I wish someone had beat the living crap out of me for thinking otherwise. I bought the Garmin G1000 simulator, which was an excellent tool for learning the G1000 functions such as how to load approaches, etc. I spent a lot of time messing with it and figured I could just get a safety pilot and go right into flying practice approaches on my way to my instrument ticket. I spent somewhere between 10-15 hours and finally realized I wasn't flying approaches any better than when I started. I finally got a good instrument instructor and we started from scratch on basic attitude insrument flying. It was another 10-15 hours of progressively harder drills before I ever saw another approach plate. However, once I developed my attitude instrument and scanning skills, flying approaches became much easier and simply a matter of figuring out how to stay ahead of the approach.