Can "Flight Sims" be useful?

[Guest Fozzy]

I am a student pilot with 20 hours experience under my wing.

 

When I am not flying I often practice my flying lessons on Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004. My thinking being that the flight simulator costs less and I don't mind looking stupid practising radio calls into an invisible headset.

 

Some pilots I have spoken to reckon that I will develop some bad habits on the flight simulator such as an over-dependence on instruments and poor awareness of climatic conditions and the aircraft characteristics.

 

I realise that a flight sim can't compete with actual flying but surely it isn't as detrimental to my skill development as it has been suggested.

 

Any comments.

 

 

[Ultralights]

i use flight sim fairly regularly, but mainly before going on a nav somewhere, i will do the flight in the sim, to get an idea of where things should be, what navaids to tune up, that sort of thing. apart from that, i dont use it for anything much else except trying to put a 747 into Hoxton park, or fly a c152 over the himalayas.

 

 

[Guest In-cog-neto]

Hi fozzy,

 

I use Flight sim to practice IFR Approachs to help keep my brain current when I'm not IFR flying. I tell my GA students that flight sim is to help understand radio nav-aid intercepts and tracking.

 

They can be good to learn you pre-take off checks etc. Ultralights is right about bad habits creeping in because using at home is unsupervised. In other words, you instructor wont know what you are doing wrong. Also, you don't get real control force that requires trimming.

 

However, when used correctly flight sims can help reinforce procedures like setting the aircraft up for a climb, Straight and level etc. Good Ole P.A.S.T. and all that stuff.

 

Hope this helps

 

In-cog

 

 

[Guest sypkens]

I have been playing flight sims since ms flight sim version 1 came out. when i did my flight training my instructors take on it was that i have been flying for a long time.

 

It depends on what you use it for. Always realise it is not the same thing as true flying i.e. your flight wont restart after your crash.

 

But as for me I have found it incredibly usefull.

 

Jan

 

 

[Guest Sabre]

Sim Flying is even better if you have rudder pedals.....

 

 

[Guest Fozzy]

Thanks for the comments.

 

I always thought that as long as I keep in the back of my mind that I am reinforcing what I have learnt and not using the sim to learn new skills there shouldn't be a problem.

 

I really didn't give it too much thought until I spoke to a couple of pilots who didn't like sims at all.

 

Fozzy.

 

 

[Guest Fozzy]

I like the C152 over the Himalayas idea ;)

 

 

[Guest In-cog-neto]

I used fs4 with melb. add on when I was learning how to navigate with that damn ADF. Back then, GPS were just 3 letters in the alphabet.

 

In-cog

 

 

[facthunter]

Simulators

 

I have been in aeroplanes that are so realistic that they fly just like the simulator. No kidding and I haven't typed it wrong. These jiggers are so good (at their best) that you can jump out of one after a proper course of training and jump into the real thing as if you have been there before. At the lower end they still have value, especially for procedures, & the programmes can reflect aircraft performance very accurately, so I can't see much of a problem provided that the limitations are realised, such as no control feel and no " seat of the pants feel " They are going to get better all the time, so go for it (in my view) All part of your experience & knowledgebase. N...

 

 

[Guest TOSGcentral]

Personally I do not like the Microsoft Flt Sim – bad experiences with the early versions but I hear they are a lot better now. That is not what I am here to talk about though.

 

 

Do not ignore the ‘Combat Flt Sims’! I spent some time with an on-line gaming group using IL2 Forgotten Battles. This is an excellent simulator and I was attracted because I am something of a WW2 type freak!

 

 

I soon found that a lot of the apparent ‘sabre toothed, shoot-em-up’, nasties that came on line genuinely wanted to learn to fly – but had no hope of doings so in real life. So I set up a training unit, built a training base and started teaching them on-line. It worked very well!

 

 

I mainly used an IL2 without weapons loaded for weight reasons, and this proved to be docile enough (if a tad demanding on the ground – but I specialize in that area).

 

 

It proved more than possible to go through the entire basic flying training syllabus, including basic radio calls etc and including stalling and spinning. The IL2 is ‘full systems’ so you could do all of that as well but I kept it simple and down to just undercarriage and flaps – ignoring mixture, carb heat and variable pitch.

