yeah i agree, NFS is just so much more of an advanced ricing simulator that it doesnt even belong on that list. it's far and above anything else on that list. IT's an insult to the great people over at EA.
How is it scary? I find that NFSU2 simulates the ricer inside of people. And its totally possible to have body kits as ugly as those. It's totally possible to get that ugly body kit on that ugly car and have that ugly car go use some ugly hydraulics and show up in some ugly street race then end up on an ugly magazine with a hot girl on there, but it makes the car even uglier. It's all totally realistic, but it's ugly.
To be more serious, it simulates a bit of street racing. Sure, no cops, not a lot of traffic, car doesn't get damaged (excluding cosmetic damage), no dead people, but it looks like that, and it's dangerous.
So it simulates ricerism. Ricerism is scary itself, but a simulator that emulates it, not so scary. I'm beginning to wonder if the creators of NFSU thought those ugly body kits were actually really good looking or they put them in there as a joke of some sort.
Its pointless to make a poll like this in the LFS forum... Make it in GTR2 forum (if that even exists) and see what wins there. Post on some rFactor forum and lets see who wins. Post on iRacing forums and lets see who wins.
It's pretty obvious LFS would win here but if you put the exact same poll somewere else it would probably lose.
As for realism it depends what your looking for... For example I don't think LFS is as immersive as GTR2 or GTR evo simply because of the better graphics and sounds and cockpits. However, the driving physics seem a better in LFS. Theres no PERFECT sim yet unfortunetly and I doupt there will be anytime soon.
I guess I'll be the first to say... put iRacing on the list and I'll vote. It's king in the physics department right now, and to me that dictates the level of realism. Lfs has it beat in many other ways, but not the core aspects imo.
rFactor just sucks as a true sim. It looks great and that's it. The Vette from Niels and the Virtua Lemans tracks almost make up for it, but not quite. Anyone who says the tires act properly at their limit in rFactor has clearly never driven a real car. It just doesn't feel right no matter if you have Real Feel or whatever...
If my solstice didn't smash in completly when bumping someone slightly on a straight doing about 2 kmh faster then him to the point were I can't see what's in front of me, I'd agree that iRacing is the best. For lapping alone, it is the best. For close racing it gets a little stupid when just a slight little bump and your car is undriveable. I think they should work on that a little more for now just so that its not AS sensible to little bumps because bumping is likely to happen when racing extremly close...
Only 2 sims have ever made me feel 'on the limit', GPL and RBR, I love trying to take that long section near the start of the Chirdonhead stage flat out despite the jumps and the dog legs, I nearly always end up impaled on the top of a tree.
However, Geoff Crammond's GP1 is the most realistic sim ever, because it is scientifically proven that everything is always better 'in the old days', and seeing as GP1 was the first sim nearly everyone owned, that makes it the most realistic of 'em all.
I think Crammond's second attempt was actually an improvement over GP1, but I'll also vouch for these two sims as being way ahead of their time. A better F1 sim has not yet been made (except graphically, of course).
Well, Papyrus's Indy500 was also pretty advanced, but thats not F1 of course.
As for F1, thats probrably because the responsibilty of producing F1 games since GP4 has been with people like Sony and Codemasters, who are miles behind Papyrus and Microprose.
It will be when it's finished, unfortunately we will all be dead by then.
Plus the force feedback is vastly inferior to LFS, which annoys me a lot.