Although some time have passed since I actually did renew my IR, I'd like to write what I did in case it will help someone else.
I bought X-Plane, a SAITEK yoke and throttle quadrant, but no rudder pedals. It all worked very well indeed. Many real details like compass acceleration/turn errors and even ram effect on the OAT gauge are faithfully simulated!
I only have two gripes about X-plane.
- It is very difficult to re-trim as there is no artificial feedback in the yoke. For the same reason, I guess, it is easy to get into pilot induced oscillation in pitch. I made a table of the proper trim settings in various configurations and eventually figured it out.
- The aircraft I used (C172S included with X-plane) had some configuration oddities like an unslaved DG but an autopilot which used (stabilised) magnetic headings! Since the DG would (accurately) drift over time you would notice the autopilot in heading mode flying a heading different from what the DG indicated. I could fix this by reconfiguring the avionics in the "Plane Builder" program.
In the end I trained some 30 hrs using my PC and it turned out to be a tremendous help. It only took 9 hours of actual flight training to renew the IR after an 18 year lapse.