In the two months since I have owned RealFlight G4, my flying skills have doubled. I know that RealFlight improves actual flying skills because I also fly indoors on Sundays. I can see the improvements every week.
I am also very pleased that my helicopter hover skills are improving so much that it looks like I will eventually be good at flying helicopters. My initial skills were so bad it looked like I was never going to get it.
One more thing that I like about RealFlight G4, I found the actual plane that I fly in the Summer (GWS Slow Stick) (on KnifeEdge swap pages) and this plane flies exactly and precisely like my real plane. It even has the weird three foot of vertical then stall and recover that my Slow Stick has.
I initially thought that $200 was way too much to pay, but, I am now sure that it was well worth the cost. Not only is it a lot of fun, I am sure that I am saving a lot of money in prevented crashes as my skills greatly imrpove.
*** NOTE *** The actual RealFlight simulator flies much better than the free download. The biggest issue with the free download is that the keyboard does not provide nearly the same degree of precise control that the InterLink box does.