My experience as flyer is just with aviation simulators. There are many types of simulation levels each level targeted to simulate "specific" elements (procedures, systems learning...) being the Level D or full flight simulators the ones that get you to the closest possible flying experience that you can get interfacing with a machine in the ground.
However all of the other non Level D are as well considered simulators if they meet the target to reproduce the necesary enviroment or conditions to facilitate the learning objective.
Probably the word simulator itself should be reviewed due to the tremendous advances of technology and the huge ammount of options available today.
Steel Beasts is used by a number of militaries as a training tool that simulates, armour, ballistics, and some of the significant vehicle systems while providing a combat enviroment that allows effective tranining to be performed.
I have talked with some "profesional " users of Steel Beast Pro and of course for them this software is a training and checking tool. They get trainned and also checked and graded in excercises, and the same that happens to me when I regularly have to climb into an aircraft Level D simulator, neither is fun or entertaiment but work, many times hard and stressful work.
So all comes to what do you call a simulator. A professional Level D simulator can also be used for entertaiment and purposes (if you are willing to pay the more tham 1000 euro pero hour "in the box" )
Since I am not a professional tanker, I use Steel Beast Pro PE as an entertaiment tool but also as a learning tool and if I compare it with other PC Titles available to the public, I like to call SB a simulator in his own right.
By the way I have just pre-ordered 4.3 π