I see what you mean
You should add the fact that the ME-262 engines acts like the world most powerfull airbrake when they are shut down. Shutting down those motors is even more efficient than a Cobra on a Sukhoi ;D
But there we are talking about incorrect aircraft/weapons data. In that case, any product of MS should be categorized as a game, X-plane should as well, etc.... and there would be very few sims out there.
It seems to me that the difference between a sim and a game is the way they model the stuff, the amount of parameters that are taken into consideration.
In the IL-2 / PF case, it is theorically possible to tweak the data to make it more fidel to the real thing. Things like weapon efficiency, max engine power, manoeuvrability etc...
In a game, there are so much missing features that even by tweaking, you would never ever get close to anything real.
So you are right in saying that with its current settings/data, the IL2 franchise lacks a lot of realism. But nevertheless it's still a simulator, because of the amount of parameters that are handled, even if a lot of those parameters currently have wrong values
