There are two big things that even folks using "realistic" settings forget.
First, flying a high performance airplane requires a high degree of athleticism, especially if you're pulling serious Gs, and/or you're flying a plane which doesn't have powered control surfaces (and sometimes even then).
Pilots from WW1 and WW2 could easily be physically exhausted just from having to wrestle heavy control surfaces in otherwise "normal" flight. In combat, pilots would get a physical workout pushing on the pedals, pulling the stick/yoke and trying to move around while being pressed down by G forces. That was one of the rationales for choosing young men as pilots.
Second, even the best game graphics and HD screens cannot mimic the real world as seen using the Mk.I Eyeball. Even flying on "full real" settings, you can still typically see distant aircraft far more easily than a real pilot/air crewman could, because the world you see on screen nicely compresses everything into two dimensions. Real life aces spent hours learning how to spot distant aircraft, and rookies were functionally "blind" in that regard.
On the other hand, that 2D display also messes with your depth perception, and graphics which provide less than 15 million pixels per inch resolution (the approximate resolution of the human eye) aren't going to give you the same detail about what you see as you'd get in real life. With that in mind, there's nothing "unrealistic" about having some variety of padlocking and HUD information about targets.
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