I wonder if the stuff you're doing is something extraordinary or something every videogame-developer could have known.
Believe me - it's far from extraordinary
It's mostly about getting things right where it matters, not about creating something complex and more advanced.
EDIT:
The often heard argument (on racing-sim sites/forums) is that is unreasonable for ISI to make rF2 look like the best looking videogame, just because they have a small team of developers.
Yes, I completely disagree with argument of team size.
Hovewer, there's argument of company's profile. Just like with anything else, making good graphics requires some experience in that area. Think of all the years ISI or iRacing took to get to the point where they are now with physics. Think of all the research done.
It's easier with graphics beacause we can all see the world every day with our own eyes. However think of all the people who have different opinions on WIP screenshots - who is right and who is wrong?
There's also a matter of approach.
One will look upon racetrack, see rubber on best line and make dark marks on asphalt in his virtual track. Someone else will look at that rubber at different angles and notice that rubberized asphalt reflects sunlight better and will add that effect, too.
Someone will notice that not just sunlight is reflected, but blue light coming from the sky aswell (why not? it's a light after all).
Someone will look at shadow and think of it as some darker area in the scene, but someone else will look at it and see it as an area that is not reached by sunlight in straight line. So it's not simply darker, it's just not lit by directional light at all, but is fully lit by ambient light.
Someone will make sunlight white in rFactor, and ambient grey. Someone else will keep in mind that red light penetrates atmosphere better while blue gets scattered and make directional light slightly yellow, while making ambient light slightly blue.
Someone will make ambient light almost equally strong to directional light, someone else will make directional light 3 times stronger.
Someone else will notice that ambient light is not equally strong in all directions...
And so on... You don't realize all these things in "one moment of enlightment"

You learn them one by one, from observations, or from articles available on the internet. It takes time.
So, as you can see it's not about the manpower of a company at all. I really appreciate the effort ISI is making now with rFactor's rendering engine, but I have no illusions they will make some mistakes. That's what happens when you do something for the first time - you make mistakes, you misunderstand things, etc., and ISI had no reason to do years-spanning research in computer graphics like they do with physics.
It's hard for me to tell from WIP screenshots, which features are "implemented properly" and which are just "not properly implemented yet". When rF2 is out I'll know all that and will be able to provide some feedback or develop some updates.