No worries, least with a 450 electric, while not recommended, you can hold the thing at arms lenght to check main blade tracking is correct (provided your arms are long enough of course) - the big nitro need to be either held in a hover with a spotter checking the tracking (dangerous for the spotter), or fixed to something SOLID and spooled up and checked while on the ground (i used my outside garden table and about 6-8 good sized zip-ties to be sure she was staying put.

As per my last post, I'd still suggest that aside from a good pitch gauge and blade balancer (mandatory items for setup), training feet and a good flight/learning plan for every single flight are going to be the two best tools in your learning arsenal. God knows trying to tick off the basics one at a time help me HUGELY when starting to learn how to fly my old 450 electric - and having had cars before was pretty much no use at all!
If I was to suggest a 3rd option, get the best 2.4gig programmable computer radio set you can afford, as that way if you get hooked just like everyone else in here has done (sorry for the stereotype guys), you won't hopefully need to upgrade you radio and lose money down the line. And then when your totally hooked and feel the need to get something larger and more complicated (be it a plane of heli), you'll already have that good radio gear waiting at home for you to hook it up to the plane. The 'expo' settings will also help tame the heli to begin with by reducing the servo travel in the initial part of your stick movements (expo can take a monster of a heli re it's ability to react cyclic & collective input before you can even blink, and turn it into a total kittycat if added at the right level)
Also, find out what brand of transmitters is more common at the local club your most likely to fly at, as getting the same will make it easy for buddy boxing when you feel you need to get your license for larger aircraft (all part of that forward planning theory)

If all this sounds overwhelming, please don't let it be!!!!
It IS doable to learn off a 450 3d heli (like I said, I did!), all these comments are intended to be are guide lines to help a little as it will still require a steep learning curve from yourself.
A good sim like Phoenix will help a LOT, and save you a fortune down the line, but as no two helis ever feel the same, your real one will no doubt feel different when you first fly it. So look on the sim as tool to learn thumb memory, flight orientation and how it changes as the heli moves about in relation to you (the controls control the heli from the nose, not how it is in relation to you). In the end, the sim should add to your flight skills, not be the basis of them. Personally I try to keep well ahead of my real world flying in the sim so that whatever I do in life, has been well surpassed in the sim - meaning I'll find it easier doing "X move" in the real world, as I'd rather try to be cleaver and smash my sim helis up a million times before I risk smashing up my real heli by pulling that same stunt unless I'm 100% sure I'm better than the skill level required!
Ie - sim flight at 11/10th's of my skill!! ...... expensive nitro thing flown at 7/10th's of my skill level!! (walk before you can run as they say)