I often get questions about how flight schools and other training organizations (e.g., the U.S. Navy) use Microsoft Flight Simulator in their programs.
I’ve collected links to many news reports, journal articles, and other information about that topic on my Flight Simulator in Aviation Training page at BruceAir.com.
That page also addresses questions about FAA approval of flight training devices (the FAA doesn’t approve flight simulation software), how flight models figure in FAA approval (spoiler alert: the FAA doesn’t care much about flight models, at least at the FTD level), logging simulator time, and so forth.
(By the way, if you’re interested in some of the technical details about the 6-DOF flight model used in Microsoft Flight Simulator, see the article “Aircraft Simulation Techniques” on the FSInsider Web site. The document, written by one of the aeronautical engineers on the Flight Simulator team, is available as a .pdf file.)
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