Check out my latest blog. It's comparing RF to Phoenix. Might shed some light on some things.
I've read the blog. Interesting stuff. You mention that phoenix doesn't have the heli's drift left (due to tail rotor). I have found that some heli models do and some don't. The mcpx, for instance, doesn't. But one of the larger ones, say the 450X, does. There are a lot of advanced model settings that can be tweaked which probably control this per model. I haven't delved into them too much except to add trainer gear (saves on the resets and makes some of the models easier to see at distance). Also, I find the modeling of the different flybarless controllers is decent too. The mcpx/npcx, for instance will not hold an attitude in real life, it will tend to fall back to neutral fairly quickly, almost as if it were a flybar stablized heli. Phoenix does the same on the model. However, on phoenix the 450x will hold the attitude you set and hold it for far far longer. I don't know if that is similar to real life or not, but it is what I would expect. I've found Phoenix does not simulate translational lift at all, no matter the model. Maybe I haven't stumbled onto a model with it enabled yet, maybe it is just not a feature of the sim. Does RF simulate it? Also, I concur, Phoenix does hold hover extremely unrealistically.