Demon Im not going to get involved in yet another Forza debate or argue just state some points to what you said.
Its upto the OP how he reads your or my opinions on the matter or if it reflects in his purchase decision.
I gave an opinion based on personal disappointment that the franchise instead of focusing on replicating motorsport or racing, with things like racing regulations, rules, weather and creating a race event enviroment within the game just seemed less important to the developers. Those are things people into motorsport and sims would have liked to of seen.
Instead T10 decided to make the game easier to play to increase the games target audience and throw in big barrell rolls. Is FM3 a much better racing game than FM2, is it much more simulated, more realistic? I wouldnt say to a great degree much different over FM2. The bigest jump was the graphics and excellent audio. For me it failed to excite me long term as it quicky began to feel and play like FM2 with more cars and tracks. In triple screen its great fun and particulary with the Turbo S wheel is a nice game to play.
Ask yourself did it introduce things to take it further in the racing department like upcoming games inc, F1 will do in weather, day - night cycles. Yet it still stuck with only 8 cars and several racing games feature more than this now. I wish FM3 fans would stop protecting/ignoring areas that indeed havnt been improved in the series but would have made it a much better racing game in general and more of a sim.
Regards being a sim and peeling back layers of difficulty/control with its big talk on tyre physics, please go ahead and youtube for videos on the "active steering support". Is it true that this is implemented for pad players to make the game easier to control and that it cant aparently be turned off even with using a wheel. How many sim games have steering assistance you cant turn off? So here we have a guy wanting to buy an expensive and serious wheel to enjoy a game that effectively is going to help him steer.
For me its like advertising a FPS game for hardcore players that has "Auto Aim" that cant be disabled. Thats one drawback in the game taking away from the challenge of handling the cars and I would think one of the reasons for example some people find other racing games more frustrating to play or adapt to. FM3 is too easy to steer and too easy to correct cars in, tyres/cars have too much grip at times. In a sense it lets players perform better at the game correcting their driving requiring less accuracy in steering and well if they perform better they are likely to enjoy it more I suppose but for sim aspect looking players then its a handicap if it cant be turned off and detracts from people able to show their own true ability.
I dont know whos these people are but heres their own findings/opinions.
Look, whatever racing game you or others prefer to play Im fine with that, go and play it but like the new games coming I will base each on its own merits and compared to each other.
Id love FM4 to go much deeper into the simness and feel as like a racing game not a street racing game based on tracks or offering point - point races but it doesnt look likely to happen.
Maybe their is more hope in:
WRC / F1 / GT5 and for laughs TDU 2
Jesus! how much for a wheel

was looking for a weel for the new F1 game in Sept .. think ill pass
Depends how you look at it my friend.
Some people spend £300 - £400 + on graphics cards which they upgrade within less than 2 years. A good wheel is going to last for a long time.