Ah, but his ain't DCS. 
It's true, but I doubt very much that Tishin will ever allow DCS to become anything like AH. The developers for the Addon Mods are starving companies with very little money to be had, and the real money comes from their military trainers (although, you would have to pay just to find out what they are like). DCS would be a lot more fun if it would adopt the HTC approach to arena play, and HTC would make more money if they adopted the DCS approach to module sales. At some point though the drive for dollars choke out the market, which is why payware games (micro-transactions) are killing the game industry. The worst thing a game developer can possibly do is develop a game for a particular userbase, and then strip out items of the game to be sold in microtransactions. Yet, this is exactly what Steam users are asking HTC to do to "save" AH.
It's my opinion that the next best thing for HTC to do would be to start building combat arenas based on the Pacific theater for DCS type gameplay, but unfortunately it will be years from now before enough aircraft are available to use DCS as a starting place. If you love ACM then AH3 is the best place to be. Those other games are just fluff. That said, I would love to have the option for cockpit realism. Some fluff is a good thing, which is why I think AH3 has the best sound engine going (yes, I have dealt with DCS before), and potentially that could make the difference. Remember, sound is half the experience.
