But I had no idea whether the music I composed would sound good or not. But when I did get a computer to play back the music I had written, I found that it did indeed sound good. That's why I think video games are an excellent preparation for the real thing. You get a chance to try out the real thing well in advance, You can crash a thousand times and find out just exactly what you're doing wrong. Much better, anyway, than mere visualisation.
Visualisation is well known to be an excellent skill to develop on many fields of endeavour.
I can do because they are totally different from the computer games. Well, yes and no. Of course you don't find that sort of capability or equipment in the kind of plane you'd normally fly in real life. Initially I used it just to get the hang of flying. But that's not what I am talking about, even though I got good at that too.