@commander: I've seen the video and most of the graphical effect used were also present in killzone shadowfall as John points out. Really all horizon does is improve on those techniques used by guirella games in thier previous games but certainly not invents something new. As I said horizon does things better than other open world RPG out there but certainly not do something that hasn't been done before.

@commander: what sorts of new techniques is horizon using that hasn't been used before?

It's a technical marvel yes but certainly not the best. We've seen much better visuals before. It's seems you're the one who is "making" up the "truth" and can't handle the actual truth that it's not something that's not been done before.

In no particular order-

Battlefield 1 and 4

Battlefront

Crysis 3

Metro last light

Witcher 3

Assassin creed unity

Far cry primal and 4

Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Rise of tomb raider

Alien isolation

Dying light

Mirror edge( new one)

Batman Arkham Knight

Uncharted 4

Horizon zero dawn

Quantum break

Ryse

The division

Since this is technical graphics only list so I'm not mentioning but my personal best visuals for a game is Ori and the blind forest.

@Juub1990: why though? You don't like far cry? Especially 2 and 3?

@Shewgenja: crytek is gone the only dev who pushed the boundaries of PC. So yeah there aren't and won't be any more games on PC that will look as amazing as these ps4 exclusives like horizon and upcoming god of war, last of us 2 etc.

Star citizen seems to be the only one that has a chance to really shine in terms of visuals but its release is nowhere close.

Also PC doesn't have big companies like Sony to fund the development for games that's also one of the reasons you won't see PC games like crysis anymore.

@Quicksilver128: Yeah for an open world game horizon has the best visuals out of the box(I'm saying this because some here are comparing a modded game with base game). On the other hand I have to diagree on Crysis 3.

Witcher 2(the writing was better than Witcher 3 imo the whole political assassination plot was very well done)

Witcher 3 (especially side quests writing)

Ezio trilogy

Black flag

Arkham city

There are more but right now these are the ones that comes to my mind.

@commander: dude crysis 3 has lots of things besides foliage that is better. Like particle effects, Water effect etc etc.

But for an open world RPG you have to admit horizon looks absolutely amazing. If you wantt fair comparison compare the foliage with Witcher 3. It's better than Witcher.

That's a beautiful world created right there. Kudos to guerilla games for creating such beautiful game world.

This just proves though that it's not about how powerful a hardware can be but how well someone( a dev in particular) can utilize that hardware.