AOB9,
if you talk to your FI, the very interesting thing to determine is how much experience the guy has with sims or is he just one of the plenty who is against them just because everyone else is as well. As I told you, I have had a few demonstrations with FI's and most of them walked away from those with a 180° backtrack on their previous hostile attitude. Most of them who had previous "experience" with MSFS bought the package, installed it, tried it for a few minutes flying on the keyboard or a £ 5 joystick and threw it away.
It is the same with airline pilots. There are quite a few these days who do use high fidelity addons such as the PMDG aircraft to supplement type transitions, such as to get a feel for the systems and procedures before they go on the FFS to train for real. There are some institutions, such as Tupolev Design Bureau, which use elaborate rigs in the official syllabus.
The most often voiced concern is that PC Pilots will be glued to their instruments all the time. That is indeed a danger for those who never venture beyond the 2D cockpit. However, the latest incarnations of MSFS (2004 and X) do have quite elaborate 3D cockpits and for VFR and ititial stuff, those should be used exclusively, if at all possible with a Track IR device. The difference is profound.
I do agree with many who think that a certain brand of simmers will take a lot of liberty in forums such as these here and therefore create a hostile environment for the rest of us who take these things seriously, who use them as tools for our daily work and to expand our experience and horizons, not to make believe something which is not there.
But I do stand to my statement that NO training aid, even a full flight sim, will ever be usefull without instruction. I reckon this is where most of the negativism comes from. People who buy MSFS as a "game" and afterwards think they can actually learn to fly on it. That does not happen. Neither can you learn how to fly in a multim million dollar FFS without an FI present to tell you how.
I hope to address this issue in more depth in the future. Now that I have got some FI's listening, I would like to have them incorporate these tools better, again as a supplement, not replacement of existing tools and methods.
So what I can suggest to you is to once let your FI have a 1:1 look at what you have on your PC and to take it from there. Most of the time, this will make one heck of an attitude adjustment.
Best regards
AN2 driver.