I found reading this thread very interesting, and although i'm far from being a pro, I can't resist to adding ( at least ) a couple of cents, although I'm conscious I'm way out of the majority of users.
My first love has been for military sims, jets and props, and I've been going through the whole Microprose era, discovered Lan meetings before the internet when we drove hours with all the stuff in the car to build a network for the week end in the hall of some remote village. I kind of miss that time because we were meeting "in real", and had good times through the night with Coca Cola and