Welcome to the community and welcome to the IF mobile sim.
Yes, it’s serious money, but once you fully grasp what you get for your money, I’m sure you find it money well spent.
Here’s more on this forum:
https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/a-beginners-guide-to-the-forum/241516
Using IF in (just) solo mode, is great for learning how to fly, takeoff, approach and land. In Live mode, on Casual server a new world opens as suddenly you’re not alone anymore. Here the realism of flying is taken a big step forward, where you learn to be on an airport and in the sky with other pilots. The cool part about Casual is that you can’t get violations. You can taxi and fly as fast as you want, do loops, all without violations. This changes on the Trainining server. In this learning environment you need to stick to the basic rules; if not you’ll get violations.
Observing these rules above, will stop you from getting violations. I recommend you make it your personal goal to keep the violations counter to 0. That would make you quite unique by the way 😉 Remember, violations are generated by the IF system; they get never reset back to 0. As you get further in this game, you’ll discover that getting violations is not something you want.
On Training server your world changes again, as you will have airports with live air traffic controllers. Ground, Tower, Approach and Departure controllers all have their specific role to guide pilots. As everywhere, you find here serious players who want to learn, and less serious players, who are just there to have a bit of fun. The choice is up to you.
I recommend you check out the #tutorials section. There’s so much to learn about aviation there, and on specific stuff for IF.
If you ever have questions, search this forum. There’s a good chance you find answers there. If not, feel free to ask! You’ll find heaps of very helpful people here.