looking for a space combat game

[Alneyan]

Perhaps the Independence War games? They are the only recent games I can think of, Freespace excepted, that would be worth its grain of salt in the flight sim department (though the ships flown there aren't exactly fighters).

Other than that, I would definitively recommand the FS1 port for FS2: play Freespace 1 at the decent resolution of 1024X768. Or you could try third party campaigns, like Derelict or the Aeos (?) Affair.