"Don't get FSX. It will not run well on your computer. In Flight Simulator 2004 the IFR is fine, with all navaids, although UK airspace/ATC is unrealistic. The ATC's a bit underwhelming, giving very wide, obtuse vectors. The ATC does not do anything special for helis. There are some addon programs that resolve the UK issues. Procedurally, though, it's great if you don't need ATC.".
A few counterpoints to this and one of the other responses:
1. "It will not run well on your computer." I'm assuming that you have intimate detail about the poster's CPU speed, memory, graphics card, drive defragmentation status, etc. If not, then how in the world would you know if FS-X runs on his PC?
FS-X, while more demanding than the previous FS9 version, can run well on any reasonably high-end PC. The trick is to turn down the many and varied options to a point that things are smooth. Fortunately, for IFR work you don't need any of the scenery eye candy and so a lot of that can be turned down or off entirely. (And, FS-9 is little-changed in any regard that pertains to IFR work.)
2. FS's ATC is certainly not the most realistic, in the US or anywhere else. For pure currency work, I would say that it's not necessary. I *do* think it's a useful tool for non-instrument rated pilots that want to get the basic idea of the flow of an IFR flight, though.
3. I have played with the ASA software - admittedly back in 2002 or so - and I thought it was crap. It seemed to be an old DOS-based sim that had kinda sorta been ported into Windows, but not really. Hopefully this is not the case today.
4. Although I personally am not a fan of it, many people swear by the X-Plane simulator (
http://www.x-plane.com). It's really the only alternative to a PC-based flight simulator, and it runs natively on Macs as well.
Dave Blevins