REAL FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR Tests A Flight Simulator | X-Plane 12 

I learnt to fly on an air cadet scholarship half a lifetime ago. I had used flight simulator for a few hundred hours (MFS 5.0) and remember my instructor half laughing "that won't be any use here..." During the first flight he showed me the basics, and then got me to fly through a cloud. The instinctive use of the artificial horizon from flightsim imposed him. The following weekend he had both his hands on the door window, during my landing. That was their little signal to each other "look how quickly I got my cadet to do this". The school wrote back to me a couple years later, wanting me to become a volunteer instructor and teach. I also got to do gliding scholarship and advanced glider training, resulting in 5 hour solo over portmoak, Scotland - all in air cadets. They all thought I was a natural, because they never appreciated that home flight Sims were actually useful!

This is very good. I remember when I told my instructor that I had a full sim set up at home. His reaction was completely unexpected. He did not want me to touch it while training. He had this notion that sims were bad, very bad for training. Anytime I spoke to him about it, he gave me these looks as if I was insulting him. I never understood his mindset about sims, I continued to use them throughout his training to reinforce his own lessons and practice my radio work with PilotEdge. He was thoroughly impressed without knowing I was using a sim to practice. I like that you are crushing that old school thinking about sims. If properly used, it will be very beneficial. Keep up the great work Mr Lewis! My son and I are big fans.

My usual procedure: preflight, checklist, ATC clearance, take off, steady climb, flying under a bridge, flying between skyscrapers, crashing into a windmill...

That freaking BMW was being such a troll, I bet you looked at him and blinked so the thought it was race time lol

IFR sim training practice was invaluable to my certification. I would redo every approach I had done with my cfii especially if I had an issue during it.

Honestly we're currently in the golden era of flight simulation. The options for hardware are endless, and so is how helpful you can make the sim work in your favor as a training tool. I used the Cherokee 161 made by Just Flight in Microsoft Flight Sim before I started flying it IRL and man was that helpful, it familiarized me with the cockpit layout, all the procedures, radio communications, overall getting an idea of how the plane flies and most importantly becoming familiar with the area you fly like your traffic pattern. You can also practice your cross country routes. There's SO much you can do that will put you ahead in your training - this is especially true for IFR training. I'm excited to see you joining the rabbit hole.

Thanks, Lew. I couldn't agree more. I have a similar setup, but with VR and Pilot Edge (for the ATC comms). It was huge for my instrument training, especially for learning to use the GPS, managing flows, and remembering how to prioritize when I'm task saturated. It's also great for trying out things that would be very dangerous in real life, like seeing what it's like to fly in icing conditions in an aircraft not equipped for flight into known icing, or flying up a high-DA canyon in an underpowered airplane, or flying out of the W&B envelope. Experiencing it safely in such a hyper-realistic environment really helps you understand the risks. I recommend anybody who is serious about using X-plane for instrument training/proficiency also use Pilot Edge so they can really simulate the task saturation that comes with the addition of IFR comms.

I appreciate a real pilot pointing out shortcomings of simulators. Your video is the first I've ever seen where that information was presented from an informed experienced pilot's point of view. I wasn't aware of MSFS being less procedurally accurate than X-Plane. Since I am not a pilot in real life, I can't confirm whether MSFS is procedurally accurate or not, but from a hobbyist standpoint. it seems good to me. I have actually flown in real life with a friend in a small twin engine plane and I can attest to the fact that any kind of game type simulator doesn't feel like it does in real life. He let me take the controls to fly straight and level for a while and gave me tips on how to maintain altitude and course direction. At any rate, I think using a flight simulator to learn procedures is very good, and enables a person to become familiarized with instrumentation, what they display and how to use them properly. Also with Navigraph and Simbrief, one can learn flight planning procedures, reading flight maps and airport maps. I think that sort of information is very helpful. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and perspective about sim vs real life. :)

I would love to see you do a video like this in MS Flight Sim 2020 since I think a lot of us are using that and it would be good to hear your opinion on the realism differences between it and X-Plane 12. Great video!

