White Knight - thank you, I guess one retires for a good reason ! But does 'progress' always improve things ? The tried and true KISS method ( Keep It Simple Stupid ) saved a lot of disasters.
I recall one of my Nav. instructors telling me that I'd never make a navigator until I'd been over Berlin with the shells coming through the cockpit whilst I was trying to get a 3-wind drift reading through a drift-sight ! Of course I never had to, similarly my future students never had to cope with trying to get a Sun, Moon, Venus sextant fix on a daylight Atlantic crossing when the Loran reception was down, and I despaired as they struggled with it for practice - INS was their Brave New World, now of course superceded by GPS.
But ...... the Big Picture is still important, I once had a co-pilot try to steer me NorthWest to Australia from Singapore - he had cocked up his maths / INS / FMS inputs and come up with a heading of 315 deg. The Big Picture again.
Whilst instructing for an Asian airline our students were very able instrument pilots, brought up on a diet of Space Invader and Microsoft games, but initially had difficulty connecting a real aeroplane to the real Earth. One of my colleagues remarked how the World had turned full circle, when we were flying with the old (?) WW II bomber pilots, many had difficulty following an instrument approach, but pop out of cloud, too high, too fast, not in line, not configured etc. etc. and point out the runway through the side window even, and they would immediately settle down and perform an immaculate visual approach and landing.
Horses for Courses, I guess. I hope you enjoy your aviation career as much as I enjoyed mine - and still do, albeit single seat microlights ( I still miss the Flt.Eng tho' !!! )
Cheers, ExSp33db1rd