Thanks for asking, that is important.
We fly close to full real. Closed cockpit, realistic engine management, we do allow your own icon to be on map, padlock and speedbar are allowed, we generally use icons, other than that it's full real.
We are more about having fun than trying to be hardcore, so settings are negotiable. We all pretty much like to keep it as real as possible, but make up for the fact that we are constrained to a game. In real life you can squint your eyes and focus distances better, where you can't in the game. So icons are allowed to account for this. etc, etc.
If you're interested at all, check out our website:
http://spartans191.guildlaunch.com. Not all parts of the site are viewable to non-members, but you should be able to get a good feel for who we are.