Either you've never seen an ARF from 20 years ago, or you've managed to put them out of your mind. ARFs are improving, but they're never going to get to the point where the person who builds competition scale models from scratch will be happy. I think it's safe to say that for the average sport flyer, strict compliance to the original airplane design is way less important than how the thing flies. What's the point of a Gee Bee ARF that looks exactly like the original if it's so difficult to fly that 95% of them crash on the first flight. ARFs are about flying, not concours d'elegance.