The most frequent complaint I hear from pilots transitioning into turbine airplanes, particularly jets, is that the simulator doesn't fly like the airplane. All say they can fly the real airplane just fine, but the simulator just isn't the same.
Welcome to the world of jet pilots. It is true that a simulator, no matter how sophisticated, doesn't feel and fly exactly like the real airplane, but the harsh reality is that simulators are the yardstick to measure the qualifications of jet pilots. Every airline pilot already knows this, and business jet pilots find out almost immediately that to succeed at the top level of standardized training they must master the simulator.
This issue is particularly acute for owner-pilots who are moving up to a jet for the first time. Typically the prospect goes flying with the very skilled and accommodating demonstration pilots the airplane manufacturers hire to show off their equipment. These demo pilots are great at making everything look easy. They subtly do the hard work in the right seat so that the sales prospect can feel immediately comfortable in the left seat and do a reasonably good job flying the jet the first time out.
There is nothing nefarious going on during the sales demo flights. The demo pilot is doing his job to show the prospect just how capable and manageable the new airplane really is. The demo pilots avoid bad weather and strong winds at the surface, and keep a steady flow of advice on where to set the power and how to manage the systems.
Imagine the shock when the new jet owner-pilot gets in the simulator and is faced with doing everything for himself. The simulator instructor starts slowly with no failures or other emergencies, but the situation is so amazingly different than the demo flights that many new pilots are alarmed.
Added to that is the fact that simulators really don't fly exactly like the airplane. Actually, that's not true. The simulator really DOES fly just like the airplane, but our perceptions are different. Subtle clues we use to understand what an airplane is doing just aren't as available in the simulator as in the real thing.
Virtually all simulators at major training companies meet FAA Level C or D standards, meaning they are equal to the airplane in terms of training and qualification. In general -- except for some required initial experience in the airplane for a pilot earning his first type rating -- the simulator is, in the FAA's eyes, an exact replacement for the real airplane. You can earn a type rating in the "box" and also establish landing, night and IFR currency without ever flying the real airplane.
The simulator cockpit is a real airplane, though it is now surrounded by so much equipment to create and project the visual display it's hard to tell from the outside that a real forward section of the airplane is in there. The cockpit instruments, lights, switches, controls, seats, everything, are from the real airplane.
The simulator visual displays have made enormous strides over the past few years with full 180-degree views and the ability to duplicate daylight, dusk and night scenes. The airport environment is realistic down to the pavement markings and taxiway signs. The cartoonish appearance of other airplanes, or airport buildings, is mostly gone. Maneuvering on the airport, and making visual landings, is now very realistic, which hasn't always been the case in simulators.
The training company and airplane manufacturer work together to collect the data that will be programmed into the computers that control the simulator and how it behaves. Sensors on the controls measure forces and displacement as test pilots fly the real airplane. This information is stored in parallel to the response the airplane made to those control inputs. So, let's say the test pilot applies five pounds of aft force to the controls while the airplane is trimmed for 200 knots. That force moves the elevator X degrees, which in turn generates a pitch rate of Y degrees.
That type of data is collected for all phases of flight and is then programmed into the very powerful computers that actually command the control feel and flight path response of the simulator. Among the most difficult data to collect is behavior of the airplane on the runway and how it responds to nosewheel steering, brakes, crosswind and contamination on the runway. But the training companies are getting better and better even in reproducing runway behavior in the sim.
When the simulator is programmed, operating pilots from the airplane manufacturer and FAA fly it to determine if, in fact, it does a good job of simulating the actual airplane. There are always some tweaks to the software necessary, but eventually the FAA agrees that the simulator is qualified and it is certified for training. What that means is empirical measurements of control forces and responses agree between the sim and airplane, but so does the human pilot observation of how the sim behaves.
