Some interesting discussion in these threads:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=112775.0 and
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=128112.0I can't believe I'm doing this, but if you want to slowly grow into playing hardcore flight sims, I'm going to suggest War Thunder. Here's why:
1) It's free!
2) It's freeeeeeeeeeeeee!
3) It's freeeeeee...quent to have fun in that game?
4) It has gameplay that is very similar to what people seem to enjoy these days, including a relatively OK unlocky metagame that gives you more and more content.
5) You can build up the realism level slowly. There's 3 modes, starting with Arcade which is absolutely a-historical, you just go and shoot people. Then there's historical, which is still fairly a-historical, like F4F Wildcats and F6F Hellcats attacking Berlin *eyeroll*, but where you only get one life and are forced to play a little more carefully. Finally, there's the full-real modes, which are somewhat comparable to IL-2's full-real modes, in that you probably need that joystick, and managing prop pitch might make a difference (even this was not well modelled in '46).
Rise of Flight is a free WW1 alternative, but it definitely be more towards full-real than War Thunder at first. And you pay for every plane (there's a couple of free ones though). The DCS series I would absolutely not recommend at first, as they are study sims. Which means literally spending hours to figure out how the plane works, including pouring over manuals, videos, tutorials, etc.
Again, the main point of Warthunder is that it begins as a nice, easy, quick and fun introduction to flight sims kind of like FPS in the air, but you can definitely build up to becoming more and more hardcore. If you eventually find out that hardcore is where it's at for you, then you should graduate over to '46, Cliffs of Dover, study sims and so forth. That's my suggestion
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Added another thread link to the top