I had a Visual Pinball cab in my living room for a few years and I would tweak the emulated machines to get close to gameplay on real games that I could play nearby. I could get it pretty close -- certainly enough to learn the ruleset and flow of a game. After a certain point every copy of a particular table plays differently and V-pins were sort of another variation of a table that you could find in the wild.

The big thing that was missing (at the time) was good nudge support. I did have an accelerometer in my cabinet but nudging never felt very realistic.