I agree with Janu that once flying for real (14 hrs, air law passed), the appeal of FSX diminished and I haven't had a virtual flight for quite a while now.
I have to respect the consistency of response of instructors on pprune re sims, but IMHO I found using it for 3-4 years before starting the real thing immensely helpful. I didn't just "play" with it though - I can see that if you just yank the stick around until you don't crash any more you will learn a lot of bad habits.
But I used the "tutorials" in FSX, which I found very good (other than the appalling cheesy "humour" of the "instructor") and if followed progressively involve learning helpful things such as pitch attitude to maintain speed, throttle for path etc. It also helped that I had a PPL friend to ask questions of and provide advice.
When I knew I was planning to do the PPL and that it would predominantly be in a Cessna 150/152, I got hold of the JustFlight C152 for FSX (luckily FREE during a promotion
). That helped a lot with familiarity of where the instruments would be, so when trying to get my head around the new concept of checklists (sorry, dolists!) at least when I read "check suction" I knew exactly where in front of me the gauge would be so it was one less thing to worry about.
Another thing I feel it helped with was familiarity with controlling a yoke with my left hand and throttle the right - I am VERY right-handed, so this needed some work. I also got over my initial confusion with the rudder pedals behaving the opposite of my instincts when on the ground.
So I "Survived" a couple of years simming, and according to my instructor didn't develop any noticeable bad habits. I'm not a "flying god" of course, but then I'm still learning, and certainly wouldn't have been any better off WITHOUT flight sim, and I think without it I'd have been that much more mentally overloaded and unlikely to be as far down the path to solo as I am now.
Enjoy your PPL, studying air law isn't fun, but knowing you've passed it will be
