I think we differ in our opinion here. Less than 2 years into this gen and I find myself more wow'd with it than I was with the PS4 at the same point in time. I'm playing through TLOU Part 1 right now and it's hands down the most visually impressive video game I've ever seen or experienced.
Horizon Forbidden West was a feast for the eyes. Spider-Man remastered + Spider-Man Miles Morales took the already impressive city and dialed it up to 11. Ratchet & Clank really felt like playing a CGI movie. Demon's Souls art style and consistency in the game world had me constantly stopping to take a look around. And of course Returnal with its rock solid 60 FPS, gameplay that was second to none and the visual feast of dozens of neon blobs flying every which way is buned into my memory.
Sony prepared for this gen and in spite of the pandemic fucking up their plans, have still managed to do a really good job. No other publisher has put out more current gen titles than SIE.
Like I said though, I think we just differ here. Perhaps after Sony has their next showcase that will alter your perception of things.
Yes tloup1, rift apart look fantastic im not denying that.
But can you remember what PS3 games looked like?
Anti aliasing was crap, pixel crawl everywhere and shaders were extremely primitive, materials would not look real at all they would just look like unlit textures a lot of the time.
Going to PS4 was huge, material based shaders, so wood would look like wood, metel would reflect properly, fabric, skin you name it, was drastically imporved, along would a significant upgrades in geometry, particles and resolution.
This gen so far pumped up the iq and framerate, has improved particle effects, added RT reflections and geometry, but it has not been as tranformative as the improvements last gen brought. So far this gen is like PC games eith extra bells and whistles like PhysX and RT, not completely transformative.
I mean, you have said that you find rift part to look like a CGI movie and that your are impressed by returnal and demon souls, and I agree with you they do look stunning. But when we analyse the technologies implemented in gen 8 vs gen9 so far its clear that gen9 is more additional then gen 8, the abundance of material based shaders and significant geometry increase in gen 8 was huge, bigger then geometry improvement we have seen from gen9.
Take returnal and killzone Shadowfall for example. Returnal added impressive particle effects and smoke effects, but the environment, chracter models, materials and general lighting is pretty much the same as what we have seen in gen 8, in killzone Shadowfall we saw improvements in all areas,character models, lighting, materials, geometry, particles, reflections, smoke etc etc
If this does not change your mind then nothing will.