Wow - that's a trip down memory lane - I learned the basics of flying from Flight Sim 1 on an Apple. The manual was pretty damn good. The application was amazing for its time.
Same. The manuals.. they were like real flying manuals. I was never a gamer, but I was working shifts through the nights with lots of spare time, so I played Flight Sim on the Apple.
Then one day a pilot friend invited me to fly with him in his club's Cessna. To my surprise, as soon as the wheels were off the ground he said "Now you fly." And I did.. for the next half hour. Around the mountains, here and there.. the thing is, the instruments in that Cessna worked just as in the sim, some were slow reacting, some were fast, and the pedals and yoke.. everything was familiar, I just had to use the real controls instead of a keyboard. A quick adjustment. So i could actually fly that thing. My pilot friend took over when we were ten meters from landing.
Once I played with Cessna Caravan simulation, with a physical cockpit instruments and controls, and I was amazed by how easy it felt to cross over, even decades later, to the physical controls. In no time I was flying sideways between buildings using the pedals to keep the nose pointed half up while I passed by the windows.
Unfortunately, the very surprised and concerned inhabitants were not simulated.
