I think if you add in the wind option and work with that for a while then you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect. I am using a sim over the winter to keep my fingers limber and The main difference seems to be that the unexpected doesn't seem to happen on the sim. The wind suddenly coming up can cause big changes on the plane that require adjustment. The flight sim seems to be pretty much the same all the time. My sim doesn't have the wind option.