It's really as real as your willing to make it. There are plenty of 3rd party addons that can help vfr to some degree. Megascenery publishes various area sceneries where the detail is so immense they say you can use a sectional for the area to navigate. I know if you want to fly the heavy iron PMDG(
www.precisionmanuals.com) is about as realistic as you can get. While I do agree it doesn't really give you the feel for being in the real thing, it can give you an idea of the procedures and the ways to go about executing a flight. There are a few good 3rd party addons out there you just have to look carefully and be willing to spend some dough on them. However I would wait until you go for your instrument rating to use it as a real training tool, they practically require you here to use a sim for your instrument training when you aren't in the real thing.