Whew! Where to begin...
FFB - I am happy where it is and I get a good sense of what the car is doing with the ability to react and control the car reasonably. It's fun to drive and challenging as well. Getting the FFB back to where I like it is thanks to this community and guys like
@bmanic and
@Kurupt CDN
Visuals - I enjoy them but I run a fairly powerful machine so that helps a lot. The weather and day/night transitions are top notch and set it apart from the other sims.
The patch - so far I have noticed that it fixed one thing: the handling of the Lotus 72D. The car is actually drivable now. MP is still very very troubled. There may be other improvements that I just haven'y seen yet. I haven't encountered a bug jump start penalty or a massive time penalty since the patch, so that is some progress. I have only run a few SP races but I suspect that until AI performance in the rain is improved running a SP career is pointless. A game breaker for many/most.
NetCode - it's horrible, and is a problem at the very start of MP races. Particularly with a field of more than, let's say, 25 cars. Cars are wrecked when being placed on the grid. They are never removed from the track if people quit out. Some cars are invisible which leads to people who avoided the initial pile up getting caught out when they come around to complete lap one. I believe the NetCode was the cause of the bugged jump starts and the ridiculous off track penalties. This is the game breaker for most, I think.
The only solutions for this NetCode problem is to avoid using damage. At least without damage on an unintentional tap doesn't lead to disaster. But, that defeats the purpose of even having damage.
One thing I believe is a problem: the quality of connection that a user has. It's a mystery to me how much this effects the MP experience but it's gotta be a huge factor.
Have I moved on? - No. Not completely. I will still get on pCars regularly but I am also getting back to R3E. Some advice has helped me with the FFB there. Besides, now that the Dedicated Servers are up I expect that there is going to be some very good RD club racing going on. I am also trying to get into GSCE. Just have to get the proper wheel settings and I may do some club racing there.
It hasn't lived up to the hype but there is a very good sim in there somewhere. I have enjoyed some very good MP races.
They (SMS) have lots more work to do but I will still support them, just like I continue to support S3S, but they better hurry up and address some of these issues because there is plenty of competition out there. They do have the console market, but they have someone hot on there tails - KUNOS. I guess a lot of people (devs) need to step up their game because the SIM racing market is filling up and I guess that's a good thing for SIM Racers everywhere.