You guys need to calm down. It really is not advancing the discussion.
We know all about the various technologies and we also know our own shortcomings very well. Various game engines are geared towards extremely short view distances, which make them useless.
We will not introduce technology which would serve to alienate a huge portion of our player base. There are things we avoid which could give a higher end system a visual advantage over a lower end system.
When the time is right, for us, we will introduce various technologies into the game.
Curly, you made the statement about objects appearing flat, that you cannot tell where the Sun is because we appear to light everything equally. Sometimes screenshots cannot convey details well, so I attached a short video. If you cannot tell where the Sun is, then let me know. Do not bother pointing out how it could be better, we already know that.
There is a lot going on in that static shot. I could show even more dramatic action shots, but I used this to keep the file size down and the quality up. Action shots are more difficult to compress down, without losing a lot of detail.
Visually, all I did was speed up the video. It is 100% untouched game footage.