Personally I discourage desk top flight sim use except as a means of practicing IFR procedures, which obviously doesn't apply to a 30 hour PPL student.
Chair flying is free and IMO just as valuable. If you insist on using a sim I would suggest you consider it a "remote" lesson. So your instructor assigns you an exercise, with defined parameters, and you go away and do it and then sit down for a debrief. So for a Navex, you would be given a route to plan and winds and weather. You go do it and then review your PLOG with the instructor.
Just going out and flying around in your MSFS "airplane" is essentially like flying a real airplane with no instruction. You don't know what you are doing wrong and the danger of picking up bad habits is high.
Last edited by Big Pistons Forever; 1st December 2011 at 04:26.