When I was in college, my room mate and I took a golf class. We started indoors with light weight plastic golf balls. After several weeks of training with these, most people got quite good. Eventually, it was time to go outside and hit real golf balls. It was almost like starting over again. Took a couple weeks to get back to where we were with the plastic balls. Then we made the jump from driving range to a real course. Same drill, had to relearn the basics.

What's the moral of the story? You'll have similar experiences going from a simulator to a real plane. The time on the simulator was not wasted, but do not expect to be able to solo on your first flight