Until now......
All us fan boys go on and on and on about this feature or that feature that LFS has over the other guys.
So we got better physics. I don't think that's really the best part of LFS.
Casual Racing. That's the real thing LFS has over any other title out there. The ability to just click a couple of buttons and you're in a server. Most of the other games has some sort of "ritual" you have to go through. And I think that initial thing helped set the general attitude of the players. Other racing games, I've seen people booted off just cause of a stupid mistake. Here, no one takes the game that serious.
When you do that, you've pretty much killed the fun in it and ultimately discourage people from playing.
I've seen people try to do that with LFS, but not to that degree and had more to do with racing series.
You kinda have to take that a little more serious than the average 5 lap sprint.
When LFS came out, there was another game that came out too. NASCAR 2003. I got that game....somewhere...
Before some nut case bought the rights to the game, you could get all sorts of mods for it. Well one of the reasons I never played it online was it was a hassle to initialize (especially with mods) and you couldn't just go jump into a server at will. not the mention is was full of losers that thought they were the next NASCAR God or something.
I think that the last two things I mentioned is what really killed that game more than anything else.

LOL NASCAR... used to play with a 1960's stock car on the 'ring.

Quote from Racer Y :

The ability to just click a couple of buttons and you're in a server. Most of the other games has some sort of "ritual" you have to go through.

This. And in LFS you almost always find those lovely gti demo servers where is some nice activity.

I like pretty much RaceRoom, but its loading times are from another planet, you can order pizza while you wait the game starting, and you have time to eat that pizza while you wait your logging into a public server. Just for realize you joined a server full of crashers (in RRE you can't peek inside a server to see who is there and which cars are on track).

In AC, you need to love GT2/3 cars if you want to have a quick race anytime. And you need to love those real world tracks that are mostly way more boring than a well designed fantasy track. Most races running at Monza or Spa or A1 Ring. (Okay Spa is not bad, just that stupid bus-stop chicane, otherwise 10/10)

In Automobilista the multiplayer joining ritual is another story, can't describe in words. And no need, since most, oh sorry, *all* servers are pretty empty. Such a shame since this sim has the most interesting tracks.

In rF2 the same story, can't describe in words, let's just say its not really user friendly, actually it is the opposite. But at least they are working on new user interface.

Dunno what is it in PC2, haven't bought it yet.

I agree entirely. While selling LFS to some of my friends this has been one of the things I've mentioned. It's a very community supportive game with how easy it is to browse servers, how quick and pain free it is to join a server.

I also love the easy to use ingame chat, great spectator controls, free view. And how trough voting a group of friends can control an empty server to an extent. And also the added benefit of insim programs to spice things up.

I truly love the multiplayer aspects of LFS!

I have not tried any other sims, even though I'm planning on buying rFactor 2 as soon as it goes back on sale. This being said, you can join a server in like, what, 5 seconds? It is indeed incredible

Except that casual racing is literally non existent in North American timezones. The only way to get races is to wake up early on weekends or participate in league races.

The latter sucks because if you're 2 minutes late to qualifying, your whole week of practice is for naught.

Both of those factors basically pushed me into paying for iRacing despite my dislike for it. I can participate in races at any time of day with a >10 car field, especially in ovals.

I would also like to comment on this; I've been playing LFS since 10 years ago now (I just played Demo as I was a kid and didn't know how to make a forum account and buy the game), but what made me love LFS was the simple user interface, not even a single tab being hard for me to understand, the available languages, the mentioned above: easy multiplayer, demo drag events (Very popular on South American servers), the car customization in terms of setups, etc.
Seeing all the approaching changes makes me very happy to be honest, been waiting some time for them now! 'grats to the DEV team + thanks to the community for making this game what it is now as well!

Along with the things already pointed out, i think chat system is a great feature, easy to do and enabled from the start

Ease of starting a race, is the #1 Reason LFS works commercially, even better then iRacing.

The number of windows, icons, and pages, you have to click through just to get into a car on some console games is ridiculous...

Quote from pärtan :

I also love [...] how trough voting a group of friends can control an empty server to an extent.

There are a lot of things to love about LFS, but the voting system is definitely not one of them. I feel like 70% of the time it's being abused for lols.