It is also much harder to not put yourself into a flatspin than in arb.
As for hunting bots - sure, there are a.i planes and bombers but there are fighter pilots as well. I did notice an uptick of new players give how nobody seems to use communication methods at certain times making me dive on a bf109 only to see it is a captured friendly despite repeated pings…
However there are fighter pilots whose names you recognize and dread if they are on the enemy team. Fighter pilots who you know that unless you can catch them in a BnZ or while they are shooting your wingman - they will reverse on you and rip your wings off.
Kills per flyout i also feel is not exactly representative. You can get long periods of patrolling when no objectices spawn without finding anyone. Then you get periods of insanity where the tickets are low and there is a very dedicate il-8 on the enemy team destroying frontline objectives. Your team goes to intercept. Enemy team goes to intercept your interception. Cue the next 15-30 minutes turning into a bloodbath of fighters trying their best to get the win.
Surely in no universe would you consider trying to keep enemies of your six without third person view in such an encounter easier than in ARB. Surely in no universe would you consider getting your guns on target long enough for a disabling shot against an evasively target easier with arb over trying to use an early ww2 gunsight (not that late gyro sights help a lot with a maneuvering enemy, they do help with bnz at least).
As for doing better in sim versus arb…
Plane’s strength: high speed, high dive controllability.
Where can you exploit such a plane more effectively? The game mode that lasts 90 minutes and allows you to boom, pitchback for another pass and then extend/climb away to try again a few minutes later…
Or the game mode where doing that means you end up fighting 1-3 vs 6-10 with ticket bleed losing you the game even as you slowly try and pick off enemies with disciplined bnz? I have lost even 5+ kill games before to ticket bleed and overwhelming numbers.
(That bring up another difference - sim you are likely fighting 1vs1 or 2vs1 or maybe 3v3. Air rb you are trying to get kills in a 16v16 furball with very limited time.)
Final point to doing better in sim over arb: you have no markers and can do sneak attacks more effectively, and you started playing sim because you got frustrated in arb and have improved since playing arb (and some of what you learned do not transfer as well back as youd expect. Like gunnery. Only opening fire on enemies from 300 meters away is suicidal in arb, while in sim 300 meters is just about ideal with most gunsights).
Idk if missile jets are different. Cannot comment on them.