I wish the whole 'hardcore' simmer thing would die in fire.
I doubt most of us started with anything more than a joystick to crash our jets and choppers into the ground in new and interesting ways.
And yet at times it seems as though the flight sim community goes out of its way to be as uninviting as possible to newbies. It is as if you don't have a cockpit in your house, a 7 monitor setup, track-ir, pedals, a 400 dollar hotas, and adhere to realistic comms your opinion doesn't count and there is no place for you. But those same people will insist on doing SEAD against SA-11's in the A-10C while carrying 6 mavericks, 6 GBU-12's, 2 GBU-38's and whatever else they can stuff under the wings, so go figure.
As much as I love flight sims it does not really surprise me that it is such a niche market.
Last I checked my enlistment is up, I was never commissioned in any branch of the military to fly jets or choppers, and so I'm not a hardcore simmer. And if my friends want to fly with labels on, that's cool with me. I'll just try to find targets with the tgp from even further out, before the dots start showing up.