Don't give up! It's got some pretty complex concepts you need to grasp, but once you get them, it's really quite easy.
First off, the "sim" is based on physical realities.
The theory behind the frame shift drive is based upon the real-world theory that if we can compress the space ahead of us, we will not violate Special Relativity (see Einstein). It is theoretically possible to achieve, but we are not even close to it yet IRL.
The FSD works not by accelerating the ship to faster than light speed, but compressing space in front of it.
Hyperjumps are similar to how supercruise works, but for much larger distances (that is how you jump between systems).
Supercruise is faster than light speed transit across a single system, but not a huge massive jump like hyperjump is.
Due to various game mechanics at work, certain functions are ONLY available while supercruising, while other functions are ONLY available in normal space.
Nothing in the ship is automatic unless you explicitly make it so, so if you start a hyperjump, you must stop it (set throttle to zero) before crashing into a star. The same for supercruise. If you're moving from an entry star to a station, you're already in supercruise when you enter the system, so you must exit supercruise when it says "SAFE TO DISENGAGE" in blue.
If it turns red and says "TOO FAST", you will either crash, or just fly by your target.
There are other things about supercruise, for example you must be at a safe, low speed to drop out of supercruise otherwise it will perform an emergency drop and damage the ship.
The exception is if it says "SAFE TO DISENGAGE" in which caes the ship is already fairly slow, fairly close to the target, and the computer will decelerate the ship accordingly so it is a safe exit to normal space.
When jumping between systems, the exit point is always next to the largest mass in that system. This is usually the primary star of that system.
This is just the basics of FSD and SC and HJ within ED. There is more, but this will be enough for starting.
I have mapped to my stick SC and HJ functions. These are as critical as throttle or pitch and roll axis.
A starship is controlled in 4 dimensions.
en.wikipedia.org
Here we explore what the theory of general relativity is and how it affects space-time.
www.space.com