Spent the weekend building a sim rig for basically nothing and I'm kicking myself for waiting this long

The reclined posture thing clicked for me too, but it took me months to figure out. I spent a while at a proper desk setup with an adjustable chair and never stuck with it. Then one night I was too lazy to set it all up so I just flopped on the couch with the radio in my lap, elbows on the armrests, and my hover stability actually got better within a session. Turns out my arms flying from a rigid seated position was nothing like how I hold them at the field. For anyone struggling with sim motivation, I'd add that the graphics settings thing matters more than people think. My old laptop would stutter every time I got near an object, and that tiny hitch wrecked my muscle memory for proximity flying. Dropping everything to medium and capping the resolution fixed it. Smooth and ugly beats pretty and choppy every time.

One thing that helped me was keeping the sim installed and ready, no plugging and unplugging cables every time. I leave the USB cable permanently velcroed to the side of the couch now. If getting started takes more than a minute I know I'll skip the session, especally on weeknights when I've only got half an hour before my eyes get tired. Three weeks in and I finally did my first real gaps at the local spot without golfing half a pack. The sim hours transferred better than I expected, mostly on the small thumb corrections like you said.

Interesting that reclining works for you, because I went through the same motivation slump and landed somewhere completly diferent. I fly mine standing up with the radio on a neck strap, same as I do at the field. I tried the desk and the couch thing first and my sim flying never transferred to the real quad, my thumb just kept expecting the weight of the rig hanging off my neck and the little shift in stance when I yaw my body through a flow. Once I started doing hour-long sessions on my feet in the garage, throttling through gaps in Velocidrone started feeling like the real thing instead of a different sport.

The garage part matters more than I expected too. Concrete floor, cold in winter, no wife walking through frame, and I can crank music without bothering anyone. My setup is dumber than a camp chair though, it's just an old HDMI cable run through the wall to a spare monitor on a bar stool so I can see the screen from standing distance. Only tip I'd add for anyone struggling with smoothness, cap your framerate below what your machine peaks at. My old laptop ran choppy even on low settings untill I locked it at 60 and the stutter disappeared, which made a bigger difference than any graphics setting.

The invisible drone bit made me laugh, my kid films me doing that now and shows it to everyone. I went a different route with the seating, I sit on an exercise ball and it forces me to keep my hands independent instead of anchoring my elbows on armrests. Took about a week to stop wobbling but it cleaned up my sticks. Curious which sim you landed on btw, I bounced between a few before I found one where the gaps acutally feel like my local spot. Once that clicked the hours piled up on thier own.

I'm coming at this from the other direction, still saving up for my first real quad so the sim is all I've got right now. Reading this makes me wonder if I'm building bad habits before I even fly for real. I fly on a kitchen stool with the laptop on the counter and it's fine for now but my thumbs definatly get lazy slouching like that. Is throttle control something you'd say a beginner should grind before buying, or is it better to just get a quad early and split the time? Feels like there's a point where sim hours stop paying off without the real thing to back them up.

The thing that made the difference for me on tiny corrections was a pair of taller stick ends off a cheap pack of spares. I'd been flying with the stock short ones and my thumbs kept overcooking inputs on gaps, same in the sim as at the field. Swapped them one night while flying on the laptop and suddenly the micro throttle taps felt repeatable instead of lucky. Took a couple sessions to retrain but now my hands know where center is without looking. Curious if anyone else has messed with stick length, feels like half the sim transfer problem for me was my fingers hunting for the right spot.

Update: a few weeks in and the camp chair setup is still going strong. Tried the exercise ball thing after reading that reply here, and honestly my arms were all over the place for two days, but it did expose how much I was anchoring my elbows. Switched back to the chair but now I hover my hands free of the armrests during gaps and it cleaned up my line precision a lot.