44 years a helicopter engineer and 1500+ hours flying helicopters and I agree totally, a sim doesn't help you one bit, Instructors push you so far but you learn far more on your own and by your mistakes, when a trip scares you half to death it tends to stick in the memory more
Retired airline pilot. Hundreds of hours in level D sims. Decades of experience with desktop flight simulations. Two things:
1) There is NO replacing proper flight training from qualified instructors.
2) There IS immense (potential) value from flight simulation, whether a level D sim, or a desktop sim (and especially with the advent of VR).