> Many years ago I was big into X-Plane. But it seems like so much of the development and community is focused on making the graphics as pretty as possible, instead of making the flying as realistic as possible. I'd easily take the tradeoff of rudimentary graphics with incredibly realistic controls and aircraft behavior over rich landscapes and fancy liveries......

This is not the case at all. The flight model is pretty good. The bundled aircraft may not be as good. But is that really a surprise?

There are many third party vendors with realistic aircraft. Try Airfoilab's Cessna 172, or Zibo Mod (free) for the 737, to name two.