I think it improved before release, but it still looks surprisingly bad in retrospect.

The first trailer was, but then the game improved enough.

It can be used to remember Uncharted 4 could even be improved ( if it is possible to do better ) , like The Order, people didnt even believe the cinematic and even less when dev said " in fact, ingame models will be better :) " , and finally they were right. So if Ready at Dawn ( sons of Naughty Dog ) can do it, there is no reason to think ND could not.

no project the transformation from U1 to U3 unto the trailer for U4 and blow a load thinking about U6.

Nathan Drake model is incredibly detailed on U4 :3

The foliage looks better on Uncharted 1, though.

Took me a while to find out the differences. But yeah, I see on the second comparison, there is a gun in the second picture and not in the first one :)

Guys, if you think there is a difference you are deluded. Obviously the human eye can't tell the difference upwards of 6000 triangles. The "diminishing returns" image told us so!

I don't get it. Not much improvement. Drake just looks sweatier.

You're obviously lying to yourself. Dat realistic sweat. Admit it, you licked the monitor screen trying to clean it.

To be honest, while the geometry is vastly superior too, I think what we are seeing MORE of is better texture work, lighting/filtering.   Kind of like what the Order guys were talking about (filters).

Even 1 year old / current PC games that are cranked to the max fail to reach the same level of realism that some of these most recent games do (at least most of them).  I think it's because of lighting/texture/filters more than Geometry...

It's definitly NOT just about geometry anymore, you can only make a ball so round via triangles before it's hard to notice.  What makes UC4 look rediculous is what I mentioned above.  Looking like ND on top of their game as usual.  

Nice comparison.It's amazing how far the series is coming from to where it's at now.