That and a few other replies made me wonder philosophically, maybe we should distinguish between a flight sim and pilot sim? An app could be both at once of course, but more a reflection on which bits get abstracted away.

eg fiddling with radios and realistic cockpit buttons and dealing with ATC might simulate being a pilot, but it's less about the sensation of actually flying and looking out at the world from above.

> maybe we should distinguish between a flight sim and pilot sim?

I wouldn't use pilot sim, it gives the impression of a 'career mode' beyond the scope of directly operating the aircraft. The terms I've encountered are flying game and flight simulator.

This is almost, but not quite, reflected in the Wikipedia article names. The X-Plane article is under X-Plane (simulator), whereas MSFS is under Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020 video game).

I want the leisure time my kids and I spend on X-Plane to count towards my/their overall ability to fly a small plane someday (a lifelong dream), but (a) I don't have room for flight gear -- there's barely space for my tiny home office desk, and (b) I can't even justify spending $100 right now for a flight yoke amid other financial obligations (it was a splurge to spend $60 for X-Plane 11).

Honestly, I probably would have bought Microsoft's 2020 FS instead if it ran on macOS.

There is also the classroom portion, which for an ultralight should be under CAD $1,000.

But something constructive: Consider enrolling them in the Young Eagles (https://www.eaa.org/eaa/youth/free-ye-flights) if you haven't already.

I can take off and land a small plane in a simulator without looking at the instruments at all (except maybe a couple glances at the air speed indicator as I set up for landing), and I've never flown in a real small plane.

I always thought visual flying was a crutch and instrument flying is the "real thing" that I know I can't do.

The kind of flying you're doing (basically) is called VFR, for visual flight rules. You keep an eye on your instruments of course but a lot of the flying is getting done just by looking out the window.

While a trained pilot certainty CAN fly on instruments alone (which is a separate certification on top of your regular license), no sane pilot would choose to ignore what is happening outside if visibility is decent. GOOD pilots like to have all the information they can, at all times.

These days it's common for PPL student pilots to undergo a little training under simulated IMC, but inadvertent VFR flight into IMC is an emergency condition and, if I understand correctly, is the top cause of fatal VFR aviation accidents.

So, very often I wind up flying with just my cheap Logitech joystick, but even an XBox controller would be a huge step up from mouse/keyboard only.

Having programmable buttons available at your fingertips without having to take your eyes off screen and look for a button really adds to the immersion in my opinion.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUdKMKeXUAAjrFO?format=jpg&name=...

What does it matter? I play city simulation games, and want them to be realistic, because I find the realism fun. Not because I plan on building my own city.

Wanting a realistic flight simulator that gives the real sensation of flying does not mean you must then become a pilot.

That's not Laminar's goal, and that's not the market they're in. You can see that in the post, it's by the founder of Laminar. It's pages upon pages of gushing over flight modelling.

They sell a (much more expensive) version that is FAA-certified for training.

It's not even that much more expensive, the Pro edition is 750.

Though unless you also have real sim hardware it's a completely useless expense as aside from FAA cert validators the features are mostly for multi-projector systems (image warping, edge blending).

Based on my anecdotal observations of people I know IRL who use X-Plane? 100%.

people using it for other purposes may be more in number, but focusing the product on their use case would dilute the intended product, and they don't actually pay the pro pricing

it's not optimizing for an aspirational use case, the product is for this very niche use case. letting other people use it for fun is just a bonus.

If you want a flight sim that maximizes fun, there are other options.

How does one interact with the MCDU in an Airbus with the keyboard and joystick? How does one set the A/P altitude and airspeed? Set the radio frequency? What's the keystroke combo to manage the EFB? What keys are bound to "APU bleed on"? The sheer amount of functionality in a modern cockpit defies keyboard control - both because you very rapidly run out of available keybinds, and also that glass cockpits require input modalities that are fundamentally at odds with the keyboard.

I'd hazard to say the "3D cockpit + mouse interaction" mode is the only practical way of flying a modern complex aircraft, short of some type of VR/hard cockpit setup.

Imagine you press a keyboard chord to pull up a virtual search bar, then type "APU bleed on" and a virtual hand reaches out and does the action.

"Now playing 'Raise Your Glass' by Pink on Spotify."

It would probably be a bad idea for a real world aircraft, but designing and testing it would be fun!

Can you recommend anything?

The stick is $200 including a substantial shipping fee from China. The TWCS comes bundled with a (worse) stick at $145, and you can resell the bundled stick for $70 new bringing the throttle cost down to ~$75. Nyogel is ~$13 on Amazon.

Don't get anything less than a VKB Gladiator. You'll buy a Extreme 3D Pro and then find yourself wanting a VKB later.

> When flying a plane in real life, you don’t do it with a keyboard. It seems odd to build a simulator prioritizing that unrealistic use-case.

How much difference does that make to the sensation though? As long as it's a motion that's simple enough to become muscle memory (which having to look around with a mouse and click on the right thing onscreen isn't), I don't think the mechanics of how you're physically doing the input makes any difference.

Something that is quite hard to convey is how you actually _do_ get into an "OODA loop" in an aircraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop) – observe, "orient", decide and act. For example, if flying VFR a lot of the time is spent looking out the window and actively checking that there is "nothing there". You look at the instruments, but you don't stare at them. A large part of flight training is pattern recognition, muscle memory, and fine motor skills.

I spent a lot of time gliding while writing up my doctoral thesis (mostly as it's hard to panic about not working when you're too busy not dying) and found it very helpful for other situations in everyday life. Part of that is knowing, exactly, without looking, where everything is. For that reason, aircraft have physically differently shaped handles for the important knobs so that they are unlikely to be confused. On the glider I have most hours in, the lever on the left that is blue, with a moulded grip is the speed brake. The tow / winch release lever is a yellow ball. In many prop aircraft, the throttle, mixture and prop pitch knobs are again given different shapes (round, star and "undulating" respectively). Knowing where to move your hands to is actually a really important skill and the keen-beans that X-plane sells to likely have set-ups where not only are these things in roughly the right place, but the distance between them and the chair is measured. Why? Well, if you're learning to fly an aircraft that burns ~$150 per hour (or more), and you can practice a ton of circuits in X-plane, it is a hell of a lot cheaper to try to get good at it outside of the aircraft first.

[1]: Some examples:

- you'll have to smash the throttle up key very quickly to throttle up for a late go-around,

- you won't have meaningful rudder controls so you'll have to rely on auto-rudder, and

- trim is a bit more difficult to get a sense for without sensing the deflection of your pitch control.