Spent many days again playing all sims. I even dug up good old Live For Speed and man that was a good game in its time... great force feedback.
This is how to create perfect driving simulator
Assetto Corsa force feedback and car behaviour on the limit + its unlimited modding
LMU kerbs
iRacing online system and its oval AI and physics (it has great Indycar)
F1 25 all modern F1 features/rules and AI (you could take any ai from 2020-25, they are ridiculously superior to any "sim" out there, it's not even close)
AMS2 VR + flying start ability to create proper Indycar
Maybe ACC menu system? It's quite nice looking.
Maybe EVO graphics, it sure looks great but I don't really care about the graphics. They all look good enough. I can't even say which one looks best... graphics are like modern EV cars' acceleration numbers. They're all fast so who cares.
I wish we could "hack" a game like this.
Actually I wish they'd update the original AC instead of putting all resources to EVO. EVO just doesn't drive that well compared to the original and obviously they are not able to duplicate AC1's driving feel anymore (for whatever reason). Maybe the guy who did the FFB is dead?

Yes they say it's still a WIP but the driving feels like ACC and obviously they're not going to change that. Yes I played it for 5 hours straight today and tested different cars. Some are better than others but when you go back to AC1 it's like a night and day. In EVO the car front ends feel weird and lifeless and I doubt we can ever mod it like we can AC1.
LMU is very impressive sim and many real drivers praise it. Sure it has good physics but I can't really connect to that FFB in similar way that I can do with AC1. AC1 to me still is the only sim where the driving feels absolutely natural. Many mods have eliminated the kerb problem too. Never thought RF2/LMU FFB was that good. Some people praise it but personally I don't really like it.
In short: All sims are more or less frustrating but in relative terms we have some insanely good sims... just compare the driving sim quality to games like FIFA and PES. Total arcade garbage which have very little to do with realistic football. I haven't played the latest ones but in FIFA 23 you could play two 15 min halfs and get ZERO fouls. Real football games have 15-40 fouls per game, you're lucky to get one in FIFA and there wasn't even a slider for that. Then they had a terrible AI comeback logic, etc.
I think AI's are bad in so many games today is because they prioritize the online gaming. Yet the F1 series have made almost flawless AI. I mean it can't get realistically better than that (2018 was still overly aggressive and 19 had some issues but after that it really clicked). It's extremely rare to get "abused" by the AI on the F1 series. Sure it happens but very, very seldomly. AI is super competitive and intelligent and actually the modern F1 games put any "real sims" to total shame in so many aspects, it's not even funny.
AI and season are very important to me because I love playing full seasons offline. That is my thing. Sure I love hotlapping the street cars too but F1 is my priority. I don't care about any career/Myteam fantasy crap at all. Just the plain good F1 seasons... never get tired of that. AC is absolutely SUPERIOR when it comes to hotlapping and classic seasons 1978-2009'ish... but you can't make a proper modern F1 seasons on AC because of its rule/hardcode limitations and not-so-good AI.
What is really frustrating is that AC's AI is not actually THAT bad, it just has some unforgivable things (like lack of blue flag/outlap ai). It's a real mystery why they left that kind of blatant issues there. All sims have more or less crap AI's. AMS2 AI is not great but it's probably the best of the bad bunch.
It's obvious by now that EVO will never dethrone AC1. Do you think it's unrealistic to except Kunos to ever update/fix AC1 because it's such an old title? AC1 is still the most popular driving sim... it easily tops the Steam sim racing ranking list every day in popularity... so why not? Or maybe they'd just ruin it by "updating all tyre models" and then it'd drive like ACC too.
Thoughts?