Yes, Orville, that was my impression at first, too.
I though "Wow, the wind feels great on the light planes" and was fascinated by the sluggish feeling. Then I tried the game with my CH HOTAS and adjusted curves and I could snipe a pilot from 500m in a Albatros - not even to mention the much more stable Spad13.
It's also not really realistic how the planes respond. Okay, I only flew once in a radial-engine biplane, but it felt a lot different - especially on the ground. In RoF if you kick the rudder you can turn without moving forward and against the skid the back of your plane is lying on. We had a wheel on our biplane and it didn't like that without applying that much throttle, that the plane at least slightly moved forward when turning.
It also has little to no effect when starting or stopping the engine. In IL2 this effect is like 10 times stronger and they had a much different prop-weight/resistance to planeweight ratio.
You should also play the game online a bit. Some people also know about the sensitivity trick. Depending on who you fly against, they'll shoot 10 times in a row with less 1 second burst, no matter from what angle they're coming, while other planes twitch and twiggle around like you and I do with the X52
As I posted: Great potential, but not quite there, yet.