More than ten years ago now I made a full-size FTD that was a facsimile of a 172 cockpit (since this was the most common training a/c, and we had one or more on line). It utilised M$ FS2004 as the engine, and Opencockpits interfaces to the instruments that I designed and built myself.
We used this for instrument training, and corrective training for some VFR procedures (for example explaining and practising crosswind landing techniques). It was also used in a cockpit familiarisation role.
It was found to be quite effective and successful in assisting a number of pilots through to completion of their various licenses.
A better software engine would have been good, I did try X-plane but (as much as I dislike M$) FS2004 seemed to fit the bill better. FS-X was no real improvement for our purposes but, having just been alerted to it by ETOPS post I will be interested to see what FS2020 offers. Although the flying school I made this for is, sadly, long gone I'm still more interested in accuracy of flight characteristics than how wizzy the scenery looks...
Just to finish, coming back to the OP's question, I had peripheral involvement in simulator research at Varsity (loosely for NASA IIRC), and significantly more later on. In my view, if you use it wisely, a simple version on a PC or whatever would be of some benefit to you in augmenting your instrument training, it would not and should not take the place of 'real' cockpit work!
FP.