I use XPlane12 with VR goggles. The goggles put me IN the DAMN AIRPLANE. Very helpful. Also, yoke, peddles, throttle, propellor threader thingy, and mixture plus trim and flaps. All are push rods for a Cessna. That setup was VERY helpful for me in my flight training and to keep my edge as a pilot when I can't fly. Nothing beats the real thing but this setup has been a major help.

When on approach to land and I lower the flaps on the Cessna 152, the nose will pitch up. The forward push on the yoke to offset pitch up is very nearly the same force required in my Cessna. Surprisingly realistic feedback on the controls MSFS 2020, using the Honeycomb Alpha yoke.

Hey man good to see you making flight sim content and just want to welcome you to the community! Looking forward to more content in the future!

Fantastic review. Thanks so much!! Watching you describe steep turns reminded me of my training days, and how cool (and successful) I felt when I'd hit a bit of my wake turbulence upon finishing the steep turn! :)

Over 600 hours on my sim! Still working on my PPL. Even after long breaks in training my instructor says I’m better than the CFIs that he is training. I use Realsim Gear avionics and ForeFlight with my sim. I practice as if in the real world with procedures and checklists. I preflight with real live weather also. Main difference is not feeling it in the seat of your pants, but still incredibly valuable!

This was great, thanks for this recap type of content, highly enjoyed it!

My same setup!!! Love it! I have Turtle Beach rudder pedals and I love them!

9:07 You can find ways to connect xplane to foreflight and use the built in charts/maps

For my IFR training, flight sim shaved a lot of expensive time. I absolutely aced the checkride at minimum required hours. No way I could have done it without all the procedural practice in the sim. Avionics, checklists, all of it. Very useful. Hoping the Honeycomb pedals will release soon....guessing they will be an upgrade. So much of an ILS is finessed with the rudder.

Aside from the wind not pushing me around, I think the heavyness of the pitch axis in the honeycomb is not all that different from the 172 I recently flew around before actually trimming it out. Also be sure to try the TPR rudder pedals as they provide much more finite control.

I'm a big fan of your aviation channel, so when I saw you also talking X-Plane I had to check it out! As a simmer who went on to take flight lessons, I found the sim to be a nice supplement. It didn't help at all with stick and rudder skills and my landings at first were a source of terror for my cfi, but as you mentioned it was great for anything procedural. I would fly my cross-countries in the sim as a dress rehearsal, and it would help orientate me to how things looked from the air or think about how to manage terrain around an approach. Radio communications from online ATC services such as PilotEdge mapped well to real life, and it just made those aspects of training easier.

Love the channel mate and seeing how real pilots relate to sims. Helps me immensely with my rig......

I have a complete IFR sim with G1000 controllers. They work for X-plane or MSFS. I can connect ForeFlight to the sim and do any real approach. All you really need is a single monitor for instrument training. For VFR you really need a VR headset and controllers for the plane you will be flying. Don’t waste your money on multi screens. But do buy the best controllers you can afford. Remember, you will need to set aside money to replace the computer every three or four years.

I live in Orlando and was looking into flight training. This is the first time I have seen your videos. I was planning on reaching out to MyFlight in the next few months. Thanks for the vide.

VATSIM is a very good add on to get your comms down, too. Yeah force feedback systems will add around $5K. Not practical for the young student pilot. Practicing procedures, sight picture, navigation, and instrument familiarity are what I find yields the most benefit. The actual flying is really more of a background thing, but provides that level of immersion that keeps your head in the mission and acts as a realistic attention sink. Also, always turn on failures when you are flying...keeps things interesting

10:44 - In X-Plane the airports are maintained by the community. Anyone can contribute updates and fixes to airports.

Theres a lot of good stuff out there. The airbus kit is really good for running through checklists. It also gets quite full on at busier phases of flight as you have to be PF and PM simultaneously

Brilliant stuff, very informative, thank you, keep the vids coming 👏👏👌👌👌

One more thing if I can - After landing in XPlane I hit ALT-R then CONTROL and 4 so I can review my landings from every possible angle. Again - has helped a lot.