 

 

Moving on a bit the scenery detail (although Russia etc) was more than adequate for visual map reading and dead reckoning cross country training. No wind so it was easier for beginners).

 

 

You can dial up the weather so IMC training was definitely on as you have a totally working full panel in front of you and can magnify the screen – so you can be definitely ‘under the hood’!

 

 

Flying a dead reckoning cross country in continuous thunder storms is a challenge. There may not be any wind but there sure is turbulence so you really have to stay with it! The compass becomes your best friend!

 

 

On top of all that you can arm up and just go have some fun when you are tired of grinding your butt working! I personally liked the heavy bombers and with a few trained ‘pilots’ would take them on a dead reckoning route off the visible map and strike with a joint high and low level attack from an unexpected direction. My untrained opponents suffered! This thing runs in real time and by the time of the strike the fighter CAP were short on fuel, suffering from eye strain and bored stupid anyway – delicious!

 

In summarry: In my opinion the Sims can be very good training tools but do not look past the Combat Sims and just dismiss them as 'games'. They are getting very sophisticated these days and in a lot of respects are a long way ahead of the 'civil' sims.

 

Granted there is the lack of feel problem, you really need rudder pedals, etc but for procedure, workload management and giving you a quite good idea of what things look like - then they can be very good!

 

 

Tony

 

 

 

[Guest Stkin0]

before i started my pilot training i used to play flight sim for first light to the point i fell asleep at the computer and by the time i went for my TIF i had 450 hours on a simulator and the first flight my intructor thought i had been flying for years so yea they help alot, i can always afford to fly so wen i can i tend to jump on my pc and do a few circuts, and navs

 

keep flying

 

 

[Guest Tesseraphoto]

Any recommendations

 

There are apparently some very good sims out there. Obviously Microsofts Flight Simulator X, and Tony mentioned Combat Flight Simulator (also microsoft isn't it) are well known, but are there others to consider before purchasing?

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

 

 

[Guest TOSGcentral]

Not quite Andrew,

 

I was using the term 'Combat Flight Simulators' generically as 'games' (which a lot are - just simple shoot em up's) rather than the M/S Combat Flight Sim that I find good, but very restrictive in free flight options etc.

 

What I was referring to was IL2 which is a basically Russian created sim (hence the battlefield of the Eastern Front in WW2 and consequently so many highly detailed and unusual types).

 

This evolved into IL2 Forgotten Battles and then further advanced into the Pacific Air War (with carrier operations etc) and at the same time started making inroads into the European Theatre and just began touching on UK.

 

No real matter the environment for this discussion in this thread. I was simply pointing out that what is essentially a 'game' can in fact be an exceptional flight simulator that can be used practically for training.

 

Aye

 

Tony

 

 

[Guest Prometheus]

I found MSFS9 to be helpful in training for a new aircraft. My enjoyment of flying increased due to the fact that I'd "copied" the Texan panel to the flight sim and honed my checks and processes. I do circuits two to three times a week and after a short break of arounf two months, went up and my circuits were fine!

 

With nav-ex's, grab your charts, ERSA and plan a nav (that you plan on flying soon) , properly. Then fly it, (with an aircraft that's close to the one you're currently flying - no point flying a C182 when you're really flying a Sportstar). Do your fuel flow calcs, CLEAROF checks, TOD etc, Get your partner to yell out once whenever she/he feels like it "You're diverting to YMXX Due weather". Check your entry procedures for your destination aerodrome and get it right!

 

Then when it comes to flying the nav, whilst the actual flying won't be spot on, (MS still hasn't been able to give a motion platform that's affordable and will fit in our sheds) your procedures, checks, map reading, planning and execution of the whole thing should be right on the money!

 

That's how I use it. :)

 

 

[Ultralights]

thats exactly what i do! and even throw in the days winds and weather as well.

 

 

[Yenn]

Iv'e got MS 2004 and use it a bit but I get bored by it. I also have X-Plane 7.62 which is a bit more realistic as far as flying goes but the scenery is poor.

 

With X-Plane you can build your own plane and see how it goes. I built the Corby Starlet and without rudder pedals I can't take off in a straight line, in the air it is very realistic and when I fitted a bigger engine to the plane I got an idea of performance from the simulator.