Funny you mentioned that but your right. In my opinion it all comes down to the individual using them. Some people actually benifit from them and others don't. Case in point, I was a whitness to an individual that had no stick time n a fixed wing aircraft other than using a flight simulator and his skills exceeded those of one with no simulator time. Than again I watched another simulator pilot who showed no skill in the real world environment. I tried the simulator and what it did for me was save money when executing new manuvers. All I had to do was push the reset button after I crashed.