I'm hopeful with the advent of YouTube and high quality video capture and streaming, we'll see video-based ground school lessons emerge that can partner with lessons.
Who knows, perhaps there's a mini business model here for creators to sell (via Patreon or even the built-in store?) curated mission lessons that go along with their YouTube content? I believe MS has confirmed you'll be able to make mission packs and distribute them via the store. And given how fast the modding is taking off, you probably already can drag a folder into your Community packages folder and have it work.
I personally played FS2020 and gave up after completing the tutorials because I didn't know what I was doing still. I feel like I could enjoy the game a lot, but a good tutorial makes or breaks a game for me. If I have to do a lot of work outside of a game just to enjoy the game it seems pointless to me.
Unfortunately they missed quite a few important things in the missions (another commenter mentioned not being told to retract flaps after takeoff).
I do wonder if part of the interesting aspect of this being a sim is that you can actually go online and watch or read a real flying lesson. Perhaps that's the direction they're trying to go in? So far, the community has been doing really well in fixing up scenery, perhaps Asobo are hoping for others to fill the gap with mods.
Re needing to pay, I'm sure there would be excellent free content on learning it (in fact there already is online), but with value added structured lessons as a potential mini product.
Many of us who are playing today also got our start with very simple and forgiving sims. When I got into them, there was no mixture, no prop pitch, no spins, no torque, and no p-factor (which was good, because I didn't bother binding rudder controls). It's a lot easier if you enable that stuff a few at a time, once you get the hang of the basics.
You do not need to buy extra content, controllers, etc to "play the game". But you can spend a lot of money to make it as realistic as you want.
Similar to FPS games coaching.
Instead of getting into your region's Platinum rank in Overwatch, you learn to solo fly a new type of aircraft with AI assistance turned off.
A "shared cockpit" remotely controlled plane mod to facilitate training in flight school would probably be helpful, but then if you start going down that route, you'd likely want a force feedback stick/yoke (and something like FS Force) to give you the ability to see and feel what's happening.
The only part I'm unsure of is if it's difficult enough to fly solo without AI assists to merit all this? Very hard to gauge when you can do it already. But still will be interesting to see what happens.
Pun intended?
seemed about 70% mixture gave me best performance.