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What's the most jaw dropping flight sim/game available, with shiny graphics and full TrackIR4 support?

I'm new to flight simulations, so I don't particularly want one where I have to read a book for a week just to take off. Also, one with battles, or some element of gaming would be good.

I've been looking around and was quite interested in BOB2, but the talk of crashes and performance issues worries me.

What should I be looking at..?

Many thanks in advance, regards,
Simon.

You're sort of asking for opposite things with your post. The better and more beautiful the sim, the more realistic it will be and therefore the steeper the learning curve. The more arcadish the sim the less graphically pleasing it will be but the easier it will be to play/fly. The thing with most sims today is that the developers are trying to make them more realistic and close to the real thing.

Most non-combat sims can have you flying in just a few minutes and then you can learn to take advantage of the other features the more you fly. FS2004 and X-Plane are both beautiful but very realistic. There are aircraft that are easier to fly like small cessnas or harder to fly like the big heavy jets or Wright Flyer.

As for WWII sims, IL-2 with ace expansion and pacific fighters add-on are beautiful if you like prop sims. For modern-day jet sims, Free Falcon Allied Force and Lock-on Modern Air Combat (LOMAC) are probably the most popular but these both have a bit of a learning curve, esp. FFAF.

I still play Jane's F/A-18 both off and online. THere is a very large community of us who fly (see the forums at [url=http://www.simhq.com)]www.simhq.com)[/url] together. There have been a ton of add-ons and campaigns and missions since this game came out in 1998. Plus, there are a lot of tutorials and training missions.

Those are the ones I've played. I can't speak for the others but you can't really go wrong with any of the ones I've mentioned. They all have somewhat of a learning curve, especially if you know nothing about flying. There's a drastic difference between PS2/Xbox games and PC flight-simulation games.

As for your question about TrackIR 4 support, you'll have to look at the list here.

It's not the best sim for gameplay, but Lock-On is the best looking sim out there and has excellent TIR support.