I think the reality is that the type of people interested in flying will have spent a lot of time in simulators already by the time they start taking lessons an

I think the reality is that the type of people interested in flying will have spent a lot of time in simulators already by the time they start taking lessons and it really helps. You'll already know what each instrument is, how to read it, in what order to do things, running check-lists, how to start the plane, taxi, navigate, etc. You'll probably be a bit clumsy at the controls and be too focused inside the cockpit instead of outside. But that's something that can be corrected in your first few lessons. And btw. focusing on your instruments is something you shouldn't be doing in the sim either; all the visual queues are there to fly proper vfr. MS Flight simulator has lots of pretty scenery, which you can use to fly VFR and learn how to navigate by landmarks. If anything, it's a little too pretty. Real life visibility is a lot more tricky. I fly x-plane myself and while less pretty, the flight model is awesome and it models the lack of visibility pretty well. And with some add-ons the scenery isn't that bad. And if you are flying IFR, it's actually the opposite: you shouldn't look outside (typically not a lot to see there anyway) and you can't trust your senses. A lot of learning to fly is basically absorbing a lot of theory and knowledge. You don't need a plane for that and simulators are great for putting all that to the test. In any case, flight simulators are used a lot by actual pilots as well for practicing procedures, instrument approaches, etc. The backstory of X-Plane is actually that the person that created it (Austin Meyer) was struggling with getting their instrument rating and developed it initially as a way to help practice that. That was more than thirty years ago. These days sims are a lot better and both MS FS and X-Plane are very usable for learning all sorts of things about flying. The trick with both is to stop treating them like games and start treating them like the real thing. It's not perfect obviously but the planes will roughly do similar things under the same circumstances. If you fly by the numbers (speeds, altitudes, etc.), things like landings get a lot easier. You'll get a lot of the same visual queues as in a real plane (too high, too low, etc.). X-plane is actually sold for commercial usage where real pilots log real hours that actually count to their ratings. The difference with the regular version is a USB-key that locks down some of the settings and a lot of hardware that you can buy yourself as well.