S!
I see what you mean, but if you compare today's piston engines to WW2 ones there is a difference
Take a "lawn mower" Lycoming that powers those Cessnas/Pipers and compare to a RR Merlin/Daimler-Benz, the difference is quite huge. Today's engines are low hp without chargers etc. to give affordable flight hours and being reliable/easy to maintain and also air cooled for most part. The WW2 engines were built to deliver power at a wide range of altitudes, mostly liquid cooled and sophisticated in contrsuction, for example the DB600-series had fuel injection etc. To put it like this: Lycoming is the old Beetle engine and the RR/DB is a Formula 1 engine.
So operating these engines differs quite a bit as the margins with the "war engines" are smaller and require more attention from the pilot, tedious maintenance to dish out the HP and be somewhat reliable. With the Lycomings and similar the flying and maintenance is VERY simple, requiring less. Done some on Lycomings
So that is what SoW should bring, attention to what you do and how you manage the engine. SoW will bring more high fidelity and also wear & tear, if still in the features. You need to watch those gauges, in IL-2 they are more or less just showing something and you do not have to worry much.
The design philosophy also plays a role in a sim, if modelled. If you compare Hurricane/Spitfire vs Bf109E cockpits, there are more levers and stuff to operate in the RAF birds than in Bf109E, which increases the workload for the pilot. Compare today's HOTAS jets against the older jets and you see the same difference. Less work for the pilot = more of his resources are committed to fighting.
Oh well..the wait is nearing it's end soonish so we will see