know to your FS then it's much more realistic, but it's still a great tool to have fun and learn.Friend of mine who is 747 and few other airplane type rated got to try my PMDG 747 on my setup and he was very impressed with how accurate and realistic everything felt. Thank you PMDG for making such a great product it made me feel so good I'm very proud of it.30" HP I7 920 4.012 gigs DDR3 1600nvidia GTX 4802x SSD harddrivesPFC Yoke and RudderGoflight throttle TQ-6Goflight MCP pro with EFISsaitek AP, radio, Multi control panels.TrackIR 5software wise PMDG and almost every other must have add-on.Evan Banalian

There is no comparison between simulation and the real thing !! That said, I love the PMDG software and have had many great hours flying and pracisingstandard and non standard procedures.I am VERY immpressed with the NGX videos I have seen and can't wait to buy it. PMDG has done wonders for flight simulation in general !!!! Well done you guys !

for me... there's no comparison. FS is good for procedural stuff, but apart from that there isn't much more in my opinion. You just can't simulate the motion (without a 6dof platform) or the distinctive smell of avgas as you climb in the plane (I fly a 1981 A36, not like those new ones that smell like leather!).

As others have noted, procedurally, you can learn through FSX, but not the actual stick and rudder. As others have noted, control pressures, the rush of watching the actual earth come up to meet you, all play a part in that. For me, the common one to three monitor FSX setup doesn't do flying justice with the glances at instruments, the look out the side to see whether you should turn final, is what is missing. Maybe those guys with 20 monitor home cockpits can replicate that, but I don't know. But, this thing lacking in FSX is why I like high quality systems simulators like PMDG. I'm not going to be flying a 747 unless I win a few lotteries first, but at least I feel like I can understand the way the plane works. I wouldn't presume to claim that I could land one by hand in that flight sim fantasy of "what if..." that we all sometimes play, but I could set it up for autoland, I would think.

As far as doing manuvers, like landings, turns while maintaining an altitude, etc. Do real world pilots find them more difficult than what is in FSX, or less difficult?

You know, I hate to draw topics to heading 090^o but, have you guys ever thought about crashing in RL?I dont actually think it would bother me if I knew I was going to die flying an airplane, actully my brother and I were joking recently, he told me if I was certain I was going to crash push the throttles forward and hope for the worst, that was I die instantly, and not have to deal with medical complications after. Sort of harsh, but I see where he was going :(

You know, I hate to draw topics to heading 090^o but, have you guys ever thought about crashing in RL?

Sometimes, usually in retrospect. e.g. forgetting to switch tanks or landed too long and think 'what might have happen If I had or hadn't done this or that.'

You know, I hate to draw topics to heading 090^o but, have you guys ever thought about crashing in RL?

Sometimes I do something and think "what if x happened?", then I tell myself why that didn't happen and what I would have done if it did. To repeat what has been said before FS can't simulate the feeling,smells, or the heat of the cockpit on a hot summer morning. It can't simulate the feeling of stalls. I was recently doing some stalls but one was specifically intense. I don't remember how far we dropped, but I specifically remember my checklists floating off my lap. That feeling is definitely not possible in any sim.