I fly both AH and WB... flown WB since Mac beta came out. I still like WB a lot, but mainly for scenarios. When I came to AH, I found that adapting to the flight model was very challenging, even more so back in AH version 1.00 with it's higher E-bleed model. But once I got used to it, I found that AH offers a much more precise control of my plane in AH... it feels better to me. Tactics I read about in books that were used in real life can actually be used here. Of course, I'm not a pilot so I'm essentially talking out my bellybutton when it comes to flight model matters.
As far as the connections go, have you played WB *recently*?? They got their bandwidth throttled at the ISP to a third of what it was (not that it ever was that great of a connection). Ping times are now frequently in excess of 2000ms for many players--two whole seconds!! My connect went from 50ms to 200ms but I'm still seeing huge warps and delayed kills and deaths. WB is completely unplayable right now. AH in comparison has had
rock solid connections from day one, with only occasional short warpy periods when new versions come out. There are sometimes freak discoes, but traceroutes usually show a problem somewhere in Sprint-land (damn crappy backbone provider!!).
What kind of connection you playing on Dobrmn? Why don't you take up this issue in the Internet Connectivity forum, post some traceroutes. If you're actually interested in fixing your problems I think Skuzzy and crew can help you out.
As far as the flight model goes, give it some time. It is challenging, but it
will grow on you. If you're looking to jump in a cockpit and start racking up kills from day one, you're setting yourself up for bigtime disappointment, dude.
BTW, you can turn off that walk to map room, walk to plane roadkill. Click on GUI and reduce the move time all the way to zero. I think that sucks too.
Oh, and to address the graphics issue, after seeing the GeForce3 demo with John Carmack showing Doom3, I'll agree with you that AH graphics suck in comparison, but it's gonna be a while before you will see photorealistic graphics like that here or in any sim. And as with WB, the graphics weren't what drew me into this game... it's the action.
As usual... my US$0.02, YMMV, etc.