I'm not a huge fan of the virtual wheel, but I usually just leave it on and ignore it. It really annoys me in iRacing, in cars like the Dallara and the FW31 that if the wheel is turned off it still stays there and doesn't turn, that annoys me more than anything.
Yes, I suppose if you can't get your wheel in the right place, it might look odd. That's the key though. If you can get your seat height, wheel position,FOV, monitor height, and horizon all right, it looks and feels a lot more like you're sitting inside the car.
OTOH, one might argue that people can't have it both ways by saying they can ignore a wheel and/or hands being there when driving, but not ignore them *not* being there.
Personally I only turn the steering wheel off if there is visible steering lag. In lfs I don't mint either way but in iracing for example I must turn the wheel off because the delay is a bit confusing.
Uhm well.. well the ffb was veeeeery smooth, sometimes too smooth though, but it felt alright actually.
I was only drifting so I can't really tell how the ffb is while racing.
Yeah, every effect has to be prebaked, tyre texture is something that would get changed a lot + dynamic wear + dynamic dirt build up, baking all that wouldn't be very high on the list yet because it needs a lot of tweaking before it's just right. I'm sure it will be done at least for the 1.0 version, if not sooner.
They already had it in NetKar PRO since 2006, no reason why they wouldn't have it in AC. There already have been videos of it in AC (can't find atm). In the videos it looked quite rough though (disappeared very quickly), but that should be easy to fix.
Apparently, there are some pics of the same rig on the assetto facebook page. No further info on the car though but it looks like it is the ferrari f10 from FVA.