The Virtual Journey

Introduction

To make your sim experience as realistic, enriching, and educational as possible, I think it's best to closely follow what happens in real life, especially if you're just starting out. I've been fiddling around for about 10 years with flight sims, never really seriously, until I decided that it was all pretty meaningless and I wanted to learn as much as possible. I hope that by structuring my learning I can help other new flight simmers too. 

As always, having a goal in mind helps. Commercial airline pilot? GA bush pilot? My ultimate goal in this virtual world is to become an airline pilot (as is my dream in real life but we'll leave that aside for now). In the US, you used to be able to fly scheduled flights as a co-pilot with a CPL (250 hours), which required that you first obtain a PPL. It's still the case in many countries. However, following the ColgainAir crash of 2009, the US mandated that all pilots flying scheduled services, captain or first officer, must minimally obtain an ATPL (1500 hours among other more stringent requirements). 

It can take years for aspiring pilots to build the 1500 hours in real life, and it's obviously pretty impractical to build that in the virtual world before starting to fly virtual scheduled flights. Therefore, I'm just going to ignore that change ever happened and work towards a virtual CPL with multi-engine and instrument ratings, trying to follow real world requirements as closely as I can, including first obtaining a PPL, and logging the right number of hours. 250 virtual hours may seem like a lot of time, but I've reasoned that there's a good reason why pilots need to build a substantial amount of hours before being given the privilege of flying for commercial purposes. 

It takes a certain amount of time to really hone the skills required of a commercial pilot. It's not just a matter of head knowledge, but some of the fundamentals need to be burned deep into your muscle memory. You need to feel the aircraft and be able to fly it as an extension of yourself, and all this takes time. It's the same in the virtual world and with a virtual airplane. I don't think there's a point in forcing yourself though, flight simulation is supposed to be enjoyable, after all. But I guess some people derive enjoyment from really diving deep.

tl;dr: I'm going to work towards getting my virtual PPL, followed by virtual CPL with multi-engine and instrument ratings before I allow myself to fly a commercial jetliner. I'm going to try to be realistic in logging of hours, and learning the same content as is tested in real life.

Disclaimer 

A good flight simmer is one who recognizes that no matter how long he's sit in the virtual cockpit, he is not qualified to fly a real plane. He may know what all the switches in the cockpit do, he may understand the science of flight, he may know the procedure for dealing with an engine failure on take-off , but he knows his place. He's a virtual pilot - and nothing more. 

Because we receive no formal instruction, it's very easy to "learn to fly" using whichever method works, and in the process pick up and reinforce some really bad habits over thousands of virtual flying hours. This is one of the biggest arguments against flight sims and a big reason why some pilots and employers may not have a very good impression of flight simmers. Still, I don't think it's any reason to stop trying to make it as realistic an experience as possible. We have to be open-minded, read widely and be humble and always ready to learn. 

Some common bad habits: 

• Not looking out of the window enough while learning VFR flight 
• Over-controlling and "chasing the instruments" 
• Using abrupt control inputs which would cause some discomfort in real life.
• Under-emphasis on using checklists and following procedures   

Some ways people fly unrealistically in flight sims 

• Relying only on GPS navigation 
• Not flying SIDs / STARs out of major airports 
• Flying only in calm weather 
• Flying with yaw dampers 

All of the content in this blog are taken and synthesized from somewhere else, and the resources are usually shown on the blog. I have zero experience flying real planes. You can and should cross-check any information you find here with other sources, just as with any other information you come across regardless of subject matter.