How would you accurately simulate the force needed to turn the trim wheel under aerodynamic loads that vary with elevator position? It sounds like a very tricky mechanical setup.
"What the U.S. crew found was eye-opening. Keeping the aircraft level required significant aft-column pressure by the captain, and aerodynamic forces prevented the first officer from moving the trim wheel a full turn. They resorted to a little-known procedure to regain control."
Alternatively, you could put an actual torque sensor between the motor and the control wheel, which might buy you some accuracy at considerably more expense. For a flight simulator, expense is unlikely to be an issue -- I tend not to have that luxury, and typically don't need that much accuracy anyway.
These kind of control systems are all over modern aircraft, much less simulators. Any new grad control systems engineer should be able to knock something like this out.
Or you just buy a COTS servo that does all that for you. Just saying, hardly a need to reinvent these particular wheels...
If you're training for trim runaway it would be helpful to simulate the full forces but I'm not sure if it reflects a worrying lack of preparedness.
The most important fix is that the MCAS should not be able to put the trim in an extreme position, the fact that it did is quite worrying.
This particular article seems much ado about very little.
There seems to be massive issues with the force required.
Root problem seems to be: Software puts trim in an extreme position. It should never do that.
Aviation Week article: if you are in an electric trim runaway, you need to turn off electric trim, then in order to turn the trim wheel manually, you need to nose down to reduce aerodynamic forces. Seems necessary to train for which it suggests was not the case.
NYT article: Simulator doesn't simulate the forces on the trim wheel correctly (although Aviation Week suggests they were able to simulate something useful)
The NYT article really seems like the least of the problems.