It's sad that so few of you seem to have played X-Wing, Tie Fighter, or X-Wing Alliance. They're excellent space flight "simulators." The main gameplay mechanic was the ability to shunt energy between thrusters, shields, and weapons. The games had a fantastic UI, great controls (with a flightstick), and a definite lean towards arcade more than simulation. The CD versions also had excellent voice acting. X-wing is a pretty early game that suffers from repetitive missions and some janky limitations (a space station is like 4 cargo containers roped together, lol) but Tie Fighter is beyond excellent and features a story campaign starring Admiral Thrawn, the only good character to emerge from the shit pile that is the extended universe. Alliance was a return to form after the misstep of the vs. game, but Tie Fighter still gets top billing as the best of the Star Wars flight sims.
I honestly can't recommend Tie Fighter enough.
If you find you really like space flight sims, there's also the Wing Commander series and Descent: Freespace 1 and 2. Freespace especially is just a shameless rip-off of Larry Holland's games but does bring something new to the table with branching story paths from mission failures. Good stuff! I guess we will also have Star Citizen some time in the distant future...
N64 Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo, and GC Rogue Squadron 2 were also very good games.