Ground life
I'd like to see a mission briefing with a 3d room and an officer telling you what your mission is, you can review your flight assignments with your wingmen and talk to loadout guy about loadout if thats how they do it in the military I don't know maybe someone could clarify that for me. As well as in flight reactions to orders and dialogue a bit like a Freespace 2 mission or 1 for that matter. This would work well with flaming cliffs as its a very scripted game. The only problem would be how radical a change would this be and would it be suited to another game altogether a new one for instance but that's as may be. If you've every played Wings of Glory you know what kind of game this would be. It is immersion that's the key factor here. Sure you could just have a text briefing but where's the sport in that as monty python says in the mosquito hunting sketch! and you should as someone said previously on this thread be able to walk around the airbase aka Take on Helicopters and climb into the plane - that would be my ideal sim, with the advanced flgiht models missile bevahiour which is new etc. of course. But these are mre than just bells and whistles they are essential in my opinion for a sim which hasn't got that missing experience feel.
One final thing. Simulators have ignored these aspects for too long when was the last sim you played that had this and a great storyline
We all slap around about realism but whats realistic as well is characters and virtual pilots who talk to you not just flight models in fact without characters it's more or less an empty shell imagine bridge commander or star trek the series for that matter with probes with no one on board.
Don't mean to be harsh but that's my opinion and I have always stuck by it.