VOR-DME writes:

Rather than challenging real-world pilots about their own level of experience,
a bit more humility would have incited you to ask how many real pilots also
have experienced MSFS, and what their observations are.

There are a lot of fragile egos in this group, most of them highly vocal in
their attempts to protect their self-esteem.

For me, flying is a fun activity, not a crutch to support or protect the ego.
Thus, comments about "humility" mean nothing to me, because this is something
that affects the ego in my view. I feel sorry for people who must depend on
their piloting experience to reinforce their sense of self-worth. I also think
that people like this make poor pilots, because the self-esteem issues may
cloud their judgement.

Anyway, people in this category invariably dismiss MSFS. I do know real-world
pilots who think it's great (not as great as flying a real plane, of course,
but still the next best thing), but they don't have ego issues. They just like
to fly.

What simulation gives you depends on what you want to get from it. You can
sit around the house and pine for the next hour you'll be able to fly in a
rented plane, or you can enjoy your spare time between real flights using
simulation.

I've already explained the analogy with movies. It's also a bit like watching
sports on TV. Some people like to watch sports when they are not
participating; there are even people who only like to watch, and never
participate. Is there something wrong with that? I don't think so. Watching
something isn't as fun as doing it in simulation, in my opinion, but more
people watch sports than simulate them.

I’m sure there are
many present who have experienced this quirky simulation game, as I have. I
certainly cannot boast your own level of experience with it (wouldn’t admit it
if I could) but I have a huge advantage over you in that I had already been
flying airplanes (as well as real simulators) for years before I ever tried
MSFS, which allows me to discern what works and what doesn’t - something you
can only surmise or guess at.

It's the imagined advantage that is important to you, isn't it? It's
important to think that you are somehow "better" than I am, isn't it?

Most ego-handicapped pilots are extremely wary of developing any interest in
simulation, for reasons already mentioned above. They don't investigate the
game much because of this fear. It is possible, however, to improve the
simulation by orders of magnitude at low cost (not that the basic simulation
isn't enjoyable or realistic).

MSFS is reasonably useful and fun for IFR recurrent training, tracking VOR’s
and airways, intercepts, etc. It is less useful for GPS navigation, as the
mock Garmin unit they propose is extremely feature-poor, and lacks many of the
pages and options pilots use every day.

Thank you for demonstrating the point I just made. Most serious simmers have
forgotten how to even look at the default GPS unit in the sim. And many larger
aircraft have no GPS units like this.

Perhaps these is why you resort
automatically to older VOR’s and airways, and consider ADS-B to be fiction,
because you have never seen what a real GPS does.

No, I resort to airway because that's how aircraft are flown in real life. In
several of the aircraft I fly on the sim, we use flight management systems,
anyway, as in real life.

It is reasonably good at numbers flying, although the numbers are always "off"
a bit for any type of aircraft purportedly being flown, so you’ll just have to
learn the numbers for your MSFS install as if it were another plane. Probably
varies from one MSFS install to another, but then airplanes vary from one
another as well.

The numbers don't vary by installation, but yes, they do vary by airplane, as
in real life. How accurate the simulation is depends on how much care has been
put into the aircraft model. The default aircraft are reasonably accurate
(especially on a fast PC), but are simplified somewhat to avoid discouraging a
large chunk of the user base. Add-on aircraft (from some companies--it depends
on their chosen emphasis) do not compromise in this way.

Landing MSFS is really hilarious, and is so far removed from landing any
airplane that it really only teaches you, well how to land MSFS.

Again, it depends on the airplane--and on the realism sliders, which some
users never touch.

The main problem real pilots have with MSFS, especially those who fly small
aircraft VFR, is that there are no motion cues. However, it's easy to adapt.
As long as the machine is reasonably fast, a real pilot can learn to land well
in a few minutes.

It is much harder to land than any real plane ...

Depends on how fast the machine is, and how dependent the pilot is on motion
cues. Obviously an experienced IFR pilot has a great advantage here.

What it is also really poor at is airplane control, particularly pitch
control.

That depends on the controls you use, and the speed of the PC.

Flying a real King Air (or just about any other plane) in cruise and
rolling into a standard-rate turn, one rarely requires much pitch correction.
A quick glance at the VSI will tell you if you need some pitch input (or more
likely, whether you are already over-correcting) but unless you are holding
the turn for a long time very little input is needed. In the MSFS model of the
same plane (and other planes as well) as you roll into a standard rate turn
the airplane falls out of the sky! You have to haul back on it and add power
to maintain altitude. So it’s good for a laugh (games are made to have fun)
but it’s not a high-fidelity simulation.

I've never flown the King Air. These days, I don't fly any of the default
aircraft. Most serious simmers don't.