Ok, so I have had chance to play Nkp 1.03 a bit more now, and I think I have played enough to make a decent enough judgement.
Firstly, 1.03 is a big improvement over 1.02 in many areas, but it's still not a "hallelujah" sim.
Multiplayer is now not totally broken, which is good, I have had a few relativly smooth and lagfree races, but the UI is shambolic, as it is in the whole sim.
Graphics and sound are as they were previous pretty much, functional, sounds aren't great, but they are liveable.
Physics, are still not "there" IMO, theres something not quite right, be it in the physics of FF.
The only way I can describe it is this, when you drive a car in RL on tyres will low pressure, you can feel the tyres squirming, moving on the sidewalls, and generally making the car move, without sliding, where as when you drive a can on tyres with too high a pressure, you feel very little movement in the tyre, but the whole tyre moves about on the road.
Nkp's tyres feel like they are made of solid rubber, regardless of pressure, there is very little movement from the tyre itself, there is none of that squirming, or scrabbling for grip you get from LFS.
I have offen be-moaned LFS for feeling to "clinical", but Nkp takes that "clinical" feeling to a whole different level.
Personally, although Nkp may very well be a better mechanical single seater simulation, I see very little that make it stand above sim a, or sim b.
To me, Nkp will remain, as it always has, a little curio that is nice to have on the HDD