To be honest, MS must've had one low standard artist. The image looked like badly made photoshop image. I remember people complaining back then that MS was taking us for idiots. FSX looks very good tho. And it's the only flight sim where the illusion of distance and dimensions are well made. Flying throught he mountains in FS2004 felt weird. Doing the same in FSX was a completely different experience. Mountains really looked as big as mountains.
The same can also be said about SH5. The movie mostly shows high speed cameras at high altitudes, but at sea level the size of the ships feels just right. All that extra detail sure shows.