We live in a world that is run by technology. Advanced technology has enhanced and optimized the way we interact with the world and aviation is not left out of this mix. Autopilots now make flights less strenuous for pilots, while glass cockpits provide more precise information; but can a flight simulator teach you how to fly?
Although flight simulations cannot serve as a replacement for actual flight instructions, a flight simulator can teach you how to deal with flight procedures and flight instruments, as well as improve your navigational skills.
Flight simulators, especially recent versions, expose student pilots to environments that are designed to feel like an actual cockpit and help them practice lessons received during actual flight training. However, although flight simulators could help enhance your navigation and motor skills, they cannot make you a pilot.
Given that simulators cannot make you a pilot, what benefits, if any, do they offer a student pilot during training? What differences exist between a professional flight simulator used in flight training and a home PC setup? In the course of this article, we would get all these questions answered!
Table of Contents
What Benefits Can A Flight Simulator Offer You?
Flight simulators benefit flight training in a number of ways. Coupled with the fact that these simulators are designed to feel like flying in an actual cockpit, they enhance certain motor skills needed to pilot a plane. Indeed, flight simulation brings certain benefits to the table during flight training. Flight simulators can be of great help in the following areas of flight training:
- Procedures: This is possibly the biggest benefit of using a flight simulator. Pilots are required to follow a high number of procedures and checklists, which can be a little nerve-wracking for new pilots. With a flight simulator, you can practice normal and emergency procedures, including checklists. Practicing these procedures with a flight simulator helps you get more comfortable with real-life flight procedures.
- Navigation: Flight simulators help candidate pilots get acquainted with navigation systems. With a flight simulator, a candidate pilot can learn how to tune and identify very high frequency (VHF) Omni-directional range (VOR) systems and interpret needles. A simulator can also be used for visual reference lessons!
- Instrument interpretation: Flight simulators are equipped with realistic standard instruments. This enables flight students to have more time to practice scanning and cross-checking these instruments.
- Operating costs: Generally, flight simulators save you the operating costs of practicing in a real plane. Rather than pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a few hours of flight training, you could just pay a few hundreds to train in a professional flight simulator or even less to set up your home PC simulator!
In What Areas Can A Flight Simulator Be Useless?
Despite the benefits that come along with using a flight simulator to augment your flight training, it is totally useless in some areas of flight. Flight simulators do very well and are effective in the areas they are helpful but completely useless in the areas they are not.
These areas are outlined below:
- Taxiing and parking: Flight simulators are not really helpful when it comes to taxiing or parking an airplane. In fact, practicing ground operations with flight simulators does not work. These ground operations include pre-flight inspection, weather interpretation, and landing that involve a lot of technicalities and demand more from pilots.
- Radio and air traffic communication: Another area where flight simulators are useless is in radio communication. Flight simulators do not work for practicing talking on radios or listening to radio transmissions. To get a grasp of radio communication, a pilot candidate must practice in a real plane using real radio conversations.
- Take-off and landing procedure: It is impossible to observe and experience the force dynamics that are involved in taking off with a flight simulator. This makes it impossible for a flight simulator to be useful in learning take-off procedures. The same thing goes for landing. It is difficult or nearly impossible to observe ground effects using a flight simulator. Also, touchdowns are not realistic enough in a flight simulator.
- General flight experience: Although flight simulators are designed to mimic actual flight experience, they can not possibly replace the feeling and experience that come from the physical environment of an actual flight in a real cockpit.
- Flight habits: Flight simulators make you concentrate so much on the instruments in the cockpit. All through your training, you will be taught how to look outside; to see and be seen. By having you concentrate so much on your instruments rather than looking outside through the window, flight simulators go in the opposite direction of your flight training and could teach you a bad flying habit.
How to Optimize Your Flight Simulator Experience
Notwithstanding its shortcomings, a flight simulator could be a valuable tool in your pilot training. As already discussed, with a flight simulator, you could practice certain procedures away from the airfield and in effect, save many dollars that you could have spent on fairly expensive flight hours.
Imagine having to pay hundreds of dollars just to practice a few procedures that you could do remotely. This is why it is necessary to optimize your flight simulator experience so that you could get the best out of it.
Here are a few tips to help you optimize your flight simulator experience:
- Give a lot of time to configuration: A flight simulator is a more serious deal than your regular game. This is why you must spend more time configuring it and mastering its controls in order to get a full grasp of it.
This may include getting a proper set of yoke and pedals, to mimic the real-life experience as possible. Just using a mouse and keyboard to steer the plane won’t be enough! - Set up random emergency mode: One area where flight simulations can benefit you is in learning emergency procedures. You can set up the flight simulator to generate an unplanned emergency at a random time. This is, of course, something you cannot afford to do in real life flight practice, but it prepares you ahead of time to manage possible emergency situations in the future.
- Activate full realism mode: To get the best flight experience closer to real-life flying, set all ‘null-zones’ to zero, adjust ‘sensitivity’ mode to maximum, and turn off all computer aids like ‘auto mixture,’ ‘auto rudder,’ and ‘gyro-drift.’
When you adjust your controls to these modes, you allow the flight simulator to expose you to an experience as close to reality as possible.
Sure, they make the practice sessions more demanding, however, the more you have to do in training, the more equipped you are to handle real-life flight situations. - Adjust weather conditions: Although flight simulators cannot give you a weather experience equal to reality, they can be optimized so you can get the possible best from them. Most flight simulators come already set to conducive weather conditions, favorable wind conditions, and standard temperature. You would have to set up your own configuration to match real-life weather conditions. You can add cloud and wind effects to mimic real-life conditions.
As an extra tip, avoid flying at noon; you can set this by changing flight time to night flights or early morning flights.
Distinctions between Professional and Home PC Flight Simulations
Professional flight simulators used in flight training are quite similar to home PC setup simulators as in the software that’s used. Nevertheless, certain differences exist between professional simulators and PC flight simulators. These differences are mainly observed in their simulation performances and also hardware distinctions.
- Hardware differences: When it comes down to hardware differences, professional flight simulators outrank their PC counterparts by a wide margin. Although PC simulators are beginning to incorporate more hardware components to make simulations more realistic, professional simulators have all that you need to make simulations as realistic as they can be. Some professional simulators have hydraulic systems attached beneath them to mimic airplane vibrations and bouncing, including landing and take-off dynamics.
- Air traffic control: Air traffic control and radio communications are more realistic in professional simulators than in PC set simulators. This is because professional simulators are connected to real air traffic controllers who get to ‘yell’ at you when you take the wrong turn, as opposed to PC simulators, where you can just fly as you please.
- Procedure training: Another training area where professional and PC simulators differ slightly is in procedure training. Professional simulators have to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. This means that procedures are more strict and realistic in professional simulators than in PC simulators.
- Flexibility and cost: This is where PC simulators edge their professional counterparts. PC simulators are cheaper than the professional ones and can be more easily set up to suit the preference of the user. This easy setup of PC simulators allows them a lot more flexibility than professional simulators, which are installed in a fixed position.
Summary
In summary, whether you chose professional simulators used in professional training or PC simulators, flight simulators generally offer a whole range of benefits to a student pilot.
Although they do not equal real-life flight experiences, they can be used to augment flight training and as practice tools away from the airfield.
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