The problem with iRacing is that it costs too much money which is fine if you can afford it. Yes, the physics and the FFB are top rate but it's not GT5. I don't get to drive a production car and no matter how inferior GT5 is to iRacing, it fills the void that I don't get anywhere else (well, there is Forza but that's a different story). The problem with iRacing is that those void is fillable with rFactor (soon to be rFactor 2), netKar (nKar) and even Live for Speed (LFS).
I've brought this up before but seeing that most people compare nKar quite favorably to iRacing especially regarding physics and FFB, Stefano Casillo (the developer for nKar and nKar Pro) in an interview he did last year for Radical Online (a PC sim news and views site) when he was asked about the similarity between iRacing, LFS and nKar Pro in term of how the car feel, he said:
"...Sometimes people ask me what I did to make FF good in netKar PRO. I am clueless.. I think there is a fundamental difference in how FF is calculated in the group netKar PRO, iRacing, Live For Speed, VirtualGP3, even
Gran Turismo Academy felt "netKar-ish" to me. I think my FF is, I don't know, 20 lines of code?"
(the rest of the interview:
http://tinyurl.com/3vmb3kn)
Sure with iRacing ver 2.0, the sim has probably pulled away from the rest of the pack. But PS4 is just around the corner and what was impossible in PS2 was made probable with the PS3 and I imagine in a next year or two, console sims will no longer be a misnomer.