"Yokes feel different". Lol they sure do. After learning on a Citabria.. (yeah I was lucky enough to do my PPL in a taildragger with a stick. Personally I think everyone should do taildragger time during training. It was a HUGE help to me for crosswind and so on. When I eventually got into a tricycle gear plane, it was like having training wheels.) Then when I got into multi-engine, it was an Apache, a Seneca, and a Baron. After those I moved on to a job flying a BN Islander... Holy hell.. Throw all previous multi experience out the window. I can carry HOW much weight in this thing?? How is the stall speed so low that Usain Bolt could run alongside and hand you an envelope on a low pass? There's no Vmc? Whats the catch? Then you move the controls for the first time... OHHHH, the controls are more of a suggestion than anything. 😂 Little bit of wind and it looks like you're doing CPR on the flare. Something that would be next to impossible to simulate.. But, with all that being said. Practicing on a sim still helped me a huge amount with familiarizing myself with all the procedures and many switches to flip. In the Islander there's a lot of clicky clack going on before and right after takeoff. You're going from overhead panel for fuel pump, to flaps and trim on the pedestal. Back up to flap indicator on the overhead. Scanning a number of engine gauges, possibly carb heat back down on the pedestal, up to the trim and mixture... Oh, right, the airframe, prop de-ice and pitot heat switches are where? Where's the carb temp gauge? Turn the fuel pumps off. Back up to the fuel gauges, back down to manifold pressure. Over to to the gauge for fuel consumption while messing with the mixture. All this while preparing to land on a 1500 foot grass strip with half a dozen people or a bunch of cargo behind you. Older complex multi engine aircraft can be absolutely overwhelming at first without some way to acclimate your way to the sheer amount of information you're presented with. Some of the modern glass panels have alleviated this a bit. But those are expensive and not all planes are going to have them. You shouldn't rely on that level of assistance. Great video. Thanks.

Great video. All I can give is my personal experience as someone who did some flight training. In 2002 after 2 hours of circuit training at YSBK in a piper cherokee I came home and a few hours later fired up my sim FS2000. I had no cherokee, closest plane was the mooney bravo, so I left the wheels down. I did the entire lesson on the simulator at the same airfield as RL. Even the engine settings I used were the same (to this day I cannot understand how that is possible???). All I can say is it was roughly the same. I was amazed at the fidelity of the FS flight model in terms of power settings and performance. Maybe a mooney should not fly like a piper warrior???😂… but that was my experience. Never looked at a sim the same way again. My flight instructor used his sim for IFR training. He told me he could practice approaches on there he could not do in the real world.

As a real world pilot light single and twins many years ago i think the MSFS will teach you a lot but you must do VR for that almost real experience.

As a VFR only pilot right now, the biggest hangup that I have is the feedback, not having the ability to feel the controls resist what I'm trying to adjust makes it way too easy to over correct. My CFI says it's much more valuable for IFR for how much training is allowed for certification; Thanks for the video!

08:49 that's an Audi or a BMW, perfectly simulated driving. 👌😂

Hey man. Thanks for the video. I just got me a set of the yoke and the throttle. I will be starting my Instrument training very soon. In your opinion, what is the best technique for scanning your instruments. I'm reading about the upside down V technique. That is: Attitude, T.C, Attitude, VSI and the scan over the rest.

I love the suv feat🤣🤣

Good morning. I just installed version 12 on a Mac Mini M2 with 24 GB of Ram. Everything seems to be going perfectly. What surprises me is that I don’t see the PAPI’s for the landing on Portland Int. On your video they are visible. It's annoying when you're used to it. Good day. Frank

Yes, most flight sim hardware has no force feedback, and even fly by wire airliners "add in" force feedback. There are limitations to simulation, there are things that are best learned properly with an actual flight instructor in an actual airplane. I would say VOR and GPS navigation practice, and checklist practice are probably the best things to practice with flight simulation..

Full force feedback yoke and rudder pedals exist, I think it's Brunner that is the manufacturer. Expensive, but very realistic as others say.

