Well there are some air combat sims out there with better looking graphics than AH, but I don't think they were built to handle 300+ planes in the same arena at the same time. I'm sure there are tradeoffs that needed to be made to support that.
As far as that top 10 list, they could've stipulated "of all time" because there were a number of those titles featured where the graphics were so primitive I could barely watch. I'd be much more interested if they limited it to current titles, and I have no doubt AH3 should rank in the Top 10 on that list. It's just not well-known enough as a sim I think.