Yep, flying around is the easiest thing but one thing I noticed I was doing on the sim was flying where ever the plane wanted to go.
Flying around and flying where you want to are two different things

Some things to practice on the sim to make starting out easier (yes, I still say get an instructor -even if just for a few flights to help)

1) Turns - don't worry about taking off or landing "yet", instructors will do this for you. Make nice slow turns, don't over bank and use elevator to keep the plane at a constant altitude through the turn. This will definitely carry over to a real model in the air but don't expect it to be exact, you'll need to get a feel for the real plane. Practice going into a turn when you want to and coming out in a direction you want to be going.

2) Half throttle, straight level flying. The sim is pretty easy with this but with the real airplane - minor corrections are needed almost constantly. It's not a set and forget type thing. Don't over control - try to be as smooth as possible using small, constant control inputs. What I mean by that is, don't "jab left aileron - release, jab left aileron - release" over and over again until you get it where you want it. SMOOTH - once you start moving the sticks, don't stop until its where you want it. Your flying will look a thousand times better and you will learn more precision this way.

3) Practice adding a little throttle when pulling the nose up and letting off throttle when you put the nose down. This will help later on down the road - especially when you do your first real loop! (Sims can loop at full throttle throughout the entire loop without ripping wings off. Some real trainers cannot). Again, practice being smooth with the throttle.

4) Start "playing" around with the rudder during flight. Lots planes just fly better when you add rudder in turns and it gets you used to using your left hand for things like stall turns in your future. Not to mention, cross wind landings. This will get you into some things called roll and pitch coupling. The sim lets you see it happen, expect it and prepare for it with a real plane. A plane with roll coupling = rudder makes the plane roll. Correct with a little opposite aileron to keep wings level. Rudder sometimes makes the plane pitch up or down so you can expect to add in up/down elevator when using the rudder. Don't worry about perfecting this yet but like I said, just play around on the sim using rudder and trying different things. As an experiment - bank into a turn and apply just a hair of rudder into the same direction you rolled and hold it. Watch how the tail reacts.

Experimenting on the sim is fun! It's a great tool. Don't treat it like a video game, treat it like real training and you will learn a lot! The first time I put a plane into knife edge flight I had done it on the simulator hundreds of times with many different planes. By that time, the muscle memory was engrained in my brain so it was all a matter of just responding to how the plane reacted and compensating to get it to do what I wanted it to do.

Thunderbolts, after you fly for the first time with a 4 channel glow plane (with instructor), come back and let us know how it went! People here enjoy helping others get started and one of the rewards is seeing the excitement after someone's first flight, first landing, first solo. Also, give us a report about how different the real thing is compared to the sim.