I’ve always wondered about these

@Skua OK, so high physics kinda simulates better drag and friction but the calculations will take longer to do, which means more lag. At least that's what I thought.

@icecoldlava So that means physics settings is the only setting capable of altering your plane's outcomes in flight...thanks for the info btw.

This is total speculation on my part, but I would imagine that it changes the number of physics calculations performed each second. Let's say low = 1 per second and high = 3 per second. If we look at a specific wing, the game will calculate the forces it produces and it affected by that many times per second. Normally low physics will be alright, but sometimes only updating the forces once per second results in things being missed or otherwise becoming inaccurate. Sometimes you find that planes can lose wings under hard turning more easily on low physics, which I think is because of this - the wing has longer to move under a certain applied force before the next calculation is applied, so by the time it has, it's far enough out office to break instead of springing back.

But yeah I'm not a dev, so I really am just guessing here

the planes will react differently to crashes( well, if you fly straight into the ground, it'll have the same effect but a simple bump will be different), Also, there might be more instability and random tilt. For example, if you fly a plane in high physics and it tilts to the left, in low settings that same plane would either not tilt at all or, more likely, tilt more(if its tilting for no reason). Another difference is that in low physics the planes usually last longer because there is less chance of them being torn apart by friction. Hope that helped