JohnBurke, about how many approaches have you flown (or "played") in X-Plane? Which version of X-Plane was it? Are you familiar with the nitty gritty aspects of X-plane? (How it was created, the coding, physics modeling, etc.). It would be hard to put X-plane in the same category as a computer game. It might be sold in the Computer Game section at Walmart, but from a practical perspective, it's much more like a real simulator than a game.


To the original poster, I used X-Plane during my instrument training (both on a PC setup and as part of a FlyThisSim simulator). I would recommend using it concurrently with actual in-airplane training with a good CFI-I during the instrument portion of your training. It was very beneficial and it saved me LOTS of money and actually added to the quality of my training. It allows you to make mistakes and correct them essentially for free (no incremental cost). In the real airplane, I was paying $120/hr, not to mention the wasted time of flying to/from airports to find the approaches. Also, in the actual airplane, you are limited to the approaches within a reasonable distance from wherever you are training. In X-Plane, you can fly some of the most complex approaches out there. During the in-plane training, I found myself repeating the same approaches because they were convenient. The checkride was like a dog and pony show because I had flown most of the approaches in the local area already. X-plane allows you to step it up a notch by challenging yourself with approaches that you've never seen before. Also, while flying in the actual airplane, I was only able to get a few hours of actual IMC during training, most of that was enroute, not on approaches. I only flew a handful of approaches with IMC past the FAF. The rest were under the hood with Foggles. Even the best view limiting devices still allow you to cheat a little bit. Its hard to see the whole panel without accidentally catching a glimpse of the ground out the side window or the natural horizon over the glare shield. Flying under the hood is not nearly as demanding as flying in actual IMC. With X-Plane, you can set the weather to whatever you want, whenever you want, so you can keep moving the ceilings lower and lower as your skills improve.

I'm not saying that X-Plane takes the place of a CFI at all, but if you're just shooting approaches alone or with a safety pilot, X-Plane is almost as beneficial as the real thing, much less expensive, and you can practice flying down to minimums without the same risk level of flying down to minimums in a real-world scenario.

Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.