For "normal" (read: contemporary civilian) flight simming, I am not aware of any new developments besides FSX (or its quasi-successor Prepar3D) and X-Plane. FSX with good add-on aircraft (RealAir which you were working with IIRC; A2A, PMDG, Dodosim JetRanger) is still ok and fun. Briefly tried X-Plane, too, but although the aerodynamics appear indeed to be well simulated, the overall feel was too much "paper plane" for me.
For pure "make-believe flying immersion", my favourites are:
a) Rise of Flight (free with three planes). WWI aircraft, so purely seat-of-the-pants VFR, where PC(?) sims are obviously extremely limited in their "realism" compared to, e.g., procedure training, but IMHO within these restrictions they did an awesome job of creating the illusion of flying an airplane, especially at the border zones of the flight envelope, and the damage model is enjoyable, too;
b) based on my very scarce dual rotary experience, the DCS Huey is a well-simulated aircraft, too.