Just my two cents here!
As a single-engine, tri-blade, european built helicopter pilot in the Alps and - eventually - the Safety Manager of the Company I was invited to tryout an Ecureuil B3 simulator because the regulators (EASA) wants us to go the "extra mile" and perform an OPC + Helicopter Training on the simulator on an annual basis.
So, together with the Crew Training Manager, I went to the simulator once and - hopefully - never again. I left home thinking that it would be a great opportunity to practice "real" emergencies for the first time and whatever...
Let me say that both of us have a good experience on the real thing, flying it daily since years up to 500/600 hours per year. Well, the first 20 minutes were literally spent fighting with the totally messed up flight dynamics and no-real-feel on the flight controls of that damn' box! If an experienced pilot has to start a training trying not to rollover on a stupid takeoff maneuver you may say that a non-experienced one will kill himself in the blink of an eye. Nothing could be further from the truth! A young boy with no hours on the real thing flown it as a long time pilot on type and in a total fluent and comfortable way!
This was the first bell ringing in my mind! But I decided to go further, accepting that a familiarisation flight with the box was necessary before doing emergencies etc. (and the instructor was not so happy with that... we were evaluating a product so, no paid hours on our side!)
It ended up that after an hour of playing around I felt myself fairly better at the controls and I was ready to do some real stuff. The next hour doing emergencies and unusual attitudes recovery was the most pointless, "untraining" and messing flight hour of my life so far... The instructor was in rush to tick boxes and show how the emergencies was real and training effective... and again nothing could be further from the truth! The damn' box never played as a real AS350, no realistic loads on the flight controls make it impossible to familiaries on the emergencies as those are supposed to develop in the real helicopter. Rush on showing the efficiency of training - in reality - shown deficiencies and limits of the simulator against the every-day-real-action.
In the end, it was an unpleasant event and I did change my mind - that was really excited - about the opportunity to use flight simulators on light helicopter to practice real emergencies.
Hope that the VR technology will close the gap between real stuff and simulate stuff, one day.
In the meantime I'm afraid that it is a waste of time and money.
PE