ELITE or ON TOP for IFR training?

"Bruno" wrote in message
...
Dear All,

I'm following an airline pilot course in Belgium, and I'm to begin with
the
IFR training next week in a FNPT2 simulator. Therefore, I would like to
use
a computer based simulator to train the procedures at home, but I don't
really know what's the best of Flight Simulator 2004 that I own, On Top
8.0
that costs about 100 US dollars or Elite 8.0 that cost much more (about
250
dollars).

Could those of you who know those pc based simulators tell me if it's
worst
paying for it, or if the Flight Simulator 2004 will be enough?

Thank you for your help,

Bruno,
Brussels

I bought Elite many years ago. It works very well, I've never had any
complaints with it. It flies exactly like the airplanes I've flown. The
one complaint I remember someone else making is that it didn't model the
effect of fuel load on aircraft performance. Whether that is still true in
version 8, I don't know. I never noticed the lack of fuel load modeling in
my sim flying.

When I bought ELITE, it was far more expensive. I have always thought it
was worth every penny. I have no prospect of flying jets, but I'm tempted
to buy the Jet version to get closer to that sort of challenge.

I can't speak to the question if you need it or if you can get sufficient
training benefit from Flight Sim or the other programs. I was able to use
Flight Sim to visualize certain radio navigation elements. At the time I
was able to get some benefit without being able to competently hand fly the
flight sim by yoke. I thought watching the flight sim panel was invaluable
in learning my scan. Perhaps that's the primary benefit and nothing more
than flight sim is necessary for that.

One thing that I liked about ELITE was that while flying it I never found
myself blaming my clumsy technique as a student on the sim and thinking "if
only I had that better program." At the time, ELITE was the most accurate
flight model, perhaps with the fuel load exception, and there didn't seem to
be a clear better choice. I probably would have bought the Jepp product but
remember it seemed to be a bit more generic and less specific to the 172 in
some ways I can't now remember. I think it's since been bought or sold and
maybe vanished in the market.

--
Scott