for me its the abilty to 'switch off'
I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ets) and its my happy place, its just zen, Sometimes i will have a plugin that will get me local radio stations and i will cruise through italy and greece listening to talk shows in languages i don't understand, sometimes i will do it listening to the rumble of the truck, and i switch off, and allow my thoughts to run free.
I've recently started getting into flight sims, and i'm looking for the same sort of thing with that (the only problem with ets is the graphics still looks like a 2013 game) and i think i will get there, its just i'm at the 'learning to fly' stage, and thats kinda difficult. Well, actually flying is surprisingly easy, landing is the tricky bit ;-)
If you're flying a larger passenger plane into basically any major airport, ILS should get you most of the way down - you just need to control speed (you're looking for landing speed +10 by the end)
Depending where you're flying, some arrivals have gaps which threw me off massively when I first started - it's because IRL there's ATC there to guide you to the final intersection for the runway, usually 10NM out... so aim for that and capture ILS, it's quite a wide margin for capture.
If you're going manually, 10nm out you want to start descending at around 600-700fpm from ~3000ft and you should have visual on the runway at this point
I never thought of mixing that with local radio. That sounds wonderful.