BPP,
Exactly and since it is unlikely you are going to have your instructor sitting next to you in your den while flying your sim, you should not IMO be using the flight sim as a "learn to fly device for the ab intio pilot".
Not only should you not but you can not. I'd agree with you that for the flying skills per se the sim time BEFORE you start to do it for real doesn't do much, certainly not if you use a 2D panel. That is for instrument flight only. Once you ARE in training however and get the instruction and KNOW what the real thing looks like and use a 3D panel with a Track IR or similar device, things change a lot.
Without motion and wrap around visuals they invariably become dependant on the instruments, so the instructor has to break them of this and other bad habits.
The benefits of motion are debatable, the warp around visual is much more valuable, especcially in VFR. I'd even go as far and say that you can achieve almost the same effect with a reasonably big screen and a eye tracking device, which will react to the student turning his head and turn the pic with it. With one of these and the relatively recent 3D cockpits as used since FS2004, the dependency on instruments will greatly decrease, as the actual view is pretty close to what you get in the real thing. Don't take my word for it, try it if you have the chance. I did not believe it either until I got the device myself, but it's about the difference between a no visual ATC810 instrument trainer and any fixed base trainer using a wrap around.
I do not even feel they have much use for cockpit famil, checklist practice etc. IMO more value is found in sitting in a tied down aircraft and practicing the checklist and other drills
Again, I agree with you unless you get the EXACT or very close model of the aircraft you actually use in training and use the 3D panel. There you can do checklist training very efficiently, as you will need to do the same movements and watch in the same general direction as you would on the real plane. Plus, of course, you don't have to "simulate" using the switches, you can actually throw them over and over again and see the results.
As I said, many pilots these days use such third party models even when transitioning to heavy irons. MD11, 747-400, 767 and several more, there are addons around which can really help you there. For the light planes, the Carenado Series are probably the best to be had.
They can also be an effective (but painfull ) way to work on your basic instrument scan. Since all home flight sims are harder to fly than a real airplane, particulaly with a bit of turbulence thrown in, accurate heading and altitude control is a real test of your scan
That is absolutely true. It does again depend on a lot of things, the sort of controls, the screen size (if they are smaller than real it gets even worse) and again, the model. But in a way, that is not so different even from real expensive full flight Level D sims. Even these are on occasion a lot harder to fly than the real one. I'd say the degree of difficulty decreases from the PC based devices to full flight sims and the real plane. I have had to do a lot of review work in the last 20 so years and have had a chance to fly a great number of products as well as their corresponding full flight sims and on occasion the real thing. With almost no exception I found the real airplane the easiest of all, followed by the full flight simulators. I do recall my first MD11 full flight session as well as A320 and was amazed how few trouble it gave me, yet it also confirmed to me that you can get quite a familiarity with a panel and it's functions if you can try them out in peace and quiet of your own office before you step on the "real" thing.
I do think it is very important to point out that any sim can do only as much as the student and the instructor will do with it. You could let a student loose in a Level D type Cessna 172 sim without instruction and see what happens. He will eventually learn to fly it, but he'll probably have quite similar problems as if he had been flying a home sim without instruction. No program will ever replace a skilled and pedagogically aware instructor. But with guidance, it may well help along the way.
As you are an instructor and several others are reading here too:
I'd ask you to take into account that people who do sim before they take the big and costly step to go in the real realm of the pilots tend to be some of the most enthusiastic of all. In the present day and age, private flying has enough people who despise every single one of us (see the other thread about drop outs) so we can do witout inadvertedly or explicitly singling out more people. Unfortunately I have seen this happen in the past. Simmers who were given their first flights or started their instruction came away totally frustrated and angry, because the FI had been going on during the whole flight to demonstrate to them how wrong everything they've done in the past was and ranting about their toys at home for the duration. I would say that this kind of attitude serves nobody. In the best case, the student will start anyhow and overcome this after a while, in the worst case, he'll give up there and then or look for another school. I am NOT saying that to anyone in particular, but as a general observation by someone who has worked in the field ever since the first sims arrived and flown actively parallel to that.
On the opposite, I was and am about trying to formulate an initiative how to motivate more simmers to take this step. I will try to develop a program for ab initio guys with extensive sim experience with an instructor and a school who's interested to go that way and also use a sim as supplementary tool during training. In the days and age where schools, flying clubs and even full FTO's are all suffering from lack of applicants and the ranks of PPLs and higher are getting lighter, I guess we should be welcoming whoever is willing to accept the challenge and do the real thing.
Best regards
AN2 driver.