Aren't there several anecdotes where veteran fighter pilots try one of these sims and comment that it is *HARDER* than flying the real thing?
Okay, there are four areas where AHII's realism might be questioned:
1-Stall-limiter. Actually, I don't know if these even warrants a mention, since few people use it and it is basically a disadvantage to anyone who does.
2.-Combat trim. I've flown Il2 and honestly, manual trim doesn't raise the workload all that much. Now there are some planes which don't *have* three axis trim...if you have a twisty stick instead of pedals, that is annoying, trust me on this. Honestly, considering extra difficulty trimming/and or flying not perfectly trimmed presents on a computer and joystick, I favor leaving it as is.
3.-Engine management. This is another thing from Il2 which doesn't really change all that much IMHO. AHII's engine management is not complex, but it *does* limit you to staying within conservative settings. There is a factor people don't think about: With a "realistic" level of control over engine management, you could run your engine in a way that would wear it slap out after a couple of sorties, a factor you do not worry about since you get a "new" aircraft every sortie. AHII's system prevents that. There is one further objection, systems that use water/water-methanol objection never run out of it-there is that. However, IIRC, most of these systems had at least 10 minutes worth of fluids, which is alot of WEP time, at least by MA standards. So this is another change I can take or leave.
4. Auto-retract flaps. This is the one change that might have an effect on gameplay. After lots of incidences of having flaps torn off or jammed, people might be as reluctant to use flaps as heavily as we do in-game, and would stick with the maneuvering settings that have a wide safety margin at high airspeeds.