I've had Elite for years and consider it the best money I've spent in
aviation. But its value is in keeping instrument flying skills sharp or
in teaching those skills. Its value for a primary flight student is
doubtful. As much as it pains me to say it, MSFS is good enough to teach
you the radio navigation necessary for private pilots. They way I would
suggest you experiment with radio navigation is to put the flight sim
aircraft on autopilot and then adjust the heading bug to practice
"bracketing", tracking (with and without wind), and orientation and
intercepts of bearings and radials. One bad habit many student pilots
have is excessive concentration on the instrument panel. Private pilot
training is about developing the hand-eye coordination necessary for
visual flying. Having said that, I find instrument flying much more
satisfying than "boring holes in the sky".

The flight model of Elite is eerily accurate to the Cessna 172s I've
flown. Elite seems to be about 100 RPM more powerful than most of the
rental aircraft I've flown, but this is well within the variation
between rental aircraft. In all the years I've use Elite, I'm not sure
the program has "crashed", although I certainly have crashed the
"airplane" while doing extreme maneuvers such as inverted ILS
approaches. I never find myself making excuses for Elite. Something
that was common when I was flying the game type sims.

--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm
Marco Rispoli wrote in message
...
I have FS2004 but for some reason I think the physics are a bit off...
I
don't know if FS2004 cuts it as far as realism goes.

so I started looking around for other simulators and I found the Elite
Simulation software.

Anyone uses the Elite ?

How realistic is it and how useful could it be as and extra help in
training
for a private pilot license (C172 specifically)?

Thanks!

--
Marco Rispoli - NJ, USA
You can read my flight training diary at
http://www.tranceweb.net