CLOD works perfectly on my computer. I have all the joysticks and fiddly bits and a massive monitor and it runs like a dream.

Despite that I haven't played it in months. There's just no content. The online community is terrible, there's only 1 game mode (basically Air Quake) and there's to high a percentage of online players who are outright hostile to you if you so much as hint at not knowing how to do everything.

As far as realism goes, they tried too hard to make it realistic to the point where in a lot of ways it's less realistic than IL-2 or even Wings of Prey. When writing CLOD they focused so much on visuals and button switching that they forgot to make any compromises based on the fact that everyone playing this game is doing so while sitting at a desk viewing the world through a computer monitor.

Spend your money on something else.