I think you're confusing the subject and medium. Media are things too.

Consider a glass of wine. That could be described as a physical thing.

Now, consider some pictures of that glass of wine.
The pictures of the glass of wine is not the glass of wine, there, we agree.
But the pictures of the glass of wine is not nothing either, they are their own things.

Let's consider a fully-analog picture, it could be described by the following properties: Lens particularities, camera particularities, film particularities, development particularities, photo-paper particularties, storage particularities. Together, these make up a the analog picture. It is a thing, and those particularities are part of the identity of that thing, in addition to the subject (a glass of wine) and the other particularities surrounding the actual scene that was portrayed.

Now, change one parameter, and it's a different thing! You can change something about the scene (a different table for the glass of wine to stand on) and it becomes a different picture, obviously. You can change lens particularities, it becomes a different thing. Anything you change here, it becomes A DIFFERENT THING.

If we scan the picture, it becomes a different thing, added to it's identity is the particularities of the scanning process.. For sanitys sake let's assume we store it losslessly, exactly the bits we get from the scanner.
If we have such a scanned picture, it's _NOT_ the same picture as the one we had on the paper, it's a different thing.

If we took the picture with a digital camera, changing nothing else, we still end up with a different thing, it's a picture of a glass of wine, and part of it's identity is the particularities of the lens, and the sensor and if it's a good camera it's stored in raw and nothing more is changing the information, and so that's what makes up that pictures identity.

Consider the fully analog and fully digital pictures, how may they be experienced?
The analog picture could be framed and hung on a wall and viewed by the human eye, this is the only way that particular picture can be seen, if you scan it, you can see a scan of the picture, but not the picture itself.
What is the true representation of the picture ? Probably there is not one, it depends on the light reflecting off of it.

The digital one can only be shown on a screen, it's identity will change if we print it, or develop it on photographic paper..
But the screen also is no true representation, it depends on the particulars of the screen.

It's the same for projection of pictures.. There is a physicality involved when a piece is captured on physical film, it's part of it's identity, along with development particularities and the particularities of the receiving medium, physical or digital. So it's simply NOT THE SAME THING.. I'm not saying it's worse or better, only that it's different, and that I know it's different, and my knowing it's different makes.. a difference.

So as I said, I love the look, but _part_ of why I love it because I know it's there for a very real and physical reason it looks like it looks.. And if that's faked, then at least that part of the love for that aesthetic is gone for me.

A physical lens distortion is significant for me not only as a purely visual aesthetic, but because my brain recognizes that this is an artifact of light going through glass. A digitally applied lens distortion may look the same all day long, but it's not real to my mind in the same sense, it's simply something added later.

Now, don't get me wrong, the simulation is _AWESOME_ and I'm happy it exists, and I'm going to play around with it.. But I do reserve the right to both like love and hate it at the same time.