One of those content empty threads I sometimes start here, just to share some emotions...

 

MS FLIGHT is the 1st simulator that really can teach you to Fly!

 

A few more of the excellent Challenges that came with Alaska, and I am completely convinced about that. A simmer who masters the various basic flight techniques in MS FLIGHT, even if using the "mouse as conntrol", and probably some of the more demanding bad weather challenges, will easily get flying the real thing!

I don't know... it may do a good job of teaching you how to maneuver a plane, which I think it does because the planes respond in a natural manner. But it doesn't teach you how to maneuver safely. Or when.

 

It's also easy to learn bad habits in a sim that can kill you in the real world, if you don't know any better. If I landed a real Maule the way my first few dozen landings with it in Flight went, I'd have been buying a lot of new tail-wheels. But according to Flight, I landed just fine.

 

One of those content empty threads

 

Say that again LOL..

 

I don't know...

 

Well, I DO know: I don't believe it. Because jcomm is a real world pilot, I think it's hard for him to really imagine how a not-real world pilot experiences a game. I am not a real world pilot but I do not have the illusion I could fly a real plane. Specially when you only use mouse mode. When you put a 'pure mouse mode user' in a real plane he wouldn't have a clue what to do with the rudder for instance. A pure pc-pilot also never experienced what you actually FEEL while flying.

 

Again, because jcomm is a pilot himself he is able to 'translate' what he does onscreen to a real life situtation (he KNOWS what you can and can't do in real life!) but telling pc-pilots that they can fly a real plane without problems is almost dangerous... As RoboRay said: a few things I can do on the pc would surely get me killed in real life.

 

EDIT

O, and btw, come to think of it: emergencies, failures and specially damage! I've done a few maneuvers in Flight that definitely would have torn the wings of my plane in real life... The lack of damage in Flight alone is enough to NOT say Flight-pilots can safely fly a plane! Again: jcomm knows what you can or can't do in real life, but Flight-pilots have no clue...!

Again, because jcomm is a pilot himself he is able to 'translate' what he does onscreen to a real life situtation (he KNOWS what you can and can't do in real life!) but telling pc-pilots that they can fly a real plane without problems is almost dangerous...

 

This a very interesting oppinion, and one that could take us along a huge thread on the subject... Both you and RoboRay have made very good descriptions of some of the problems with using a flight simulator an then going through RL flight experience. In my "exclamation" I tried to be as impartial as I could, given that I fly for real, but the fact is that MS FLIGHT focusing mainly on Visual Flight and giving us an excellent feeling of "being there", instead of having complex instrument panels that tend to make us look inside more than we look outside (something Flight Instructors easily recognise as a characteristic of someone starting to take flying lessons and comming from a "simmer life").

You may convince yourself that one can learn to fly real airplanes in the real world using a free arcade type simulator from Microsoft, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

 

This is an opinion of a real world pilot and retired flight instructor. There is a lot more to being a pilot than maneuvering an airplane in near empty space without ATC and without consequences of actions or inactions.

 

Not to rain on your parade, but it just ain't so, except maybe in your simulated world.

 

Ray

Not to rain on your parade, but it just ain't so, except maybe in your simulated world.

 

 

Well, I based my opinion on both worlds, the simulated one and the real one... Of course, I was never a flight instructor, and that may well make the difference ....

Well, I based my oppinion on both worlds, the simulated one and the real one... Of course, I was never a flight instructor, and that may well make the difference ....

 

Could be, but I think it is based more from the many years of experience and thousands of logged hours.

 

Ray

 

I can just see you explaining to some crying Mom that you don't understand how her son could have augured in on takeoff after borrowing the Cessna at the local airport after earning his points badge in MS Flight. :Straight Face:

 

Ray

When I was learning to fly my brother visited from uk.

 

He was quite an accomplished 'sim' pilot and figured he would take a lesson with my CFI and be ready to solo later that day!

 

Needless to say his appreciation for the art of real flying was significantly enhanced after 1 hour.

 

The funny thing is....after a few hundred hours, I now find sim flying to be more challenging due to the lack of feedback through the aircraft and the controls.

Pretty much any flight sim of reasonable fidelity can teach someone the basics of how an aeroplane works and what inputs you make to control one. The very first version of Sublogic Flight Simulator back in 1982 could do that, and I could even show that to someone with a toy aeroplane in my hand if I had to, but there is a world of difference between understanding the concepts and doing them with a 30 quid plastic PC joystick or mouse, and actually flying an aeroplane properly using the real controls, and no PC-based simulator can really do that to anything other than an entertaining degree.

 

There are just too many things that are so vastly different when you get into a real aircraft: How much you move the rudder to keep things coordinated, how much you don't move the rudder to prevent overstressing the tailplane, how you trim properly, how you keep the engine running efficiently, how you use the prop controls in various phases of flight, the ATC procedures, what this or that vibration or noise means etc, etc. Not to mention the fact that physically sitting in an aeroplane and having its sights, sounds and movements surround you is like the difference between night and day when compared to sitting at a PC monitor; it would doubtless overwhelm anyone who had never flown a real aircraft.

