I was cleaning up the other day and found my trusty old Sidewinder 2 joystick in a box it has probably been living in for the past 15 years or so. Got me to thinking that there hasn’t been a decent space combat sim is ages - I think Freespace 2 is the last example I can remember.
Any other game families that seem to have disappeared into the mists of time?
Hmm, yah. I tried to fill this hole with Elite: Dangerous but couldn’t click with it. Star Wars: Squadrons is actually pretty great (and in VR it’s about the closest to flying an actual X-wing you’ll get!) but it’s quite brief and doesn’t have the sort of enduring value you’re touching on. Overload was a kind of Descent recreation, but for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on it felt like a floaty FPS rather than piloting a ship. And I love No Man’s Sky but it isn’t really a space combat sim (it doesn’t even support joystick controls, in fact).
A lot of the old Bullfrog games don’t seem to have had modern revivals either, like Syndicate and Magic Carpet. They never did respect genres, as such.
I don’t know if the game was actually released, but this conversation reminded me that Rogue System pique’d my curiosity when I read the article. (That was a few years ago!!)
Edit: Alliance Space Guard may be similar in the idea. 
Looks like it was actually released but development is currently paused:
As detailed in a Steam community forum post in 2018, the one-man development person suffered a head injury and is yet to return to working on Rogue System.
Oh, that’s a sad reason for it to be paused 
Last time I pulled out a joystick was X4:Foundations.
It’s not a new game, but is still actively being worked on.
As a 4X game, it has a lot more learning curve than most space sims though.
I enjoyed Squadrons, but didn’t complete it. I definitely should rectify that.
I’d really love a new wing commander, but it’d just have to have a Mark Hammil cameo.
I loved Syndicate and would love to see something like that come out.
Satellite Reign is the closest thing I’ve seen.