Well, the vegetation textures have received another pass and look much better, our poly usage is strong, and much of the temporary textures have been replaced. I think once we have our final post fx in place we will look current. If you've seen some of the other recent games with post fx turned off, where it is only base art and lighting being looked at, they look pretty plain, too.
So yes, I think we'll look better than what you see in those early screens.
With such a small art team (Luc doing textures and some props and myself doing the modeling, object placement, etc) you have to work in passes. We can't work a track from start to finish in one go for two reasons:
1) If Gjon says it's time to ship we have to have content. If we worked a track from start to finish then we may end up with two GREAT looking tracks and that's it--not cool. So, we work all the tracks up to a certain level, and if we have time, we work them up to the next level, and so on. I'd rather have several decent looking tracks at release that can be updated as opposed to only one or two completely finished tracks.
2) We are STILL adding new features to the graphics engine, so we couldn't completely finish a track completely yet even if we wanted to.
Anyway, I have to admit, once you're in and racing the visuals just seem to become secondary anyway--you are so focused on racing, caring for the tires, watching the weather, etc., that you don't have time to find flaws. I'm not saying this is an excuse so we can produce mediocre tracks, which is why we are doing pass after pass to make them look as good as possible, but it does play into our hands that we could maybe let slip a few glitz things that we want to put in and add them later if we feel that it's time to ship the product. If that makes sense... It does to me anyway.