Mike Ash writes:

I agree with the rest of what you said, but this is ridiculous. YOU may
get 95% of the fun (although how you could tell, never having flown a
real plane, is beyond me) but that is by no means universal. The number
for me is more like 1%, which is why I've basically stopped simming
since I started flying for real. You can bet that I'm not driving 90
minutes each way and paying $30+ for tows just to make up that last five
percent!

Sims are fun, sims are useful in limited ways, but a 95% solution they
are not.

As you yourself admit, it depends on what you're looking for.

My idea of fun is flying in poor visibility for an hour and then finally
coming out of the clouds and mist to see the runway perfectly aligned right in
front of me. It always surprises and pleases me to see what you can do when
flying by instruments alone.

In contrast, flying a Cessna in the mountains at night VFR (or even IFR, with
its limited avionics) can be so stressful that I often just skip it.