I play Flight Simulator X at realistic settings. Does it mean that i can fly a microlight easily?

Question

I can even make jumbo jets landed. Of course paying attention to altitude, speed, flap degrees, aprooach,

Answer 1

Fly?  Yes.

Land?  No.

Take off?  Probably.

Deal with a problem or an emergency? Not most of them.

It's that whole "the ground is hard" thing and you can bend but not break the law of gravity.  You also don't learn enough about systems and dealing with problems or emergency procedures.

No one needs a simulator to fly.  Once you're up in the air, there isn't normally much to hit.  I set people loose at altitude all the time.  No experience and no sim time.

It's that coming down LANDING in less than ideal conditions, and not having the experience of all of the sensory inputs from the aircraft, instruments, and environment that will break your toy or kill you outright.

All the training people do at safe altitude is what prepares them for landings and all the training and bookwork is what prepares them for emergency procedures.  Flying is hours and hours of watching the scenery go by punctuated by moments of sheer stark terror and panic (or what could or should be).

Here's a favorite classic example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI4d5AeAi...

Here's your sign.

Answer 2

Despite the knee-jerk rejection of simulation by a minority of crusty old-timers in aviation who resent the constantly increasing realism thereof, you can profit considerably from using a simulator before training to fly for real.

Desktop simulators are good for some things and not very useful for others, and these advantages and limitations are linked directly to the nature of a desktop PC, with its limited, general-purpose interface with its human user.  A desktop PC can't simulate the motion of an aircraft, and its small screen doesn't provide the visual field that you'd have in a real aircraft. The realism of the controls varies a lot, too, and the joystick or yoke or pedals that you use may not exactly duplicate those of the target aircraft.  However, software-wise, and in terms of processing power, PCs have all that is required for quite accurate simulation.

What this means in practical terms is that Flight Simulator is only so-so in terms of simulating visual flight, i.e., flight under visual flight rules.  However, it also means that Flight Simulator is quite good at simulating instrument flight.  Overall, Flight Simulator gives you more of a head start for instrument training than it does for the basic pilot training (which is heavily oriented towards visual flight and motion cues). And FS gives you a great head start over people who have never gone near a simulator at all.

It's unlikely that you could simply jump into any kind of real airplane and instantly fly it competently just from playing with Flight Simulator, but at the same time, with a competent and open-minded instructor (not one with a chip on his shoulder concerning Flight Simulator), you could put all your simulation experience to good use to help you advance further when learning to fly for real.  And once you become a pilot, FS is still useful for things like instrument flight ... and it's way cheaper than a real airplane, if you can't afford to run out to the airfield and fly for real.

Answer 3

As someone who's done both on a Cessna 172 I can tell you that the experience is both similar and quite different. The cockpit layout is familiar and I know what all the controls and instruments do but when you get airborne in the real thing it's quite different. The simulator isn't very good at turbulence and I can tell you the air is seldom still. Landings are almost never with the wind directly at you and it takes a fair bit of finesse with the rudder pedals to keep the plane lined up with the runway. I've also had planes "float" on me, riding a cushion of air down the runway without touching down and with the stall warning going off. I've never had that happen on the sim. Another thing the sim doesn't do very well is the noise. Without a headset on you'd have to shout to be heard over the engine. Then there's the torque from the prop. The sim falls far short here. On a real airplane the tendency to go left is much greater than I've experienced on the sim. I also flew an ultralight and the big thing here is noise and the wind rushing past. It's an exhiliration you just don't get from the sim.

Answer 4

well im pretty good at fsx also but i don't think that i am able to fly a real plane unless its a 737-800 or a crj-700 but you probably could if you had to

Answer 5

Easy answers: NO

Sitting in a nice comfy computer chair, looking at a computer screen, with a little plastic joystick in front of you does not guarantee that you will have success with the big guns...er, planes.

Sure, you get the layout of the panel, a somewhat realistic, make that hardly realistic at all...representation of how the airplane will react, and you may just be fooled into thinking that you can manage an airplane on your own.

However, step foot into a real cockpit, even if it's just a 1960's 150, you will come to the realization that simulators and real life flying are not at all in the same category. The seats are different, the sound is much more relevant, the controls are real, the gauges in front of you are somewhat similar to those on your computer screen, but now you have real wings, a real engine, real wind, real runways, real radios, real turbulence, and most importantly, three dimensions.

Getting into a real cockpit for the first time, no matter how many sim hours you log, is very overwhelming...you finally realize that...oh, wait. This isn't a computer game anymore....

But who knows...it's probably possible! ;-)

Answer 6

As mentioned, the real world experience is different. I have gotten to briefly fly a Bell 206 and the helicopters in FSX are vastly different. There is real feedback, turbulence, wind, and most importanly, no pause button. However, FSX would at least help get you familiar with an aircrafts instrument panel.