its not just the graphics imo, this dev have it aligned correctly in his mind I would say
I look at games like the classic Jane’s Fighters’ series, or the earlier MicroProse games like F-19 and marvel at their elegant simplicity and game design choices. I think it takes a lot of confidence in your game to eschew realism the way those games did, because in a lot of ways it’s “easier” to just copy real life and hope for the best.
Realism is way overrated. People will always tell you they want more realism, but I don’t think most understand the far-reaching implications it has. A common design trap is the idea that adding realism makes a game better.
I think a lot about the Jane’s series of games and how they’re so much fun and so beloved by the flight sim community, and how those games are a lot closer to Ace Combat style games than I think most fans would ever admit. What Jane’s does so brilliantly is that it dresses up its very arcade gameplay in real life acronyms, concepts, a licensed name with weight, and a very grounded presentation, to trick people into thinking it’s a simulator.
On a mechanical level, it’s pretty much an arcade flying game, but if you had a button to manually turn your radar on, and had limited missiles. The Jane’s Fighters series practically wrote the book on how to gamify modern air combat into what people think modern air combat is like.
Unless you are specifically setting out to make a high fidelity simulator (which I don’t recommend for a multitude of reasons) I think it’s far more important that your game feels realistic, rather than actually being realistic. It’s a fine line to walk, and it’s something I worry about with my own game all the time. The best examples of the genre know how to walk that line, and are confident that their design decisions make for a better experience overall.