My personal experience after holding an Instructor Rating for over the 30 years is that I have yet to meet an ab initial student that benefited from using a personal computer sim program. In fact my experience is that it extended training time because I had to get the student to un learn bad habits.
However a totally different story for Instrument Rating students. I encouraged my students to use MS flight sim or equivalent. I gave them scrips to follow starting with basic figure 8 patterns moving on to more complicated patterns. The flight model of MS flight sim is so Shyte that you need a very good scan to hand fly one accurately.
Master flying one of the crap GA airplanes in the sim and you will be an ace in the real machine. Having a really solid scan is the secret to success in Instrument Rating training.