I found the bit about looking down at the console in the ship to be interesting. I had a bit of a similar experience after playing racing games for years, then finally getting on the track in real life on a motorcycle. In a racing game you can pretty easily keep an eye on the speedometer to set corner entry speeds, etc. In real life you simply do not have time to take your eyes off the track and look down at the speedometer. You have to do it by feel. It's a very important skill for real life racers, and something you could never develop to any accuracy from a tv screen - a sense of your actual speed.