Judd said "...in some full flight simulators, there are limitations with visual displays where sight of the runway environment is lost as soon as the runway threshold disappears while the aircraft flies abeam while on the downwind leg. This means the pilot is forced to go heads down on instruments and follow an artificial map and even start timing depending on the height of the MDA. In real life, if forced to abandon visual flying on a circling approach it is time to immediately go-around. In the simulator, since we often lose sight of the runway late downwind because of visual limitations, we are sometimes are forced cheat a little and stay on the clocks until the runway in sight on final. We take a big deep breath and the check captain ticks the box..."
Very thoughful and a classic example of "negative training" - on the day pilots will invariably do the same as practiced.
Flysafe
PJ88