Most instructors don't seem to like teaching simmers - you can get yourself into some bad habits if you're not careful. Useful for practicing navigation and some other skills but useless for handling.
Change "don't like" to "hate" and I would fully agree with the above quote. Every PPL I taught that had a lot sim time arrived with a boat load if negative learning and bad habits I had to beat out of them. You can't prepare for the initial PPL lessons on your own using Microsoft flight sim. PERIOD !
Want to really impress your instructor. Google "attitudes and movements" and then go through everything you find. Make a note of anything you find you don't fully understand so you can ask your instructor. The Attitudes and Movements lesson presents the foundation skills that you will use in every part of every flight for the rest of your flying career. Truly understanding and apply the concepts in this lesson is vital to successful flight training.
With respect to a particular training airplane, any airplane, my general observations about student weaknesses, is that systems knowledge is weak to non existent and that they have not committed the emergency vital actions to memory. The airplane Pilot Operating Handbook is your friend
