Its all objective , i hear what your saying about the state of Sim racing compared to FPS and your dead right yet not one of the bleeding edge games
has anywere near the number of active players that Counter Strike does,the BF1942/2/2142 are close i guess but i would bet more guys play CS1.6 than all of them combined (no real factual statistics invovled).
And CS1.6 is not a pretty game so it must come back to gameplay, it always does in the end.Game play wise LFS is right up there, imho its the pick of the bunch in all the factors that count,easy to install even easier to play online and the racing online is awesome from the point of view you can play with some pretty nasty pings and not upset everyone around you.
Ive got both games and i really like some things from rfactor,yet the online experience of LFS on the most parts is out of this world compared to anything else available atm , so yes we are blessed