That's called a "scissors", and it's the ultimate lowest form of air-to-air combat. Once you get in a scissors with someone, one of you will get the first shot and win -- and there is no way out of it.

The problem the LucasArts people must have had when they did X-Wing is that, since there's no energy dimension, no up or down, then there is also no combat that you can do that isn't essentially a scissors. When you are trying to nail an elusive Tie Advanced in your X-Wing, all you are doing is trying to wiggle the nose just right to get a good deflection shot on him, and he on you.

I find the dogfight action in X-Wing pretty simple for this reason. I have yet to go head-to-head with a human opponent in a real flight simulator game, so I really have no idea if all the reading I did in Robert Shaw's excellent book, "Fighter Combat" did any good. But X-Wing is cool, Tie Fighter is cool, and it's rumored there's going to be a third part to the series out soon. My guess, from seeing the films, is that it'll probably be something where you can fly the Millenium Falcon, though I'm not sure what they'll do for gunnery in that one.