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I flew a Real B767-400 Simulator made by CAE, at a Major Airline Training Center a few months prior to 9/11. I think it would be very difficult, to repeat this after 9/11. I was friendly with one of the Sim Check Pilots and he invited me down for about a 3 hour run on this brand new Sim. It was due to have it's acceptance flight by the FAA, the week after I flew it, so I think they may have just wanted to rack up some hours on it to make sure everything was OK. The cost of this particular Sim was about $28,000,000. I was scheduled to start flying at about 8PM on a Friday evening. I had a co-pilot, who was another Private Pilot that was a neighbor of the instructor, and I flew the left seat. The hardest thing for me to do was to climb into the Captains seat without stepping on something and breaking it, as there wasn't a whole lot of room to manuver past the console and seat. We started at the gate so we had to taxi out to the active using the tiller on my left. The distance between the nose and where you nose wheel was, made it a little difficult to keep the plane over the yellow taxi line. Once on the runway, the instructor had me take a good look at how the runway looked out the window, so that I could get an idea of when the flare would happen. Of course, we would be alot higher when actually flaring. I set takeoff flaps, RTO, on the Autobrake, and away we went. At about 135, I rotated and climbed away to 3,000 agl. I set autothrottle but otherwise hand flew the aircraft. I spent a great deal of time trimming out the yoke pressure, for level flight. I tried to keep it within 150 feet of the assigned altitude, but it was much harder than it was in a Cessna 172, to keep the altitude constant. :). We flew about a 15 mile loop back to the approach runway on our first approach, and I followed the flight director down to the runway and landed pretty close to the centerline amd right in between the hash marks. I tried staying lined up with the runway using aileron inputs at first , but he suggested that for small deviations to use the rudder instead , so that we wouldn't get into a aileron roll type of approach. Prior to landing, I had set landing flaps, ( 30 degrees on final) and autobrake to 2, and armed spoilers. The instructor said, " Gee that was pretty good, do you have much turbine time? " I said, " no, the only time I have is in Cessnas and Piper fixed gear." Then I told him that I had been flying MSFS for a few years and mostly larger jet aircraft and he was really impressed with how much I had learned from a home Sim.... On all our approches we used autothrottle, but everything else was handflown. He stated that he prefers line pilots using A/T so they devote more attention looking for traffic than chasing an airspeed indicator. What suprised me was that the pitch change from descent to flare in the 767-400 was a 2 degree change. This is to prevent tailstrikes. If memory serves me, the final approach speed was about 140 knots. I did drop one in from about 30 feet , when I flared too high on my 4th approach, and that motion sim let you know that you goofed with a resounding "thud" as it dropped to the runway. :( Other than that,the rest of the landings and takeoffs were pretty good. Grimaces from the other 2 occupants in the cockpit, immediately followed our jarring arrival.......This entire experience made me realize how much I had learned from MSFS, and I always have felt after that, that if it was necessary, I could get one of these things on the ground in one piece.

I've been in / flown a number of flight simulators (B-737, B-757, B-747, B-777, A-340, and several research simulators). Probably the most important element toward an immersive environment is infinity optics.High-end simulators use a set of mirrors (and/or other optics) to change the focal point of the out-the-window view to infinity. This changes your eye's focus point from a few feet on your PC to infinity, which makes some difference in terms of separating what's inside the cockpit from what's outside. But the real difference has to do with parallax. As you move your head around in a high-end simulator, what part of the outside environment you can see changes. If you're standing up next to the cockpit seat, all you can see out the window is the tarmac below the nose. As you shift your head slightly while sitting, you see the window frame shift relative to the exterior view. This immediately makes you feel as if you're immersed in a real 3D environment rather than looking at a computer screen a few feet away.Motion, vibration, & sound effects help, but it's the visual cues that have the biggest impact. You feel like you're in a real aircraft before you start up the engines just due to the parallax effect out the window.- Jim

Jim, I work for one of the companies that makes the projectors that are used in these simulators. What you are describing is a collimated display and here is a blurb on it from the sim company. http://www.cae.com/www2004/Products_and_Se...ystems/cd.shtml

A little of both. I did two hours with a friend in denver in the 777 simulator. After about 2 hours, we pretty much had done what we want to. After that, the novelty had worn off a bit. What I like about FS is going anywhere, flying a bunch of different planes etc. I would never trade the 2 hours though for anything. It was a ton of fun.

Good luck Tord

I flew an Airbus 320 level D sim and a B767 sim last year in Denver. I believe it enhanced my enjoyment of FS2004 because I was flying as close to the real thing as I ever will in my lifetime. Being able to hand fly the Airbus into KSFO and get the actual feel of the aircraft when you move the sidestick controller was a memorable experience.Airbus