As an ex-instructor I can state that before everyone had computers and most flying enthusiasts had filght simulators on them, the IMC students that I taught managed to achieve a much higher standard of applied I.F. in their 15 hours of training if they practiced on computer flight sims than those that did not.
Many years ago I was ground instructing at a middle eastern military flight training establishment. A new colleague who was an I.T. instructor joined who had no experience of flying whatsoever. He got interested in finding out about how to fly and the only thing I had to help him was a copy of the original FSII which he could run on his old 5.5 MHz IPM PC! I gave him a few briefs and every lunchtime he practiced with his "game". He discovered that he could get his aircraft on the ILS at, say 15 N.M., save his position and then try to fly the aircraft (using the keyboard!) down to decision height. The beauty of it was that when he came off, he just reset to his saved position and had another go until he managed to do it.
After about 12 weeks of this, we were due home on leave, so I suggested he put into practice what he had learned and so I put him in a C152 to see how he got on. Once he realised that the aircraft behaved the same way as his computer flight sim he managed to fly visually as though he had received several hours of instruction. Then I gave him a radar vectored I.L.S. I have never before or since seen a person with about 20 minutes flying experience fly an ILS from 10 miles down to a decision height of 200 feet without any problems whatsoever!