now that i've read part 2 i guess it's time to buy a joystick and get back into the cockpit again! great article, thanks for bringing back so many games to my memory, i've totally forgotten how much i used to play combat sims.
the only thing i'd like to add is that in my opinion the x-wing series actually got less sim-like with every sequel. while tie fighter was excellent, x-wing alliance was more of an action game that featured poor joystick support and was better played with a fps style mouse+wasd method. the game also felt more like a corridor shooter (descent or forsaken for example) than a space flight sim.
as for the criticism that part 2 was more like a well written wikipedia entry, you can only do so much.
of course there are many things left out, but considering that the genre was huge with a very large number of games released, you can't go too much into details or you would end up writing 7 pages on every single type of sim.
just think about all the fps and action adventures/tomb raider clones that were released in the last decade in comparison.