I have SkyDemon on my iPhone and often switch it on in the car for a lark. It's brilliant busting airspace and getting away with it.
To the OP; I can't quite work out what sort of flying you do on the sim, are you flying heavy jets or light aircraft or a combination of both? You mention switching the autopilot on; very few light aircraft have an autopilot. I fly a reasonable selection of types and only one of them has an autopilot, and that is more of an unusual attitude generator than an autopilot...
. I leave it off unless I want to amuse myself with it's attempts to fly anywhere but where I want to go.
Flying light aircraft is a completely different ball game to flying a big jet, apart from the obvious dynamic differences. You should be able to cope with a complete instrument failure in a light aircraft and still be able to land safely. The ASI does give you airspeed but so does the sound of the slipstream, the weird and wonderful noises that different vents and intakes on the aircraft make at certain speeds and how the controls feel. I don't need an altimeter to land VFR, no qualified pilot does, you do it by looking out the window. You fly mostly by feel and the picture out of the window looking right. You get none of this on a flight sim. I'm not knocking flight sims by the way, they are good fun but do they recreate the
sensations of flight? Well no, how can they?
Edit: Having seen the money, time and effort that some people put into their sim rigs they probably spend more on simming than I do flying. Each to their own though.