" Do you think War Thunder would have the crowds of weenies it does if their arenas matched fights were forced to use the AH flight model, and joysticks\ rudder peddals with no F3 mode? With half the players for each matchup AH vets who have been around for 5-10 years?"
Simulator servers are cockpit only, realistic settings, no icons, and FMs pretty damn good....
Now venture into the arcade and "realistic" setting then the flying of gunsights around with no cockpit obscuring your view is totally there....but evidently 20,000+ find that appealing (or maybe more find the tanks appealing...not sure).
But yeah, while 32 people on a server match seems small...32 people wanting to fight makes for fun times.