X-Plane to Real Plane

One of the original themes of this blog was supposed to be bridging flight simulators and the real world, with occasional diversions into other topics. It may be hard to tell that anymore, since I've spent much more time on the "diversions" than the core themes, but the universe seems to be reminding me of that this week.

I've encountered two interesting articles on the subject in the past couple of days. Although I rarely post "hit and runs" (posts that just link to other articles without much discussion), this week also happens to be the start of yet another semester for me. Since I also work a full-time job as a pilot, I'm unfortunately too busy for a deep post this time around. Nonetheless, these articles (especially the first one) were too good to just let pass by.

The first one, Learning To Fly on Simulated Wings, is a very nice look at how Bill Forelli (no relation to Sonny, I presume), saved himself a ton of time, money, and embarrassment by learning much of a standard pilot curriculum in X-Plane before transferring it to the real world. It's a success story for FS to IRL training, with a particularly notable accomplishment within:

Forelli... soloed in less than 10 hours, which includes two discovery flights followed by 6.7 hours of focused training in a Piper Archer.

As an instructor, I only soloed one student in less than 10 hours, so that is quite an accomplishment indeed. Back in the old days, when flight training was just "keep going around the patch until they've got it down," single-digit hours to solo wasn't all that uncommon. However, in the modern world, the regulations have so much that is required to be covered before solo there is just too much to go over it all and still solo in less than 10 hours. Since Forelli learned much of that beforehand, he was able to do something that not many people can do nowadays. Kudos to him.

The second one, From Filmmaking to the Flight Deck: An Animator’s Guide to Training in VR, is one person's approach to creating a customized flight sim solution for herself to aid in her flight training. Her approach to it is interesting, even if it may be a bit more than most people are willing to put into the effort. Nonetheless, her list of five advantages that flight simulators have over the real world is right on the money:

1. There’s no drive to the airport — your virtual plane awaits you whenever you have the time to fly.
2. Your flight time is never canceled due to inclement weather — you can change the weather in X-Plane.
3. You can pause the simulation and look up questions you may have or zoom in on an instrument dial to see exactly what’s going on.
4. You can inexpensively train in a plethora of planes from every era that are never grounded for maintenance.
5. You are flying in complete safety.

I have written more than one post here on how important #3 is when learning to fly, and especially how useful that is when it comes time to expand one's skills and get an instrument rating.


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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

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