How can I avoid flight simulator software reinforcing bad habits?
I posted this answer on FB a while back:
I’m a commercial pilot as well as a flight sim fan with somewhere in the neighborhood of 7000 hours logged on Flight Simulator and Falcon 4.0 games.  I disagree with the assertion that the sims are so different from the real thing.  While it is true that the kinesthetics of being in a real airplane are different from the sim, the handling and behavior of the sim is so close to the real thing that the same mistakes I make in the sim I make in the real thing.  They are also very effective platforms for practicing instrument flying and approaches.  It’s not surprising that Redbird makes use of a proprietary version of FSX for its flight simulators.
That being said there are several notable areas where the entertainment sims can be off from the real thing:

Avionics may be simulated poorly or unrealistically.  Alabeo payware is a major offender here.

Games do not adequately simulate weather hazards.  Flying into a thunderstorm in FSX is a benign experience.  This can kill you in real life.

ATC interaction is appallingly unrealistic, akin to having an adult conversation with a talking Barbie doll.  Probably the worst offender is XPlane’s default “ATC” which is absolutely nothing like the real thing.

Airport and navigation databases are terribly out of date and cannot be updated.  This appears to be changing with the advent of Flight Simulator 2020 which periodically updates its airport and nav databases, but FSX and XPlane are horrible.  This dramatically affects realism when flight planning IFR flight and shooting practice approaches, as, at least in the case of FSX, the default approaches are now 14 years out of date!

Terminal departure and arrival procedures are often not modeled properly or absent altogether, making operations from major airports unrealistic, especially for jet flying.

Considerable errors exist in the default terrain as well as airports. Some of the worst instances I’ve found were in FSX and include an airport in the middle of a 1000ft deep pit.  Ft Worth Meecham Intl. has the peculiar obstacle hazard of floating houses along the glidepath to runway 35.  Gustaf III / St Bart’s and Courchevel are wretched as well.

Some sims (FSX) suffer from control lag ie a delay time between control input and movement of the control surfaces, creating an unrealistic control response which makes it difficult to fly demanding maneuvers eg aerobatics accurately.

Some sims are developed around certain types of aircraft and do not replicate other aircraft or systems well.  FSX turbine and jet engine simulation is a great example of this.

Edge of the envelop flight characteristics such as spins and aerobatics are often modeled poorly or completely absent in these games.

Ground handling and and takeoff and landing characteristics are unrealistic compared to the real thing.  This is really apparent when flying tailwheel airplanes, particularly in XPlane.


There are fixes to some of these problems.  Some payware aircraft are extremely realistic - VRS’s F-18E and RealAir’s BE60 Duke and Lancair Legacy quickly come to mind as does PDMG’s 737NG and 777 aircraft.  Additional addons for weather as well as cockpit avionics like Flight1’s GNS430/530 and GTN650/750 GNSS heads are great examples as they use the Garmin trainers as their core. ATC add-ons and Live ATC in multiplayer games alleviate the controller flaws in the default software.
If  you do intend to use a desktop flight simulator software to train on, I suggest that it be used as a means to augment actual training in an aircraft following the instructions of a CFI.   This allows you to accomplish a lot of training on basic airmanship and a fraction of the total cost compared to actually going out flying in the real airplane. While it diminishes the principle of effect during learning, It can accomplish a great deal of goals in terms of rote procedures and psychomotor practice.   Again a good flight training syllabus should be followed under the direct supervision of a certified flight instructor combined with actual flight training in an airplane.  When that’s done desktop flight simulators can be extremely useful to a budding airman. I learned how to do crosswind landings using FSX  and have always been very good at them ever since.   If training is done solely by means of a desktop simulator and self-didiaction,  this can lead to negative outcomes, such as incorrect use of the flight controls.  I remember one point early on in my flight training, there was another student working with a flight instructor who had logged in a lot of hours in desktop flight simulators by himself prior  to beginning flight training.   He had developed the undesirable habit of using elevator trim in order to maintain altitude during cruise flight wile playing sims and it took a great deal of work from his flight instructors to break him of this habit and install the correct use of trim in order to neutralize control pressures when in cruise.