After playing the demo first hand, the graphics look 100x better than these earlier screenshots. Way better than the one everyone pointed out of the Ferrari. I'm actually quite shocked at how smooth and crisp everything looks. The lighting is about perfect as well. The only difference I see from the game demo and the earlier screenshots is that the early screenshots had added AA for absolutely 0 jaggies which Forza 3 demo still slightly has.

I will download the demo after work and provide the definitive feedback on the subject :)

Actually, right after posting that I played the demo with the Ferrari and it does look rather bad in some shots. I think it is mostly a combination of the bright red color and the fact that most of this track is in the sunlight because it looks much better in the shadows when it actually has objects to reflect off the paint. Darker colored cars all look very realistic and lifelike. Easily equal to GT5 gameplay vids.

After cycling through all the cars in my race, the scorch red paint on the Ferrari and Mustang just does not show well in full on heavy lighting. In shade and in indirect lighting they look magnificent, its just at the times like in that above screenshot that these colored cars do not look all that good.

you know what i think it is?

selnor increased your expectation so much with touting this as a graphical king (better than killzone 2,uncharted2,gears 2,gt5,..)

he did the same thing to me with far cry 2 and need for speed shift(majorly disappointed with both).don't trust him with graphics ever again.

in game dirt 2 look much better than this with the impressive lighting .

I noticed that too, the lighter the colour the more the detail, pick the evo in red then race again but pick white, it looks totally real in white, feels like you could actually put your hand in and touch it!

The more you play the demo the more details you notice, really cool but I do think the cockpit view is too close.

Good to know things are turning around. :)

Just played the demo and I gotta say Iam impressed.I like how the cars handling varies alot one frmo the other.I like the graphics while in gameplay and the graphics improve two-fold while in replay mode(over-all lighting becomes far more realistic.).The only downside is the fact that I found the mini cooper to damage so damn easily while the audi seemed to be invincible.Over-all I was expecting better damage but overall makes me excited so I guess Ill be pre-ordering this.

As far as I have seen here, I'm not impressed...

I would play it myself, but my 360 broke last sunday... again, so it'll have to wait.

Yeah I raced with scorch red, white, black, dark blue, grey, and bright yellow. Bright yellow and Scorch Red look very poor in the direct and bright sunlight, however all other colors look great.

What I'm not liking so far is how the cars look like they're floating, especially in Replay mode! The color of the shadows under the cars don't match with the rest of the shadows mesays!