A friend of mine e-mailed this to me, it is worth a read.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">After nearly two decades of happy and enthusiastic flightsimming, I recently decided to take the opportunity to fulfill a life long ambition and gain my pilots license. To all those out there who are like me and dream of actually flying a real plane instead of a simulated one, I’ve only got one piece of advice. DO IT. Find the money, save up for it and just go for it, because anyone who enjoys flying a sim of any kind is sure to never regret taking the next step that leads from fantasy to reality.
But I’ve got to tell you, don’t think that years of simulated aircraft flight will in any way prepare you for the challenges that you’ll face when piloting an aircraft when it really counts. The following is my account of the difficulties and mixed emotions that I faced whilst going through my flight training. Don’t take this as gospel though, since I’m sure there’s folks out there that will disagree with my story. All I’m saying is that if you think you’re prepared to take to the sky, think again because you may well encounter similar emotions that could change the way you feel about flying.
Firstly I’ve got to say that it never ceases to absolutely amaze me as to how far flightsims have come. To all those out there who spend their hours developing new software, hardware, planes, flight models, textures etc., etc., to give us such an enjoyable experience, I thank and congratulate you all. I think we’re getting ever closer to the goal of having a truly realistic flight experience on a desktop PC. With the upcoming release of FS2002 and FLY! II, by the look of it, I think we’re about to experience the next big step that brings us closer to our goal. I can’t speak for the new software just yet, but as to all existing sims out there, don’t be fooled into thinking that its anything like that famous slogan “As real as it gets”. I’m sure a lot of others out there will agree with me on that one. Real is sweat pouring of your brow, sitting in a single-engine light plane on final approach with no one there other than yourself to put it down safely. No off button, pause button or auto-land here. You do it, do it right or you might not walk away from it.
I thought I was a pretty good pilot on the desktop. I flew everything and anything I could get my hands on, completed complex aerobatics maneuvers, precision approaches, transcontinental journeys, bad weather landings, low altitude flight, dodging skyscrapers, emergency landings etc. I’m sure I’ve made my simulated passengers scream with fear more than a few times due to a departure from controlled flight ;-), and the simulated death toll from the myriad of crashes would surely prompt all governing flight safety bodies to immediately revoke my license, but in short, I love flying, always have always will, and thought I could do it all. Not only in simulated flight, but I also gave myself a pretty good chance if I had to do it for real. Heck yes, pilot and flight crew collapse with food poisoning on a 747, “Let me through ladies and gentlemen, I’ll land that plane!”
I’m only a fledgling in the real world of aviation, but now that I’ve had a few hours under my belt as Pilot in Command, I’ve grown to have a whole new appreciation for pilots in general. I’ll have to tell you, if that flight crew on the 747 really was out of action, I sure as hell wouldn’t be so fast to put my hand up. I’d probably give myself a big fat ZERO chance of landing a modern airliner safely without any assistance. Sure you know the basics, the attitudes, maybe even the speeds, location of controls. But do you really know how to control something without knowing how it feels? Of course not. It’s not just for fun that commercial pilots spend hundreds of hours practicing and learning. If it was that easy, they’d probably just say, anyone who’s got a copy of MS Flight Sim, line up, because it’s just like the real thing!. Now I haven’t been at the controls of a anything bigger than the average motorcar with wings, but I’m sure it doesn’t get any easier to land an aircraft as they get bigger, heavier and faster.
One thing I was really hoping for was the fact that what I was learning in real life could be practiced on my PC at home. My training aircraft was a Piper Tomahawk, so I visited the FlightSim.Com file library for a popular flightsim equivalent. The plane looks great on screen, but you fly it for two minutes and you realize that as hard as you may try, there is absolutely no comparison you can draw from flying the real thing. Take away the things we can’t simulate such as movement and g-forces, we should still have accurate handling, speeds and performance. None of those things seemed to really be close enough to do any serious practicing on the PC. I threw that poor little Tomahawk into turns and situations that would have made my instructor reach for the eject handle and meant certain death in the real thing. Sure, I can hear a lot you saying it’s the flight model, but it’s not just that. Flightsim just doesn’t come close in simulating a real environment. These are light planes, you get danced and pushed around all over the place. The Tomahawk only weights about 800 odd KG’s so any gust of wind and thermal updraft effects the flight path significantly. When flying in the real thing you’ll be constantly adjusting trim, flap, power, elevator, aileron and rudder inputs to suit the conditions. On the PC you can fly as if on autopilot with a minimum of input, hands off the stick, no flaps, no worries. Steep turns at slow speeds, easy. Landings are a piece of cake every time.
One of the hardest things I found to do in real life was cross-wind landings. Again, easy as can be on the desktop. Just hold the controls as required and the perfect simulator world will guide you to a smooth touch-down. I can tell you that I wish I had a training tool that would have let me practice with a little more realism, because in real life you start to get awfully nervous and even scared at times when you realize that you have to do this right. No second chances.
Before I started my flight training you could have asked me, “will you ever be sick of flying?” and I would have answered “Not a chance!… fly all day if I had the chance”. Now, I’m not so sure. There have been days when I’ve stepped out of the plane feeling totally exhausted after only an hour of flying. There’s been times when I’ve felt dejected and totally in doubt as to my own abilities (5 crappy landings in a row will do that to you!). It’s often an example of “The harder you try - the worse you get”. Sometimes you just had to walk away and come back another day with a fresh attitude. Next time round you’d nail every landing and ask yourself why it didn’t work last time. Simple answer is stress. There’s a lot going on, and it’s easy to get hung up on something trying to focus too hard on one thing, and in the process forgetting vital others. The flightsim doesn’t have that stress and unfortunately you don’t seem to get an opportunity to practice functioning under stress effectively in a safe environment. Maybe it's because today’s sims are much too easy to fly. I think that developers should look at what’s possible to decrease the gap from the arcade feel to that missing realism in order to give people a simulator that more closely resembles the actual difficulties encountered in real flight. I know this again opens up the big can of worms debate of eye-candy vs. realism feel. Prior to flying in real aircraft I would have opted for the eye-candy in my sim, but now I’m craving the reality and it’s no where to be found. What about giving those who want the added realism the option?
Being such a confident pilot during my flightsim outings, I really thought I’d breeze through the training to be top of the class, but there’s been some stumbling blocks along the way which I never thought I’d encounter. Flying a PC is easy, flying the real thing is so much more difficult, and I think today’s simulators can give people a totally false sense of security and ability with their claims of realism.
But don’t be put off in any way. The challenge of flight is both fantastic and rewarding. Get out there and do it, because you’ll gain a whole new perception and appreciation for what flying is all about. The only difference between then and now is that when I spend time on a flightsim, it’s more of a game to me rather than a simulation pretending to be real life.
Who knows, with the ever increasing realism factor in today’s sims, we may well say one day “As real as it gets” holds true.
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