For those of you that are thinking about getting an aircraft with a fully functioning FMC I should warn you that these devices are not as simple as they look and there is a lot of information that has to go into them.
For starters you can not load a FSX generated flight plan into most of these so that means you will not be able to use ATC. and to make thing harder you can not enter a FSX generated flight plan into one of these because the NAV DATA BASE IN FSX is older than dirt. The current AIRC cycle is 1812 and the one that FSX uses is not even close to it so if you try to enter a waypoint the odds are it will not be in the FMC data base
in order to keep up with the AIRC cycles you have to purchase them from Navigraph but NAVIGRAPH will not update the nav data in FSX
Of course you can always not fly IFR and just use flight following
And to make things even more difficult there is more than one type of FMC I have two PAYWARE aircraft that have fully functioning FMC'S but they each have there own method of data entry. I prefer the one in my PMDG 737-800/900
you can use your keyboard to make data entries and the other one you have to use the keyboard on the FMC.
I am still learning how to use these devices as there is a lot to learn.
So if you struggled flying IFR flight plans I would think twice about programing a FMC as they can be a challenge but I love every minute of it.