Not a pilot, but after reading many FAA manuals, I figured that as a VFR pilot I would need to be able to fly looking out the windows and learn were to look for visual queues about what I want to know. Then used the instruments for confirmation until I was confident in my judgement. However, my turns may never be perfectly coordinated everytime, but its close.

Loved this. Thanks.

hi,great vid...i'm curious on what FOV you use for a single screen?

If you want to feel the yoke, I would recommend you the Brunner Force feedback yoke. SEP PPL here and use it together with VR. As immersive as it can be

As someone who has well over 1000 hours in the simulators I completely agree with your stance Lew. I believe it aids training procedurally but not physically. Nothing can beat the actual airplane. My flight college uses Frasca FTDs, which you can actually log time in, (At my specific school, most of our instrument checkride is in the FTD simulator) however yes learning the instrument procedures and flying approaches is great in the sim as the FTDs give some feedback and you are not doing crazy maneuvers, doing anything else in the simulator, especially VFR maneuvers is pointless as even with the feedback, it does not replicate the real plane enough. Thank you for your content Lew and I am excited to see the future of this channel.

Man I've been saving (or trying to) for the Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo together.. I just can't handle the idea of 700 bucks or more new and buying something like that used just doesn't sound good to me.. I'm glad to see you enjoy it as a real pilot.. I've been flying sims my whole life, never had a good yoke / throttle and really want one.. I do have the thrustmaster rudder pedals, I didn't go for the logitech, I heard they weren't very good.. but the Honeycomb, boy I really want those.. thanks for the video!

Great video! You should try VR! Even trough you don't get motion or force feedback... Inmersion is a lot better!

270 hours left seat, PP-ASEL-IA (and high perf and retract)... X-plane has been a godsend... and each new release just keeps getting better. I'm using lil navmap for companion navigation...do you have a recommendation for that?

2:38 The lack of feel I suspect is partly due to the difference in inertia. In a light plane with a direct mechanical connection between the yoke and the control surfaces, you can feel the weight of them when you move it. It has momentum and inertia. If you rigged the sim yoke to actually move some big metal flappy things it'd probably feel a lot better. You still won't get aerodynamic forces, but I expect it would help it to not feel like nothing.

You can purchase Cessna throttle unit which will give you a more realistic scenario. They can come with throttle, prop, mixture and flaps

If you want to upgrade the experience I highly recommend tobii eye tracking. Kinda expensive, but IMHO worth it.

You forgot to announce to remain clear of your propeller, as you were commencing engine start! 😂

Orlando Exec? My dad flies in and out of there (less now). He got his LS rating out of Apopka.

Thanks for the video sir. You're a CFI and used to be an airline pilot? What happened to your airline pilot career?

08:50 that was a very airforceproud95 moment and reaction... rofl

Thanks. I've been thinking about replacing my "vintage" CH Products yoke/pedals (the CH yoke/pedals also lack "real feel"--I wonder how it compares to the Honeycomb or others), although they've been very reliable for more than 20 years, I believe. Can you turn off that ridiculously distracting red lighting on the Honeycomb yoke? Yeah--Aviate, Navigate, Communicate! Sims actually make even harder to multi-task, as you can't do anything by feel--you have to find and stay on click spots to do things like change frequencies and bugs or select procedures or enter waypoints with a GPS. You often have to take your eyes completely off the flight instruments as well as the outside view to painstakingly get the settings you want. Much easier/"safer" to do if you're using the AP (another thing I think sims can help get you used to using--I learned on steam gauges decades ago but in the "glass age" there seems to be less emphasis on stick-and-rudder skills and more on automation). Throw in some turbulence (at least XP allows you to undock certain avionics like the G1000 or 530 so they're not bouncing around) and IMC and things can really get challenging. You can go from a stabilized approach to a high AoA/bank angle-induced stall/spin quickly, especially if you're near Vref.

