I solo'd an aircraft on my 16th birthday and learned everything I knew up to that point in Falcon 4.0, Flight Unlimited, Fly!, MSFS, and more sims from that day. Of course we went over it in training, but the sim work that preceded it was extremely helpful and I breezed through the instruction.

Interesting, I'm not sure I agree.

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.

No, both types of flying are very important to "real" pilots.

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.

Ain't that kind of the point: to be forced to actually look at your instruments? From what little I know about flying, that's kind of a critical skill unless you expect to only fly in VFR conditions and never IFR.

The first pilot license most people get involves flying VFR almost exclusively.

We can drop the 'almost'. If a pilot holds only a basic PPL, that means they aren't qualified for any flight in IMC.

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.