While some aspects have become more realistic it has always been the case that difficulty settings can be modified and the realism settings can be turned down as per each players preferences.
I'm not sure if you've noticed by in 4.10 and again in 4.11 the realism area got a bit of a workover and there are now even more fine tuning options so that you can turn off fragile torpedoes, use more basic bomb arming (i.e. they always go off no matter what you do), use easier to aim rockets, etc. Some of that was just done and some of it was community request but I think it looks pretty good.
The realism factors on IL-2 have always gone up. More realistic damage modeling, flight modeling, etc. have always been introduced as time went on. When 4.01 came out years ago it introduced a totally new flight modeling system that was meant as a kind of test bed for Cliffs of Dover. It totally changed how we all flew... but everyone has adapted nicely. Many people newer to the game never knew what it used to be like
