I'm looking for excellent space sims. Can someone recommend one? Perhaps a game where one can choose combat or just flying time or just roaming...But it must have excellent graphics good control.

Don't know if it will fit your purpose but my son plays Star Wars Galaxy. It's an online pay monthly game. You have to build your character but there can be land based or space based things to do. Looks quite good.
You can download a 14 day free trial so give it a go. (Takes a while to download when setting it up though)

Just type SWG into google and you should find it easily.

Vic

Charles,
Try and find a copy of Mocrosoft's 'Freelancer'

It reminded me of the old 'Elite' games bought up to speed.

Although there is combat (quite a lot actually) in the storyline, you also have to trade.
TTFN
Tom

Heard of Orbiter?
Freeware space flight simulator.
I haven't personally tried it (yet...), but I've read some reviews saying that the level of realism is such that you could "almost qualify for ESA by mastering it".
That goodbye-life stuff, I presume....

But damn, those 2001 Space Odyssey mods look cool!
I'll think I'll have to give it a try some day.

A couple of years ago, I came accross an engaging space sim title X3. The title was developed by a company called egosoft. You could characterize it as a open sandbox game mainly dealing with space minning and expanding ones fleet, while dealing with hostiles and pirates.