I am a complete novice to flying. The only planes I have ever flown in the sim are the C172 and the Bonanza G36. I can get around ok, can manage to take off and usually land ok. I can create a flight plan in Little Navmap and load it into the plane.

I would like to get some opinions from people regarding whether I am likely to enjoy Career Mode or not. I realize that no one knows what I like and what I don't. But I am interested in knowing whether Career Mode is fun for a complete beginner? I really wanted to focus on helicopters and take training in the Cabri G2. However, I learned that you can't do that in Career Mode until you have completed the fixed wing section and gotten your virtual ppl.

Thoughts? Thanks much.

Getting your "virtual PPL" is pretty easy. I'd say just jump in and try it out. Career mode is intentionally designed to be easy to get into. So dip your feet in, see if you like it, and continue if you do!

I think it's great fun. Gives you goals and gets you travelling to areas you otherwise mightn't.

I'm pretty far into the helicopter side of career mode; Lvl 135ish with 2 H125s and 1 Taog Dolphin and 1 Dauphin in the fleet (compared to the plane side, where I only have 3 GA planes currently). There's a ton of caveats to Career mode but it can be really fun once you accept the limitations. I think all the negative criticism of Career Mode is coming from Airliner sim players, since the Airliner stuff is very much locked behind hundreds of hours of progression. If your focus is on learning to fly, career mode actually gives you a ton of content that's structured, and not too repetitive either.

I found the helicopter missions in the Search and Rescue company to be very fun, a good combination of challenge and variety. Its less repetitive than the fly A->B cargo and passenger missions. You can make decent per mission credits with the basic SAR missions and an H125, no hoist. 150k per 20-30 mins of flight time. My advice is to skip the flightseeing company the game recommends you start once you have enough funds. Flightseeing missions pay poorly for the time invested, you are better off starting a cargo company with the 172 they give you and learning the flight procedures, radios, navigation stuff while doing those early missions. You CAN do cargo with the light helos but its more steps. Personally, I did cargo missions to fund a Vision Jet and VIP charter company, then did VIP charter missions until I could fund the SAR company and my first H125 purchase.

One more thing for learning helos in the sim - the tutorials will speed you very quickly into some difficult topics like Hovering without assists. I STONGLY recommend you play with assisted tail rotor for the first 10-20 hours, especially if you do not have a set of pedals. The G2 starter helo is harder to fly than the H125 in my opinion and the sooner you can get out of it, the more fun you'll have