It’s absolutely amazing to me the wide variation ideas how these “video game physics” actually compare. And while I’ve not played all the games, I’ve played a lot of racing games from GT1 and FM1 up to the games of today. I think it’s safe to say that many people have some games rather underrated and others have some games highly overrated.
Fact of the video game world is, the physics are video game physics and that’s all. As long as you can drive through things, fly hundreds of feet through the air and not obliterate the suspension, abuse the transmission, tires, and engine the way the video game units get abused. So long as all that happens, all it is is video game physics.
I don’t really think any game does it any better than any other game. They all approach the solution from a slightly different perspective.
As for center point steering “CPT” vs front wheel steering “FWS” vs “AWS” (which mimics center point steering). I’ve found it to be just a matter of to geometry of where the developers placed the turning point of the car. And whether or not they have taken the effort to update the graphics of the car. There are cars in TC2 which are CPT and some which are FWS. I didn’t check for any AWS. But likewise there are CPT cars in FH5 as well, the '69 Charger and the '13 MX-5 are 2 I found. Seems to be older version cars that have been ported from previous horizon versions. And the new AMG GT which is AWS exhibits CPT due in part to the steering nature. However if you change to rally suspension, you lose the AWS but the car retains the CPT characteristics. I would imagine we would find this characteristic within the GT game as well. And possibly within some of the PC “sim” games as well.
No game is perfect, nor will we likely ever get the “perfect” racing game. But we do have some that have some fun points and are sometimes enjoyable for letting of steam and gaining a bit of relaxation.