Why is this:

still the best space sim/fighter in over 10 years?

Ok, there have been others...Freespace was a great attempt at a space simulator, and I bet there's others I missed out on.

But they're probably all at least 5 years old!  Why have we gotten so many FPSs and RTSs with graphical and gameplay improvements continuously over the years, but not flight games?

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks it's awesome to get a joystick or gamepad and shoot down a bunch of baddies...why does this genre not get developed more?

I love Xwing!

Hopefully Star Wars Battlefront III will fix that

Yeah I miss the TIE Fighter and Freespace days... I guess we need some new sci-fi movies with epic space battles to inspire devs.

I remembered as a Kid playing the star wars on arcade... It was the top of the top

A great attempt?  Freespace (and much more so, Freespace 2) was @#$%&*ing awesome!

BTW, I'm in the middle of a game of X-Wing Alliance.  :) 

I know! It's gotten to the point that a friend of mine is talking about programming his own. We'll see if that project gets off the ground or not.

Best space sim I've seen was called Terminus, but I only played the demo and couldn't find a copy (legal or not) a couple years later. It used actual inertia instead of magically fixing your trajectory to match your ship's orientation, and managed to set up the controls and HUD so that this situation was useful and fun instead of a nuisance.

Ok, sorry for calling it an "attempt"...but I didn't play the Freespace games in depth til recently...so I guess I'm not as wowed as I would have been in the past...though it is pretty sweet.

Have you gotten to Freespace 2 yet? IMO there is no equal in the space combat genre as far as having the story unfold while you're in mission (XWA is a close second, and Freelancer comes in a strong third). Also, the beam weapons, flak guns, missiles, energy weapons, and ship designs are incredibly creative and really make the universe come alive. There is nothing more awesome than making a strafing run in between two opposing cruisers trading beam fire and flak explosions, and fighting to control your ship while unloading a stream of fire from your maxim cannons and dumbfire rockets. :D