The Eternal Question
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I enjoyed his enthusiasm. That was a fun video. Gave himself a challenge with moderate turbulence and gusty winds.
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My wife would have done better tbh. I was thinking, “I you take your hands off the throttles one more time, I’ll throw my iphone at the back of your head!” But the answer is clear as any mature sim enthusiast knows: flying an airliner has so little to do with the manipulation of controls and EVERYTHING to do with the professional interactions between crew, ATC and weather. It is rational decision making and CRM that actually guide the jet safely from A to B.
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Yes what is funny to me is how he had his hands full with just the very basics. I guess I take for granted all of the other 85% of the things that you do besides just manipulating the controls… Maybe my imposter syndrome isn’t as imposterish as I thought… 
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His landing was decent, I’ll give him that. And his sim partner give him excellent guidance. You could see big improvement between the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes.
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I still send flowers to the [virtual] families of the people I took out during my one and only F-16 sim ride, circa 2003.
Takeoff wasn’t horrible. Flying formation pretty easy. Shooting down the MIG would’ve worked if I hadn’t been negatively trained in Falcon 3 (or 4?) - I had my home TDC controls set to what made sense, to me (up is ‘up’ with the TDC button, not so IRL).
The touchdown went ok, for a few seconds. Then things went pear-shaped quickly and, being a flight sim hero, I tried to salvage it.
The building that eventually stopped me was, allegedly, base op’s - full of pregnant ladies, all with quadruplets, according to my “IP” 
. Caught a lotta flak on that one.
Was fun. My wife nearly puked just watching me [while doing the BFM thing].
The graphics we so-so.
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I’m sure that was mentioned…the method’s for dishing out memorable (important) criticism are timeless…there I was, circ 1979…
First go in the ATC VFR tower simulator. Was in a small hangar-sized building.
- Mock tower cab (only 180-degrees of windows)
- Aircraft were ‘moved’ about on the airport surface and for landing/takeoff by fellow captives (students) by hand. I’m sure someone made airplane noises.
- Had what seem crazy impressive visuals for airborne aircraft for the time: imagine a dozen slide projectors, stacked vertically above the cab; all articulated (somehow) that would project images (of airplanes) at several angle as they flew by. I guess swapping out images based on the angle and distance?
Where was I…oh…I missed a wrong readback…something to do with taxi instructions, and of course the one on final ‘magically’ warped to the numbers, colliding with the other.
A few moments later I -literally- smelled smoke: The instructor tore up my grade sheet, puts it all down on the ‘runway’ (just a big board with lines and stuff), takes his lighter out and proceeds to start a lil fire, “you just killed a plane full of such-and-such…X2”. Guess it worked cos I still remember that.
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What I’m hearing is. If the 
hits the fan, the flight crew are incapacitated and you have some ‘random’ with a few hours in MSFS on a 737… Hey, it is better than nobody?
Imagine if you had someone with an equal number of hours in X-Plane 
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Or even worse someone who flies dcs all day, we would be looking for things to fly under, barrel rolling airliners, and becoming target fixated on anything with wings whilst trying to get in a firing position 
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I think any old sim hand can land a 737, or any other airliner, on a calm day without breaking anything. What I don’t think is that flying a 737 module specifically will make the sim pilot any more capable during the hypothetical landing than someone who flies a generic tricycle-geared twin in their sim of choice.
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Yeah, If you know the basics of how to land an aircraft, and you can learn this in a good flightsmulator, and you can keep your cool when sitting in the actual cockpit of the aircraft, you could land it. Throw in a few gusts, turbulence, ice up that runway etc, and the outcome may be vastly different. Even fully certified pilots may struggle with learning to land a new type, consistently…
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In my case I’d probably bump the stick too hard (particularly with the Viper’s force-sensing sorcery) and find myself waking up to an Auto GCAS flyup.
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It always surprises me how small and cramped a cockpit actually is. In the video you can see how close the CDU is and you don’t need Inspector Gadget arms and eyes to use it.
I get the same feeling when flying in VR, almost a sense of claustrophobia.
I was thinking, “I bet @smokinhole is loving these meme’s”
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Yeah, I think the biggest issue would be a simmer messing with the ACP and suddenly loosing radio contact, or simply not finding the right button to transmit via one of the various communication devices.
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My guess is that’s the important bit.
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I’ve been a scaredy cat. I see simmers coming in sideways in strong winds and…
Yeah.
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