Well, I dont totally agree with this one...We have been shown many many features in the course of the past 5 years...Dynamic weather, pilot's bailout animation, highly detailed lighting, leaked videos with better visuals thant what we have today, and many visual effects that were shown as part of the " developpement updates"...
Remember that Oleg was there every Fryday and was himself presenting those features as 'included' in the game...Go back to earlier photo buckets and you will find some gems in there. And compare with today's version...
Oleg did promise (!) Cinematic Photorealistic visuals...So good it would be used in upcoming movies as the new code would be a great tool for movie makers.
So the high expectations were not ours 2 years ago...They were Oleg's.

Salute !