I have this distinct vision of a bunch of RC geeks sitting in a room and piloting these drones, delighted by the fact that they are finally getting paid for it.
Quality is outstanding for what they have, but they've cut down on the quantity quite a bit. A lot of cars and tracks are gone, but I really only noticed the missing tracks because they have the cars I actually want to drive. I just hope the update the Nurburgring and bring it back in a DLC.
In my experience, you want a car so shit it doesn't even deserve maintenance. That way you can beat the living shit out of it every day until it dies and you won't even care.
It's funny because, like you said, if someone runs close to the wall early in the race its a caution, but someone can spin with 20 to go and and it isn't a caution (happened at Homestead).
Boris, this may or may not answer your question but it's my take on the game:
As you said, the game is generally pretty 'open.' Missions on first play through and many online games (I.E. Wasteland servers) require you to have a 360 degree awareness at all times. The enemy could be anywhere. You could be running north through a forest, see any enemy patrol running west 200m ahead of you, and make them an easy ambush target. Problem is, you could just as easy be the one running west 200m ahead, which means you need to have your head on a swivel if you want to have a fair engagement. This can be especially problematic (read, frightening) when you are lone wolfing it as you generally need to move slow to have good awareness, but then it's boring and it could take forever to make an objective. So you have to balance being bored and being safe. The problem is pretty well alleviated in groups because you have more people to scan the horizon and cover each other (and you can revive each other), so you can pick up the pace and still be safe. These kinds of games need to be played with extreme stealth or in groups.
Some game modes do try to narrow the 360 degree aspect of Arma. My favorite game, Domination, is pretty good at this. The game assigns a village to be captured by Blufor forces, with the enemy generally only spawning inside the village. Depending on how close you get to the village before you engage, the openess of the engagement changes (The closer you get, the more open the battle).
Honestly, you can sometimes prop 5 guys up on a hill a kilometer away with some snipers and AT and they could probably kill a 200+ infantry and 20+ vehicle force if they know which targets to hit first. It's not very fun to play like that though. You could also sneak right into the middle of the village and try to work from there, but that tends to be pretty much impossible unless you have a crack squad and a ton of air support. Most people like to start on the edge of the village and work their way in, usually so that they always have ~120-180 degrees to engage enemies from. They don't have to worry about getting shot in the ass, but there's still the challenge of getting flanked by clever enemies. Domination also owes itself towards groups, but that's usually because it's 20-40 Blufor infantry with 1 heli or tank to support them against 200+ infantry, ~15 technicals, 5-6 tanks, as well as a potential attack heli and anti-air guns.
My favorite match ever in Arma II consisted of a night raid on an enemy village. I got into a pretty serious squad and we infiltrated the town while the rest of the infantry tried to attack from a nearby hill (without suppressors like a bunch of sillies). We got ourselves posted up in a small walled compound in the middle of town, dead center of the enemy forces. While they tried to rain hell on the rest of the team 600m away, we sat there and silently picked them off in every direction, never more than 200m away. By the time the enemies were all dead and the town officially captured, the four of us in the squad were the top 4 in the game.
Well, I honestly can't 'watch' an F1 race unless I have my laptop open and my iPod playing music.
A note for my fellow Americans, was it just me or was the NBC coverage complete shit? Besides the audio issues they had in the post race, Will Buxton was awkward as **** on the grid and I kept noticing errors they made in reporting the race. Not to mention, all the commentary seemed to have a good 2-3 second delay.