Originally Posted by
rickair7777
I would be careful using a PC flight sim to train for the PPL. It's just different enough that it might cause negative learning.
Those devices can be useful for instrument training, for practicing IFR procedures in IMC conditions by reference solely to instruments.
But for maneuvers and landings, it's just too different from the seat-of-the-pants and visual references in the real airplane. Simulators that provide that kind of fidelity cost millions, and they still are not quite realistic.
We've found this to be true at our academy as well.
The only time we use sims in private is just at the beginning of the ground course as a sort of enhanced chair flight just to demonstrate what everything does and what it kinda looks like. That is in a Redbird though, not the more basic PC ATD's.