You should try the Airfoilabs C172, big upgrade over default

When Covid broke out, I stopped flying and got MSFS, a new computer, and all the sim hardware as a means to “keep learning” until I got back to the real thing. A few things I noticed… as Lew said, zero feedback. Not a big deal, but it was weird at first. Rudder control is garbage. I have the same rudder hardware as Lew and it’s terrible. Tried all of the settings and can’t get anything close to a real plane. On the ground, all inputs were dramatic, and in the air you almost don’t even need to use them. Landings…. It’s really hard to know if you’ve had a good landing or not as the software will allow you to land no matter what. I mean, in the sim, you can plop it down and be fine, but if I did that real world I’d def do an incredible amount of damage to the plane. 😂😂. But yeah, the buttons, checklists, procedures, etc make it a great tool.

Quest 3 and mixed reality seems to be the best solution for GA aircraft .

I love flight sim, its definitely helped with Instrument flying. True not all planes are the same. I often switch between a 172 and a Bonanza, but they usually both have a 650/750 set up and you can get a mod for those and practice. Its made me 1000 times more confident. Couldnt recommend flight sim enough

Brunner yoke and pedals would give you feedback

I never went through the process of getting a pilot license (too expensive), but I had flight instructors call me a natural wit only experience on X-Plane using just a gamepad.

Would love to see a full flight with atc etc start to finish!

Recommendations on VR headsets for XP12 anyone? Also what about checklists while under the headset? Not a fan of toggling side to side to do you checks before maneuvers.

Good choice on the Bravo throttle, but I would have recommended the Boeing Yoke from Thrustmaster instead if not Brunner. Much nicer feel and great design. Rudders are super important....that's an area that you will never be happy with unless you invest some good dough, like from VKB or Thrustmaster.

love the videos

For a fair test you really need VR in both. It's a total game changer and the realism quintuples as soon as you put the headset on. Also, the lack of tactile feedback has made me better, because it's a lot harder. You have to scan both outside and the 6 pack, which is not a bad habit. I took a discovery flight recently and the CFI let me fly the whole thing, including S-Turns, Turn around a point and a T&G. He was stunned that it was my first time, and I was stunned at how much easier it is when I can feel that feedback that a sim doesn't have.

Good video

Brilliant pilot I wish you were my instructor brother .... great content as ever

Does the Xplane sim have a good ATC communication practice? Can you add ATC sim game to practice

The biggest thing for me on the sim yoke is when you let go of the yoke it springs back to center.. Thats my biggest complaint..

Lewis, would it be possible for you to try a VATSIM full light in the simulator, using the Zibo 737 for X-Plane 12?

@8:47 cant escape the bmw drivers, not even in flight sim

Add foreflight as a device. Helps learn foreflight.

Hi, how valuable to you feel force feed back controls are to make a sim more realistic ? Regads, Jean-François

Have the check the flight model of the Cessna. It didn't float halfway down the runway

Sitting down and practicing procedures and checklists with a piece of paper and a poster of your aircraft's cockpit controls is useful. So is using a simulator. Shocked. Shocked. Neither one is a replacement for the immersion of real flight with the physics on your body. Shocked. Shocked. You could make a piece of wood and put some fake instruments and circuit breakers and get the muscle memory going on a simulator. All very good ideas.

Time for some head and eye tracking!

The first company to produce an affordable mass market force feedback yoke will make a fortune.

Instruments, Procedure and (sight) picture.

You should do KFLL in Vatsim more often

I find the only real problem with sims, is the lack of feedback. I don’t understand how that’s not hey implemented by MSFS and the hardware. It’s the one thing that makes training in a sim harder than the real world.

Bravo is not the most high quality throttle quadrant, but it is the most versatile, so that’s good and why I have one. The Alpha is not the highest quality but it is the best low end offering available. But the Logitech rudder pedals are a waste of money, they are the old Saitek design that Logitech got when they bought that company out and they did nothing to improve them, they are shit, and I had a set, I know. Do yourself a favour and sell them and get either a Virpil set with toe brakes, MFG Crosswinds or the Thrustmaster Pendular. Any of those will be much better and will also allow for half foot, or heel on floor positioning of your feet, better for fine control. FFB yokes and sticks, and rudder pedals are available for feeling feedback in the controls as well as transducers for haptic feedback and motion rig setups as well, but of course you are looking at bigger bucks for those. But why not simulate spending loads of money as well, as that’s also more realistic to aviation. 😁

Please list your PC Specifications - CPU RAM GPU etc. Thanks.

