With regards to the question, "will we ever know what actually happened" . I wonder do Air France and or Airbus already know, would it be possible to recreate a series of test either in the sim or with a computer program that would stream the same infomation that air france recieved during the last moments prior to power lose and or break up of the aircraft?
I'm sure that Airbus and Airfrance have a short list of possibilities, but in all likelyhood no conclusions down to only one. The difficulty is not the simulation it's the validity to the assumptions that you would input. No doubt thousands of MSflightsimmers on these internet forums have crashed this flight hundreds of time with their own guesses (err simulations)