Flight Sims As Effective Pilot Learning Tools

Thanks to Wired News for their article discussing the increasing use of PC flight simulators in educating real-life pilots. It references Microsoft's newest Flight Simulator 2004, and mentions: "The Navy decided to see if using Flight Simulator would help... students. It found that trainees who used the program did better in their training, prompting the Navy to issue customized versions of Flight Simulator to all of its flight students." There are still issues with using retail PC products: "Flight Simulator's limited field of view from the cockpit, and the resulting focus on the instruments that it encourages, can cause problems that need to be corrected in flight training", but overall, Microsoft's product is described as "...a highly effective tool to help student pilots learn how to fly."

Comments

Build your own plane?

[orn]

One other thing that flight simulators can let you do with growing capability: you can design your own planes with some tools.

In particular, X-Plane has a really cool interface that lets you build planes. It uses physical models to determine how your plane will fly, then you can jump in the simulator and give it a shot.

Pretty neat.

Money vs motor skills

[JustAnOtherCodeSerf]

Flight training isn't cheap. A good flight sim can help you learn quite a bit about flying, especially when it comes to instruments. When you start flying, you're overloaded with all kinds of new things for your brain to deal with. Sims can help with this sensory overload by getting you familiar with these things so that you can spend more of your time and brainpower on actually flying.

I think the most common complaint with sims is a tendency to form motor skill habits that relate to how a simulator flies and not to how an airplane flies. It's like trying to teach skiing or riding a bike with a sim.