JSFFan There is a saying in the computer world GIGO (Garbage in Garbage Out), I am not saying that the F35 is no good, it is unproven, as I understand it, the latest software has minimal war fighting capacity, the computer infrastructure needs to be upgraded for the normally accepted IOC standard software to work when it has been developed. There remains a large amount of testing still to do to sign off the F35 of any variety, it thus confuses me as to how anyone can develop a realistic simulator for the F35 and then make pronouncements on how much better than another platform it is.
Quite possibly if the F35 performed as it was initially promised to when a mature platform that had met all of the KPIs in its development, there might be some validity in your comments.
As I understand it the F35C simulator does things that the real plane does not do, such as catch a wire when landing on a carrier. The simulator software will need to be changed every upgrade to the F35 to reflect the actuality of the plane's performance. Sadly LM does not yet seem to be able to change the performance of the LRIP planes to get back on track to the initially promised performance parameters.
I assume that in sim land the F35 helmet works?
Regarding your comments about Situational Awareness, in theory there is nothing to stop the sensor suite from the F35 being incorporated in a 4th generation fuselage.