> MSFS is a game with nice visuals, use X-Plane if you want a real simulator

I completely agree -- Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been more than a game. I haven't used X-Plane, myself, and wouldn't have the expertise to properly judge the differences, myself.

However, as a kid in the early 90s, we had upgraded from an 8088 to a 80486, and getting time on the shared, single, computer, was difficult while Dad was training for his pilot's license and later IFR rating using the 80s version of Flight Simulator.

The funny thing is that until recently, it never occurred to me that the intention of Flight Simulator[0] was to be "a game". Now, I'm sure 1985 (or so) Flight Simulator on an 8088 left a lot to be desired as simulators go, but even back then it was "far more than a game".

I remember playing with it after my dad purchased it. The pretty picture on the front/box art gave everything the appearance of being a game. But it was missing one, critical, element. Games, I thought, were supposed to be fun. But outside of a small handful of major airports, which had a few lines to represent landscape, the game was basically "make the small airport disappear into large amounts of gray landscape", dial in the frequency, aim the plane, and then the best part -- when you're done, try make it a car[1].

As a child, I flew with my Dad in his Piper Cherokee probably somewhere in high doubles/low triple digits (over about 5 years). As a kid, I remember my Dad saying something along the lines of: Take-off, Landing and Problems are the only time the pilot is doing anything. Most of the time you aim the plane and wait. My Dad used to keep a 500 ct box of Atomic Fireball candies to keep him awake on long, multi-leg flights.

I have only, briefly, played with the latest Flight Simulator, but I felt like they nailed a lot of the physics engine. I used to love taking my friends with us on trips in the small plane. Where we lived, by about my teen years, all of my close friends had been on at least one commercial (jet) flight, and they all acted macho (the boys, anyway) having flown before (none would admit to a fear of heights at this point). The most intelligent of my friends would start to see their anxiety rise shortly after the hangar was opened. My Dad would hand me this pole to attach to the front landing gear -- so that I could pull the thing out of the garage. I was all of 145 pounds soaking wet, so watching me pull a larger-than-a-car-sized object that seats 7 with one arm and no physical exertion is the first sign that it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Shortly after, when my Dad asks for everyone's weight, the new passenger is confronted with the fact that "the plane is so light that everyone's safety partly depends on where I sit in this thing". If they aren't scared, yet, the next chance is about ten minutes after take-off, when my Dad would usually make a comment over the headphones about how smooth the air is -- I'm not sure if he was always being sarcastic, but "a smooth flight" was usually about as bad as the worst turbulence I've experienced on a commercial jet. So depending on how long we had planned on flying that day, my buddy now realizes this is as safe as they're going to feel.

The best description I've heard of it is that it feels like you're sitting in a kite. It's a kite that can be controlled, safely[2], but you feel every gust of wind and you can't help get the feeling like mother nature is getting annoyed with you and might just decide to slap you out of the air, much like we would do to an annoying fly... and that it would take very little effort on her part.

[0] In reference to the original MS Flight simulator from the 80s/90s -- there are many flight simulation games out there, but the point of these games is usually "to use a plane for war/combat/other traditional game purpose". The physics engines of these kinds of games are far simpler and sometimes feel like the plane is flying through loose snow rather than air -- i.e. like a ski/snowboard simulation game that includes "up/down" and reacts more slowly to turns than "being firmly attached to the ground" but not so slowly that you feel completely at the mercy of the wind.

[1] Also known as "landing" -- on that version, if memory serves, a good landing was characterized by a high-pitched "chirp" (implying the wheels hit the ground) and you could roll around on the ground. If you didn't stick the landing, the plane just stopped dead wherever it touched the ground (I think a "game over/start again" screen popped up but I'm not sure).

[2] I've written a few stories about the kinds of fun my Dad has experienced flying -- he was a "private pilot" in that he was not licensed to charge people to take them places, but he flew multiple times per week as a sales manager/owner of his company. He hated flying if he wasn't the pilot (commercial or otherwise) because he'd been through enough trouble in the air (and handled the problems successfully) that he had greater confidence in his abilities to handle problems than "a person he didn't know who was in charge of his life". I had always thought we were trying to save money, but it was far more expensive to fly the small plane (alone) than commercial.