Hehehe, I hear you, Thierry! Sometimes, when I look at others' work, I often marvel at the (sometimes) OVERKILL of detail, when you compare it to what the goal of the project is.
And, if one has the luxury of "millions of polys" (for a CGI movie or a printed graphic) one can "easily" detail anything, given enough time and attention to details. It's getting a believable result from LOW POLY modeling that is a skill unto itself! IMO of course!
And, if the end goal is a flight sim model, you have a pretty strict budget for polys, otherwise you can't ever fly the plane, because it reduces the game to a crawl.