Is the art and effects in CoD dated?

[philip.ed]

Dano, whilst I largely agree, the top cloud layers in CloD look little different from Il-2, and I have always found them to look quite dated by todays standards.
Many features of the game are extremely similar to Il-2, and although Il-2 is excellent, I think we were expecting many areas to be completely new. For example: objecting loading. Really, there is no excuse why buildings load up sporadically. WoP models this way, and TBH once in flight, no one is looking closely enough to monitor the complete transition. In CloD as it stands, it is extremely noticeable.
Then there's the sounds...are these the revolutionary sounds based n a 3-D sound engine that we were 'promised'?

My main gripe, though, is where is the BoB? All of this development time, but no campaign to match BoB2?
I think that starting the engine from scratch clearly took a heck of a lot of work. Because the CloD shown in those early build shots and videos doesn't look far off from the current game.