About the "muddy" textures:
In the Beta Demo you don't have high-res textures, only medium (regardles of what you choose in the game options). It's written over in the ut3 forums. I'll see if i can find the thread again.

And about the "indie-shader-thingy": I have to agree with that, nothing really new you see there. BUT (and that's a big BUT!) UT3 uses a lot of these shaders AND the game runs smooth. After playing the shangri-la level i tried to create a bloom effect similar as the one in this level in A6. I had to use some hacks/workarounds/whatever-you-call-it, to archive it in pure A6 mode without the use of plugins (well ok i'm using the render2texture.dll as i only own A6 Com), but in the end it worked out (I think I'll post the shader and a demo level in a few days for those who are interisted). Well, it runs smooth, but i think the framerate could be much higher if i would not have to use all the workarounds.
I think the big thing about the unreal 3 engine is not graphical features, but the ability to use all these shaders TOGETHER and still get playable framerates...well and there's the editors of course
Oh and btw, i did a scene capture with DxRipper (rips everything that is currently rendered) and guess what, a shangri-la screen-cap consists of ~0.6 Mio Polygons. Now 0.6Mio Polys + all the shader stuff + quite good looking textures (although not highres) + playable framerate = Impressive if you ask me.

One last note: I'm not an Unreal Engine fanboy