ORIGINAL: Minnreefer
It does not replicate ground effect and tree effect and or turbulance as well as real life. I don't feel it helps that well with depth of field of vision and distractions.
But it can be a great tool.
Jon
What's a "Tree effect"?
In G4 you can set thermal emitters to introduce turbulence at specific areas.
I find this very useful. Our field has the runway on a plateau, and during slight gusts, the updrafts and downdrafts from the runway edges will suddenly push a plane up or down. I can set an emitter off to one side of a runway with a high degree of variance to simulate this.
Couple this with the wind variation settings and you end up with a fairly realistic wind environment.
Re: Depth of field.
Actually the sim helps with this a LOT.
Since you get no actual depth perception in a 2D simulator, you can get used to NOT relying on depth perception at all.
At distance mine is horrible anyway. Thanks to the sim and the corresponding lack of depth perception in the sim, I've learned to use landmarks as aids when flying and landing. So this has helped immensely.