Graphical scalability is more "easy" that cpu and ram scalability. I mean, you can reduce number of polys, texture quality, viewing distance, and lots of graphical related things to make the sim run on a lower en graphic card. But for number of objects you NEED ram and cpu power. RAM for handle all the moving and fixed objects, and don´t have an slide show because of continuous reading the hard disk for loading fixed objects, and CPU power for handle all the physics and AI of all those objects. And at least that the user edit manually every mission, we can assume that the numbers of objects of a particular mission are the same on every pc, so also assuming that you have similar cpu power that can handle lots of aircraft, if you make a realistic mission where you have hundreds of planes and ground objects, not to mention building on citys, RAM becomes a very serious issue, specially if you have OS RAM limit.
Still, seeing from other perspective, right now with il2 1946 we have big maps with thousand of objects, and most people still have 32 bit OS systems, and RAM doesn´t seem to be a problem on missions, the problem is usually cpu power or graphical, so probably RAM OS system wouldn´t be a problem to have the optimum system.
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