Those who want to become a captain of a schip, be it a cargo or pax, spent a lot of time on the sea in small boats, they learn about the enviroment in which the will spent the rest of their career.
In others words, they learn to respect, feel and smell the caprices of the biotoop in which they operate.
For us pilots, our biotoop are the feelds of air, bouncing around in a light single or twin in this ever changing enviroment, is in my opinion very important, as you stay in touch and devellop a feeling with reality.
A full synthetic enviroment does not give that cognitive feedback.
Synthetic reality is absolutely not enoug, it gives a false impression and I am not talking about technical matters, but about the stuff that more than anything else has an impact on our operations, WEATHER in all it's forms.
Flying a big jet in real time and weather already gives you a feeling that WX can not beat you. Those that have had the opputunity to devellop a sense of WX are less likely to be caught.
I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the value of the rael stuff.
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Smooth Trimmer
[This message has been edited by Streamline (edited 25 May 2001).]