Something Not Seen Since Babylon 5: I’ve Found Her 

There is now a demo for In The Black, a space combat game in Early Access, developed by people who also brought us Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries.  You should definitely check out the demo if you are interested as the reviews have been quite mixed thanks to the rather buggy state of the game.  It is first and foremost a space combat sim, so there doesn’t seem to be any overarching story, instead it’s a series of missions as well as some free play options to let you test out ship designs without risk of losing credits.  There will also be a multiplayer component to let you blow other players into … component parts.

The physics should make things interesting, and hopefully proper HOTAS support will be coming soon.  You can always toss it on your wishlist and wait for updates to improve the game.