As a flight instructor, flight sim teaches lots of bad habits that need to be unlearned at the beginning. Over-fixation on instruments is at the top of this list for VFR operations. I am not at all convinced that a person with only sim experience would be able to successfully land a C172.
I wasn't even able to successfully land a 172 after 6 or 8 hours in a 150 and growing up around aviation, including flight sims. Add in the fact that these were night flights (and in SoCal airspace) and I become very skeptical of the flightsim theory. I only wonder what tail number the time builder logged (but if you're going to forge that, or the airports, why do the flight at all?)
How similar would you say it is to simracing? Because simracing prepped me extremely well for the track despite never having driven a car.
I have zero experience with simracing, so I don’t know. I would guess the urgency of other vehicles being around, needing to see the course, and a lack of interesting instruments inside would tend to keep a simracer’s eyes outside and away from the dash.
Flight sim experience causes "over-fixation on instruments"? I'm surprised, I would have expected the opposite.
Yes, VFR pilots need to look outside a huge majority of the time. The rule of thumb is look out the window 90% of the time and peek at your instruments the remaining 10 percent. New primary students and especially simmers have a tendency to stare at the flight instruments, a bad habit that can be tough to break.
For example, ATC might give an altitude restriction for safety: “Cessna 123AB, maintain VFR at or below three thousand for crossing traffic.” Observing this restriction is important, but staring at the altimeter will likely result in the heading wandering all over the place and ironically even a tendency to over-control altitude that may cause wandering up and down. The proper way to execute it is to learn what the level sight picture looks like, put the nose there, trim for straight-and-level flight, and occasionally peek at the altimeter and VSI to confirm that it’s staying there. If the pilot gets distracted, say looking down at an iPad for a bit, look outside first to get back on heading if necessary, check the instruments (“take a picture with your mind”), and make small adjustments to get back to where it should be.
ATC operates on lots of buffers. For a restriction of three thousand, that crossing traffic is likely to be at 4,000 or higher.
Ah that makes quite a lot of sense and I'd definitely find myself with that bad habit if I tried flying. In a sim my purpose is to have fun flying the plane by the seat of my pants but flying in reality would have me anxious to avoid breaking any rules.
No need to anxious. Your CFI is there to keep you safe and prevent anything wildly dangerous while you’re teaching yourself to fly.
Look outside, and learn what correct looks like. References on the ground are already giving you gobs of information. The feel of the yoke and the sounds from the engine are also giving you continuous clues about what the airplane is doing. No sim I’ve seen reproduces all of those additional channels of information.
Where simulators are really helpful is with procedural flying, like practicing instrument approaches. You can’t log your desktop sim for currency, but advanced training devices are good enough in the FAA’s eyes.
> flying in reality would have me anxious to avoid breaking any rules
You’re generally operating well away from a perilous state with ample margins of safety. I find flying incredibly relaxing.