Forget dynamic campaign and better AI, can we please get some better space optimization?

Heard a rant for today. I went to an air show last weekend, watched fighter jets do cool fighter jet stuff, and it made me want to play DCS again after about 6 months away. Loaded up steam, got ready to download and….. WTF do you mean this game takes up 440GB of hard drive space. I have xplane12, FS2024, and a few other games and combined they don’t even equal half of DCS. Can somebody please explain to me why both XPlane and msfs can model the entire world, nearly ever airport to a reasonable degree, and probably have more planes and assets in game than DCS, but can do it with 1/10th the space. How is this game so massive.?!?!?