Well, I haven't played any of the previous iterations of the game (Except for the extended FM6 demo that Apex was) so I don't have too much to compare to. About the paddle shifting animations, I think it's way better now (Barely noticeable) than what it was before, have you see how exaggerated is it on Apex and Horizon 3? Uggh so annoying.
I also think that the windshield reflections of the hands are a bit over done, but to be honest I don't watch them everytime, even I don't see real world reflections on the windshield even when they are there. Anyways I'm enjoying the game a lot, and it's great fun when it's not crashing to desktop...
About people complaining about no new features... It's a track racing game, there are not too many things to innovate in. I think the racing game fans are at an all time high of annoyment, which is quite ridiculous given all the options to choose you have at the moment. Apparently all games' physics are wrong, all lack something, all have bad feeling, all have not enough tracks or cars and the list goes on...
Have you tried sideloading the game? It worked flawlessly to me. I was stuck with the same 0x87005 code and restarting. I just can't understand how they failed so shamelessly on the exact same thing as the previous game. The Windows store is the worse piece of software bundled with W10.