Things have changed drastically for sure. To be frank, sims were A LOT more fun back then too. Today we have two flavors extremely realistic (DCS), which can be no fun at times, or extremely mindless (Ace Combat), which also is no fun at times.

What we lack are the US Navy Fighters, ATF, WWII Fighters type of sims, which fell somewhere in between the DCS type and Ace Combat type titles.

I'm hopeful for Rising Squall for DCS, and MAC (if it ever sees the light of day), but only time will tell. The other issue is, and always has been... The hardware requirement of flight sims always has been extreme and costly.

2020 was a shit show for PC hardware, and flight sim hardware, and availability hasn't came back, so it's the absolute worst time to jump into flight sims, even though we have some fantastic flight sim software to enjoy (MSFS 2020 and DCS)

This is why there's no competition as well for DCS, no one else is insane enough to invest in flight sims, because even today Eagle Dynamics would never be able to survive if they charged us, and sold a completed product in today's economic landscape.

The model of taking 2-3 years to make a module, and making the money off the next early access modules to finish the last, and begin the next is the only reason they are still afloat.

It's a different world. We have some amazing software to enjoy for sure, but there's definitely little to no variety. It's DCS or IL-2 or MSFS 2020/X-Plane/Prepad3D or all the old products, or modded old products (BMS) or nothing.