Having taught a lot of modelers to fly, I've noticed two things about students. Licensed full scale pilots are the hardest to teach and have the worst failure rate. It's due mostly to ego, but it's clear that cockpit hours definitely aren't a positive overall. The next hardest group are the people who show up looking for 5 or 10 minutes of help, all they'll need since they've already learned to fly on their pc at home. That group actually has included a few who have done great from the start, but the majority struggle with a personality deal like full scale pilots.

There is a major failure with pc simulation. Depth perception and model location perception (situational awareness). No matter how good those students are that've mastered the control input for "coming at you", they usually have a problem with depth perception. It's not surprising as there is zero depth perception when staring at a monitor that's about 24" from your eyes. Their first landings are usually aborts. They're not familiar with how far out their downwind leg should be, just like all students. But their base legs are almost always short as they turn onto final way early and outboard of the runway. And if left alone would land off runway.

Most I've taught who really did learn "coming at you" from RealFlight or such, really do have an advantage. It usually only takes a couple of flights to get them oriented. Then most discover the real world always has "turbulence" turned on, and is usually turned way up. I've seen a couple who didn't like the real world after discovering it couldn't be switched off. They never got comfortable. Different strokes...

We fly our real models outside. Desktop simulation can help. Don't expect it to do more than that.