Yes. Included books cover only basic information on planes and some airports.
There no thick manuals with information on flight mechanics, navigation, etc. like you can find in "old fashioned" versions (eg. FS5, FS2000Pro). I was little disappointed on it.
But the price is close to the MS Store price and you get box and some other non-virtual things. If you collect on the shelf MSFS versions for years, the boxed version is the only choice for you :).
You don't have to keep a DVD in the drive all the time. You just make the ISO image and leave it on HDD.