As you see there are varied opinions on the whole "use a sim, don't use a sim" debate. Personally for me I don't think I would have soloed yet if it had not been for the sim. I just wasn't getting enough flight time at the field with an instructor & buddy box. For the most part the instruction I was getting was being told to go home & practice on the sim. So I did, and after getting fairly proficient at it & thoroughly frustrated at my lack of progress trying to learn the right way, I went out & soloed myself & had the best day I can remember in years. Mine was a very different situation though do to some serious health issues that my instructors were trying to deal with at the time, which forced me to take a path not reccomended, luckily it worked out ok for me.

I still like to practice on my sim all the time, to keep my thumbs so to speak. Especially during this stretch of bad weather. I noticed the very same thing you described though when I first started on the sim. Well at the very beginning I thought if this is even half as hard as the real thing, there is just no way I'll ever be able to fly. But I kept at it & pretty soon I realized I could fly all the advanced planes that I wasn't supposed to be able to fly yet, & that the trainers & parkflyers were the ones giving me fits! I could even do touch & goes with the F-18, while barely being able to land the PT40 1 in 4 tries.

I'm not familiar with the sim you have other than hearing it mentioned in different threads sometimes in here. I have G2 & the NexStar versions of Real-Flight, & while I know alot of instructors in here don't like them because we learn bad habits on them that they later have to try to unteach us, I feel the sim has been a huge help in getting me started. It is a great place to practice new things that I'm not yet ready to try on my real planes, the spacebar is free!

The other thing I really like about the Real-Flight sims is the swap page. You can go & download modified planes that other ppl have created by changing the components of the planes in the sim, & some of these guys really know how to set them up. I downloaded a giant scale CAP that some guy created & it is just a full blown 3D Monster!! I never get bored trying to fly this thing, it's incredible. There are pages & pages of planes to download & try out. It's alot of fun.

Good luck to you, I'm glad your finding this hobby to be as fun & exciting as the rest of us do.