Forza and Forza Horizon most likely use the same simulation code, but are completely different games. I think the OP's premise is a bit flawed. There is still quite a bit of creativity wrapped around the simulation part of a game.

Thats like... your opinion man! (to quote the Duke)

Ellington ? Wayne?? Of Earl ? Iron ?

The Dude ... El Duderino... Your Dudeship...

Nooooooooo, I got it wrong... The Dude of course. How could I?

Yes, technical precision on recreating (simulating) some 'thing', but plenty of creativity possible with what you then DO with that thing.

ie- Realistic Auto Sim turned into Death Race 9000 or realistic Demolition Derby

+1 .... just because some "Game" Devs turn the Simulation genre into "F1 2015", "Flight Simulater 15" or "FIFA Soccer 15" yearly sequels which try first and foremost to reproduce a RL activity and then make that Simulation of this RL activity accessible to the general player via smart user interfaces (which, as said, need A LOT of creativity to get right) doesn't mean Simulation has to be that.

You could create a "Life on Mars" simulator... no matter if it simulates a day in the life of green lifeforms, or of human amateur astronauts shipped to mars without a return ticket, both could be called simulation. Heck, as much as I'd like to say the "Goat Simulator" doesn't deserve the name for the buggy joke it is (and a quite expensive one, though I guess some people got their moneys worth of entertainment out of it), calling it a simulator is not completly wrong.

In the end, according to Wiki a "Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time", which means the important part is to have a system running in the background that is emulating this function.

Any game with a physics engine running could be said to be a simulator... of course, the definition of the genre is different, but there is a simulation running in the game. If the game then happens to largely revolve around the results of this simulation, you COULD call it a simulator (Angry birds anyone :) )

I happened to know that a dev team worked for 3 years on a car racing simulator for Android, which is technically very well-made.
It's like playing Gran Turismo 3 or 4 with better graphics (like GameCube/Xbox or maybe better).

And i happened to know they only got € 10 000 earnings out of it, considering the game is in English, downloadable worldwide from the Play Store for about 0.50€ and has no ads.

This tells you very little about the simulator genre and a lot more about the mobile (specifically Android) marketplace. You could probably find teams who have done high quality RPGs, FPSs, RTSs, Platformers, Survival Horrors etc.. on Android who have made even less money.

The big draw for Android and other mobile platforms is that you will make some money not lots just some. This means if you spend a long weekend doing a crappy Match3 or Tetris clone you can earn a few dollars for it. On the other hand if you spend 3 years working on a quality title then it better be a labour of love because you are highly unlikely to recoup what you put into it.

As for all your other assumptions about the racing simulator genre they are all just plain wrong.

Tell me what magical tool can "copy and paste" a photo and make it into a fully modeled race track with all the meshes and textures, probably Polyphony will want to know about it.

ooh! i had one once! it was some package i picked up at the 96' CGDC. what was it called? it could make a mesh out of a photo of a tank! kinda expensive as i recall - might have paid as much as G for it - then never used it! <g> (this was back when i had too much money, before the market crash of 2000). 3d construction something? probably don't make it anymore. don't think it did textures, just meshes from photos.

That would be handy, I wonder how it was able to make such calculations. Definitely a time saver, you could import pictures and images of all manner of things and instantly generate meshes from it?

ooh! i had one once! it was some package i picked up at the 96' CGDC. what was it called? it could make a mesh out of a photo of a tank! kinda expensive as i recall - might have paid as much as G for it - then never used it! <g> (this was back when i had too much money, before the market crash of 2000). 3d construction something? probably don't make it anymore. don't think it did textures, just meshes from photos.

Probably what they call "photogrammetry" today... many game devs use it nowadays to save some time and money on creating high definition models of tnaks and other vheicles.

Seems in order for it to really work though, they need to make an awful lot of pictures from all angles around the vehicle, making it not-so-convinient again. I guess still more accurate than having a team of modellers doing all by hand, maybe even a little bit faster, though cheaper? I don't know....

And then you also need to get the access to the vehicle, and some days alone with it to create all the images needed, whereas the modellers doing it by hand can work from blueprints, that do exist for most vehicles and in case of historical vehicles are easy to get, as long as the owner cooperates.

AFAIK the real reason why they keep doing it is for better accuray and for the fact that between blueprints, factory drawings and then the physical vehicle, there is often some variance, sometimes big ones. And working by hand from photos is harder to do than from blueprints, so photogrammetry clearly is the winner when you cannot or don't want to use blueprints and factory drawings.