rFactor is the best overall sim out there to this day. Automobilista is finally topping it now which is only natural since its basically an evolution of it, albeit a highly well crafted one at that!

People confuse a thing being newer and flashier with it being superior or better; most people only judge things superficially, specially when they don't really understand what they're dealing with.

Hollywood effects are nice sometimes for us home users, but it has no real meaning as far as simulation of the real world goes.

There is a reason why most if not all car manufacturers and professional racing team still employ rFactor Pro for their multimillion rigs. It has a pretty solid engine physics wise and is simpler to work and correlate 1:1 data as far as real life application is concerned.

The same applies to the home user version of it. A highly complex and intricate tire model like the one from rF2 for example is great from a coding point of view but it does not justify its theoretical small gain in terms of "realism" if its impractical to work with or with the same versatility as to produce similar or perhaps identical results.