Hi, good to hear all is well with you. Please give Colin a heartfelt hello.
To answer your question let's review a bit of musical history. When synthesizers first came out they tried to sound like violins, guitars, pianos, etc. They only wanted to synthesize what existed in the real world (of course there are numerous exceptions to this but just follow along). Then as time progressed we got synthesizers like the Roland D50, Korg M1, Prophet 5, etc that were proud to make sounds that had never existed before. Right now with plugins we are at the stage were they are trying to emulate things in the outboard gear world. They even look like the gear. Soon some genious will invent a plugin that is proud to do something so radical that it will open the flood gates. That's when we get plugins that allow us to pan up an down, and to do all sorts of things. I can't wait until I can put on a helmet and "think" my mix into a computer. No knobs, gear, plugins, just my imagination!