Maybe because the old birds are a sort of hobby within the hobby, I'm pretty tolerant about the numbers. I wouldn't know if they were right or wrong. I understand why they are important to some people, just not me. In the end, it's me maintaining speed and altitude, and there is going to be some combination of thrust and control inputs that will do that. There will be some sort of rudimentary autopilot to reduce the workload. Beyond that, I'm not interested if the EPR settings are the same as the real airplane. I'm just speaking for myself.

I remember how many people said the 727 was dreadfully UNDERPOWERED (especially the -100). Yet it's one of my favorite airplanes, and seems okay to me. If you don't keep your engine spooled up during approach, you're liable to fall out of the sky. Just like real 727s did before pilots learned how to fly them properly.

I was reading the 737 section. Man, how depressing. A minimum of three separate mods before you can even go near the thing? I've only gotten around to flying the 737 once. I made a circuit and came back to a perfect landing. Surely an airplane that was all that broken couldn't produce such a result?

I'm not criticizing anyone. It is the same in other hobbies. I also like to play wargames. There are those who want to know armor slope and thickness for a Mark IV tank and calculate the effect of every round. Then there are those who will accept a greater level of abstraction to keep things enjoyable for them, and, after a fashion, realistic, too.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out from the forum which airplanes are just botched and not worth my time, and which work just fine, but some people would like to see more realism with. The forum is for everyone, and everyone's tastes, so it's not really a problem. Maybe a bit of a frustration for those who are not as oriented toward realism.