My brother was a check airmen for one of the airlines he worked for. I got to play in one of the big simulators with him on one occasion. It was very important to fly that simulator by the numbers, when I tried to land the simulator without using the instruments, the seat of my pants didn't work out well for me. I think these fly by wire complex aircraft do tend to insulate the pilots from the basics of flight and maybe that can become a problem at some point.
The inverse can be a little humorous. I have an old Rogallo style hang glider that can be towed behind a boat. I tried to get my brother who is a Captain for a major airline up in it once and it sort of freaked him out. It is basically a big kite when towed behind the boat. We use about 500 feet of line; it comes off the water at only 15 mph, less than 10 mph when launching into the wind. Unlike a parasail you can control its altitude and guide it from side by side and even release from the tow line and land on shore or soar the ridge lift from nearby cliffs. My brother was certain the glider was going to drop out of the sky and kill him at at any moment. He was however the first one to test fly my Skypup ultralight which has no flight instruments and loves it.
Later he relayed an anecdote to me.
On one of his check out flights as a new right seater, they spent 45 minutes on the tarmac trying to program a balky NAV computer for their flight. Everytime they got it programmed, they had to redo it based on changing weather conditions and other issues, e.g., ATC and traffic. Finally in frustration my friend exclaimed, "Why don't we just kick the tires, light the fire, and fly this bird to where we're going?". The left seater just looked at him like he had three heads. What?!?!? Fly, what is that?
He told me that he had no doubt that I - merely a virtual pilot - could probably fly one of the big liners as well as any of the crew with several thousand hours under their belts (and probably IFR too). But in commericial aviation nobody just flys anywhere anymore.