I think some of the developers are right when they say that if they made their addons 100% correct only about 3 out of 100 simmers could fly them and the complaints would be deafening.
No doubt they are!
It's easy for us to forget that whether our mount is a warbird, an aerobat, a jet fighter or a tubeliner, in the game we are simulating doing something that IRL requires hundreds or thousands of hours of specific training and experience.
This, in itself, is not unique to flight sims. In other games where you have to do parkour, wield a sword, fight monsters, etc., obviously you would need many hours of practice to do these things IRL also.
What is unique about flight sims is the pseudo-realism lent by the fact that real pilots, no matter how demanding or heroic their task is, do it by sitting in chairs moving their hands and feet a few inches, just as we do when gaming, and with similar controls. No wonder flight sim players are easily led to think they could operate a real aircraft whereas nobody playing Witcher 3 is under any illusion that they can even hold one of those weapons properly.
But just because it's sitting in a chair moving your hands and feet a little doesn't mean you'd not be a fool to strap on a P-47 (or F-18 or 737) without a similar amount of experience.
To make the game accessible, flight sim devs have to do what any other RPG game dev does, which is to somehow build your avatar's presumed competence into the game, generally by making the tasks easier. But with the added challenge that at least part of the flight sim audience THINKS it wants the tasks to be just as hard as in reality (but really wouldn't like it). And with added challenges too, like there's no flight sim equivalent of a player accumulating "skill points" (actions get easier and more effective); you actually have to get more skilled yourself.
I'd be in favor of those kinds of training modules too. The existing learning programs of course don't really make you log enough time to even operate the 172 proficiently, but they are a good compromise in at least making you practice a little, with a plausible instruction environment. They could do similar transition training for other advanced aircraft categories.
Bonus points if they got a real pilot to be the coach. I am old enough to remember Chuck Yeager hisself talking me through the basics in Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer 2.0. Pretty bad game - you can now download it from myabandonware and try it out yourself if you have an emulator - but getting slagged by Chuck when you screwed up was cool. What if they paid Dudley or Hinton or Romain to be the virtual instructor in a 172 to Pitts to T-6 to P-51 training program lasting 20 hours or so. I'd buy that.
August
