All I can say, that I personally feel very different when I realize I'm dreaming. There is a huge rush of suddenly everything feeling more real than the reality itself. I feel more 'there' than I'm feeling here now. And in majority of my lucids, at least for first 80 of them, there was a huge rush of excitement. I still get it sometimes, even if not at the beginning.

There are some dreams, some may call them "false lucids", when you think about being lucid, but you don't actually gain lucidity. It just doesn't click. You don't put 2 and 2 together.

Do you practice RCs and do you do them in your lucids? Have you tried doing anything, like flying? Are you trying DILDs or WILDs?