With all due respect for Capt. Al Haynes in the Sioux City DC10 crash (which is undoubtedly one of the most skillful and most amazing stories of piloting in the history of aviation), much was made of the fact that nobody could replicate the survival of some of the passengers in a real simulator. Regretably some of the blame for that lies with how horrible simulators are as well as the extreme height of flying skill shown by the crew that day.
So true. I've been closely involved with varying simulators over the years, and as you rightly say, some of them are "interesting" in terms of their fidelity. Even the modern recent ones have their moments, we discovered the hard way that sidelip is not correctly modelled on most sims, probably because heavy jets are not supposed to be slipped, tends to upset the G&T brigade.
We found that one out when we were trying some non standard handling on another occasion.
The real challenge is that so often, if someone wants to "explore" beyond the normal limits, that's seen as being inappropriate, or similar. If Al Haynes hadn't done some "experimenting" prior to the day it all went pear shaped, he wouldn't have had the skills needed to do what he did. With the way things are going now, a pilot that wants to develop "extra" skills is often frowned upon, which to me is a crazy way of encouraging people to be better at their job. Beancounters strike again I suppose.