The realism of some payware planes has increased drastically, from aerodynamics to systems and failure modeling. Unfortunately, high quality payware has become very expensive.
As for X-Plane itself, Austin Meyer doesn't seem to have lost his old modeling habits, which sometimes infuriate flight simmers. Remember when he read a book on ground physics and all the wheels and braking were messed up? Now he has mentioned in a live FAQ session that they do HDR lighting "the right way" and that's the reason why cockpits are so dark in relation to the outside...
As for X-Plane itself, Austin Meyer doesn't seem to have lost his old modeling habits, which sometimes infuriate flight simmers. Remember when he read a book on ground physics and all the wheels and braking were messed up? Now he has mentioned in a live FAQ session that they do HDR lighting "the right way" and that's the reason why cockpits are so dark in relation to the outside...