Hey Lewdix.. huge fan of you. Been watching your flying videos and stuff for a while now, I am actually a scenery developer for X-Plane 12 and I am a huge flight simmer myself. If you'd like, we can get in contact and I'll help you out with a few things if you're interested. Just please let me know. Keep up the great work.

I’m not trying to be a know it all or a guy who pretends he has a lot more information than anyone else, but I do know a few things. With this simulator, using vr, I can set my actual visuals to literally exact experience. For just a few hundred dollars for a quest 2 or 3 it’s literally night and day. Weather slightly moves visuals on a monitor but on vr it’s legit. And when I was a beginner the landings were legit the beginner fear… floating, slamming… overrunning desired landing spaces, etc. adjusting seat height, head tilt matters, it’s so dynamic. Significantly harder with a static screen and straight neck. On monitor everything was easy, but on vr it wasn’t photorealistic but environmentally it was epic. Like if power is too low on approach the immersion makes it feel real vs just “oh I’m dropping too fast add 7% throttle…” to more like…. “Power… sounds and looks right”

Your Rudder Pedals can be highly tuned in X-Plane 12. In Settings/Joystick select the Saitek Pro Device. At the bottom, make sure the Control Sensitivity sliders are all hard left.. 0%, select Done. Then on the right side under Yaw, select Edit Response Curve. Select Catmull Rom from the Interp Mode drop down. Create a point using the + sign and pull it out to the right, say 0.70 on the X axis, whilst maintaining 0.25 on the Y axis. Apply. This ensures increasing sensitivity with pressure. Hope this helps.

in your opinion as FI.. is Flightsimulator or XPlane a game ot true simulator?

Question. If you were an airline pilot? Why would you go back to being a flight instructor?

Have you tried VR? I think it makes a big difference

Have you tried VTOL VR? 😀

Thanks for adding the bit about taking xplane sim physics over Microsoft gaming. Was wondering if anything had changed since I had heard that [xplane] ages ago when it first came out.

Flight sims are very helpful if u have hardware

I think the flight dynamics are off in flight simulator, for example Flight simulator 2020 zero wind the Cessna is pulling to the right, which is backwards. The rudder inputs are way over sensitive, no matter how you adjust them.I find simulations nothing close to flying a real aircraft, it’s basically just an expensive video game.

What if you put a IPad for you instrument plates

try VR it is a game changer

yeah I find MSFS sluggish. A very unrealistic flight model which is a massive crime. They had one job. And they claim it's super advanced, they just forgot latency and other actually important things. Another unforgiveable crime is the lack of planes. They don't have to be perfect in every way but they basically need every plane you can ever think of. Having a handful of planes for a plane simulator... again they had one job. And a cool thing they could also have done although that takes actual engineering intelligence is have a couple of fantasy planes of what's actually possible as opposed to the very sad state that is GA. A massive gap is actually light jets (ALJ) in the 4 seater category like an SR22 but weighing 300kg, pressurized and having two small turbofan jet engines. A plane that is easily made and would totally revolutionize GA. As for motion simulation it should be quite simple to do a 2 axis seat which could fake a good portion of the motion experience. Basically just a light office chair on a forward ball joint and two linear actuators at the back corners. VR headset with pass through to let you see the controls and your hands would really get you there.

more flight sim content

Thoughts and views of Microsoft Flight Simulator?

btw x plane 12 should lower their price. It's a little amateur outfit unlike Asobo. They should price it accordingly. Might get some sales. also x plane could try to get some satellite imagery that they could compute 3D from, that way they could get the entire plane in better quality than MSFS without any manual labor.

no no no ... ms flight sim is where it's at

LOL why is there a car with a german licence plate in Orlando