I still enjoy it a lot, P3D V2.3, though I miss the lovely PMDG 777 & FSPax.   I'll be happier w/ it when water & wave animation are greatly improved--at least as good as FSX is a very reasonable expectation IMO, lose the big performance hit in certain kinds of cloud shadowing situations, and finally I'd like to see a little more cloud lighting contrast once again--doesn't have to be as intense as 2.2 and earlier was, but somewhere between.  I don't have OOMs which I guess is a testimony to not running overly complex birds.     

.I've always had the sense the various releases of 2.x are almost trial balloons to test various approaches to different tasks

Good point Noel and if v2 is a test balloon then it's s pretty damn fun one!

Yes it's a lot of fun as was FSX before it.   I've personally lost interest in doing the running alpha/beta testing that the sim has become and am happy to wait around a while and see if anything else really improves--in particular as mentioned water, cloud contrast, and the few areas where performance is horrid secondary to something that needs a major change.   For example, in wetter weather when you are taxiing and start getting some misting or whatever is being represented performance goes into the toilet.  Once these are solved I plan to uninstall and reinstall everything.    I think the running alpha/beta testing is not something I'm interested in.   I'd rather have them polish something up, leave it be, and then a year or two later come out w/ a substantial upgrade that improves several things that have been well tested.   This would presumably be much easier for 3PDs to cope with too, not to mention users who really must uninstall and reinstall lots and lots of software w/ every incremental release, except for a few who may get by w/ a patch.  This being said, it's made some amazing progress in some areas so far, while deteriorating the excellent AA & much better water the ancient FSX engine enjoyed.  The latter issue seem fixable.