Just to add to this discussion ...

Flight sims aren't dying because of the community. The hardcore community has always been there for many years through many different simulations.

What has changed is that PC games publishers are no longer willing to invest the amounts of money and time required to develop a AAA flight sim when they can go and develop a console game that will sell a lot more units and make a heck of a lot more money.

That is why most of the combat flight sim development has shifted to Eastern Europe and Russia where development costs are infinitely lower than the U.S. Notice that there are almost no US flight sim developers left. Of course Microsoft still has Flight Simulator but that is the only one.

The only other U.S. developers still writing sims are those publishing pay-per-play online games. IL2 and LOMAC both come from Russia. Quite a few PC games are now coming from Russia and East Europe.

Except for some major PC games franchises very few U.S. devs are still writing PC games. It may be cyclic and we may see a resurgence but the days of big ticket flightsims coming from the U.S. market are well and truly over.