 

And don't even get started on how you operate a flying boat or seaplane correctly, which is a subject in itself; one of the very first flights you make in MS Flight, where you land the Icon on open water, makes no assessment of the swell, tidal flow, touchdown attitude, wind, or any of the things you would genuinely do when alighting an aircraft on water. You'd probably cartwheel the Icon if you did that the way Flight has you do it.

 

Flight doesn't cover any of that to anywhere near the level required to teach it correctly, and is not intended to either. It can be used to replicate those things if you already know them, and you can fill in the gaps with your knowledge and experience if you fly for real, but someone who has not flown an aeroplane for real could not do that, and in many ways it would in fact be counter productive for them to try to do so.

 

You can get more out of Flight if you use it to draw upon what you know of real world flying, glossing over the things it misses; but don't confuse that with it having the capability to offer that level of fidelity to someone who does not have those experiences to draw upon.

 

Al

I remember having this argument in the early 90s. There are some people who believe that time spent with a PC flight simulator will make it possible to solo with fewer hours in the actual plane, and there are others who belive that PC simulators are totally useless for anything relating to real world flying and invest considerable emotion in their arguments.

 

Now, given that flying is 90% mental and 10% physical, you can learn a considerable amount of the mental stuff without even having a flight model in a rudimentary simulator. A good simulator is even better. If you can't train your muscles (which is probably true in this case) you can certainly train your mind.

 

As for landing tail wheel first, that's a valid landing technique. You just don't want to come down too hard.

 

Hook

The above posts hit the nail on the head. As a longtime FS user I always thought flying for real would be a piece of cake. But that wasn't quite true. Ofcourse I learned quicker than some others because I already knew about the basics of flight. Also reading the instruments was easier for me than for a complete newbie to aviation. I bet most folks here will be able to steer an aircraft safely above ground, at least I didn't have any trouble with that. But stepping into a real plane (the exact same type as you have flown in the sim for years) and fly away without some sort of incident or even accident will be quite impossible.

As a former pilot, for the record I haven't flown in over 30 years, I think that most of these sims could teach somebody enough that the could most likely taxi, take-off and fly a non complex plane like a Cessna or Piper trainer if the weather was really nice. Landing? Well that is another matter and I don't think many would be able to so. As far as flying in an empty world with no ATC. Well that was the way I flew. Sometimes I never even turned on the radio. I think I used ATC once and only flew into one or two controlled fields but like I say that was over 30 years ago so maybe there are a lot more controled fields now.

All very good contributions. Of course this is the sort of argument I've been in, several times, sometimes here at AVSIM (before 2006) exchanging opinions with other simmers and real pilots.

 

Of course I only own a glider license, although I have had hands-on experience on a few GA aircraft, on a T-37 (YES!!!), on C337, and 1hr on a CAE LevelD A320 simulator, which I managed with no problem (by that time I believe I knew that bus so well that I could have passed a checkride :-)) including landing at LPMA under extreme weather conitions.

 

I also tried a Frasca FNPT2, an ALSIM FSTD, and and ELITE FNPT2. I really preferred - by far - the feel of the ELITE FNPT, but all of the three were easily nailed by an experience in a very well desgned, and fs9-based FNPT I later had the chance to experiment.

 

I believe that sometimes people are afraid of admiting the effetiveness of even pc-based flightsims in creating a good mental perception of what flying a similar plane for real can be - it's sort of a Taboo... As far as landings are concerned, IMHO it's 90% a mental problem and the remaining 10% a question of mastering the flare technique, plus the crabing/sideslip components when landing with a considerable wind component... taking off is so more difficult, and sometimes lethal in RL if things really go wrong, and this is the sort of experience that a good flightsim coupled with a good scenery can add to your flight experience, as well as trainning emergency procedures over a scenery that matches as close to real as possible the areas where you're going to fly in RL...

I've never flown a real plane but hope to in the not so distant future. I've been using fsx since day 1 and while I would have to argue that its a more complete simulator in terms of features the feel of flight is great and I have found myself in far more scary situations in flight than I ever did in FSX. Scary situations that I have learned from and would be aware of in the real world, so in that respect I think ms flight can help towards being a better pilot. But obviously nothing comes close to the real thing. I would take a pilot with 10 hours real world experience over a sim user with 100000000 hours any day of the week :)

I did use early versions of FS in the '80s extensively before starting to fly. I can say that it taught me what most of the controls and instruments did, along with radio navigation very well (CFI gave the PC sims, which he had never used, big thumbs up for that) but virtually none of the actual "hands on controls" skills translated in any useful fashion.

 

For all it's improvements in flight modelling, I doubt this has changed much. As others noted, it is now good enough for a trained pilot to use in a realistic manner, and to provide a foundation of general aeronautical knowledge, but I would not suggest it as a training aid to learn piloting skills.

 

To learn navigation skills, certainly.