Fill in the contexts, shall we?
If you make the DM more realistic then the game would be harder to succeed in (for me). True it would be harder to fail in as well, but AH has always been about playability (for me), about being a fun and mostly believable game, (which definition of 'believable', happens to be a game which lets me get 10 kills in a matter of minutes).
I stopped playing IL2 online because it was too much work for too little gain (or in other words, I just couldn't adapt to it)... (plus the .50s were pathetically undermoded "IMO" (I mean, I couldn't shoot down something with .50s - if the .50s were modelled right, the fact that I couldn't fully adapt to the game shouldn't matter - if I shoot, the wings should come off! Teh 50s ArE the R0XX0rS!). In AH I can come into the arena and within a matter of minutes have 10 kills under my belt. I like that (and that's what really matters to me. Who cares if the game changes to something that more closely resembles real life?)
I was also one of the smug folk who thought AH was simply the best in everything. I'd sit down and play IL-2, and see that I'm getting my butt kicked in situations which in AH would've been different, and I'd sit down and think to myself
"total bullshi* - obviously the game's wrong." That went on for the first few months - until I got used to the restrictive view system. Played both AH and IL2/FB (and all the diddly add-ons) extensively, and reached the conclusion the 1C:Maddox folk almost perfected the DM system.
Frankly, anyone who'd suggest the AH DM is even remotely superior over IL-2/FB's is either seriously biased or insane. And bringing in the 'gameplay excuse' is a just a classic cop-out. The general difficulty and success rates of aerial gunnery in IL-2/FB matches real life instances much more closely than AH, and the effects of gunnery (DM) are much more profound and believable.
There used to be the same bullshi* 'concerns' about the refined gunnery when AH2 beta came out - how people obviously will not be able to cope with a more realistic gunnery, and that kind of 'too much realism' would ruin the game and make customers go away.
As it turns out, those claims proved to be exactly what it is - a crock of bullshi*. The average gunnery distances in AH1 was way over 500 yards, easily upto 600 and occasionally 800 to 1000. The refined hit detection reduced the gunnery range down to 300~400 yards (which btw, is still way too far) - people had trouble for the first month or so, and they easily adapted to it ever since.
It's not as if refining the DM realistically is the same thing as asking "8-hour-flights-to-target" sort of realism. The DM is directly related to combat and frankly higher level of detail in such components of the game only
enhances the fun, not deterrs it.
Any flightsim that depicts hydraulic fluids catching fire, and then the flames dying out after the fluids are all spent, is superb in my book. Or, a sim that depicts damaged throttle gates, the pilot rudely realizing that his throttle system has been rendered unresponsive by enemy fire.
Can AH offer that kind of heart-pounding immersion with its DM?
