The human eye CAN distinguish between 720p and 1080p, BUT at a healthy, sensible viewing distance it's a very slight difference, which many people won't notice. (Pressing your face within a meter of the screen is another story, but you shouldn't be sitting that close anyway)

It depends on the size of your display of course. I can spot the difference between the 2 from a fairly far distance, depending on the size of the set. At my usual gaming distance, I spot it right away. 720 is blurry in comparison to 1080p. Now, that's not even mentioning how perceivable the difference between 1080p and 4k is... Even on the same screen size.

Now, the point I am making is that the added resolution allows for much more detail to be shown on screen. intricacies in foliage, for example, as well as smoother edges, more bumps in the models (instead of painted textures), more realistic landscape geometry, etc... All of which are easily perceivable to the human eye. Take a game like Call of Duty 4, which was realistic for its time, and take Crysis 3... Are you telling me that you don't perceive a difference?

Well, the PS4 and most likely the NextBox will be capable of achieving graphics that are much more detailed compared to what we had on the PS3 and 360. I think what may be preventing some people from realising that is because the games that were shown at Sony's PS4 reveal event were mostly very familiar and somewhat saturated genres.

The thing is, 720p definitely looks sharp enough to me in favor of having the game run at a solid 60fps. This was the Killzone demo's achilles heel for me. A fast/smooth frame rate really improves the visual experience, IMO.

If the devs really only had half the RAM to work with compared to what's going to be available in the final console, we'll see if they can run graphically demanding games at 1080p/60fps. Otherwise they should gives us the option to select between higher res or higher frames, since there are fans of each preference.

Besides killzone nothing shown was saturated. The new infamous game looks like a whole new ip while keeping the infamous name. Knack is a great refreshment for my fav. the platforming genre, sleeping dog is a new ip, and deep down seems like its going to be a great game. So far only gg, evo., japan studios, and sucker punch announced new games for the ps4. That leaves sony with 10+ studios to still announce games alongside many other 3rd party games. 

My point is, 720p to 1080p is not the striking difference that 480p to 720p was. Or that primitive shading to full per-pixel shading was. The leap this time is less pronounced, it feels more like a refinement than a full-blown evolution.

Nice try, my last pic was a crop from this gallery (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-21-killzone-shadow-fall-ps4-1080p-screenshot-gallery) with screenshots from realtime rendering in SF, unlike some bullshots that have already been posted here. That image of Psycho must be from a low res video or screenshot cause anyone whos played even the vanilla version of Crysis knows its textures at max are on par with even todays best PC games. And speaking of which, the close up shots of Psycho in Warhead  such as the drowning of the korean soldier scene towards the end look just as good as Deep Down. Its sucks that I uninstalled Warhead and cant get all screenshot crazy on ya.

Lets try this again shall we:

My PC which does not cost more than $1000 (7870HD, 8GB,4100FX). I should probably turn motion blur off as it seems to get in the way >_>

Again, SF is good but not "OMG better anything Ive ever seen in my entire life". And definately not "OMG you need a Titan and an overclocked Core i7 to experience the same on PC". Thats all nonsense.

You don't seem to realise that he's talking about console generations. PCs don't fit into those gens since they gradually evolve every few months, while consoles do every 5 or so years. Hence the term "generation".  Psycho on PC may look real sharp, but its console counterpart doesn't. Hence the visible differences in detail and sharpness between current gen models and the next gen ones. That's what I think he's trying to illustrate with his comparison shots.
Heck, Crysis 3 on max settings on PC still seem to have better model textures overall (just look at those faces!!! 8O) than what we've seen so far for the PS4 . But that doesn't make the early PS4 games any less impressive looking in my book. 

PS: That hi-res shot of the Helghan you posted is quite glorious! =D

720p? 1080p?! What is all this nonsense? Boggles my fragile mind. No matter the "p" or the ram or whatever (all of which I genuinely don't understand) for me the real thrill of a game is starting it up and being taken away to another world for a few hours. Whether it be Pokemon on a lowly DS or Skyrim on PS3 or Mario on WiiU or Zelda on 3DS, it's a game qualities greater than graphics that make a game for me. Oh, and a good soundtrack. Needed for immersion. But I do so enjoy reading how heated these arguments get from certain members =D

This. Graphics have reached a plateau. There's only so much more polygons and better fancy textures you can throw at things. Game developers need to cut this obsession with "MOST REALISTIC GRAPHICS POSSIBLE" anyway. Yes, sometimes they're very pretty. But if I wanted a game to look like the real world, I'd go for a walk.

AI, Physics, GAMEPLAY. These are the things that SHOULD be the focus of this "next gen". Will they be? Sure. Maybe by Nintendo and a couple of other companies. Meanwhile, most will continue to simply pour on "them grafix".

Physics... Often go hand in hand with the visuals. Foliage for example, or destructible elements?

An added graphical fidelity allows for much more than just a superficial coat of paint.