Played the demo. So far I like what I see. The presentation is excellent. The menu UI, and the features are excellent. I can't comment on the physics or much else right now since I only did one race. But presentation is a big step up from FM7 as far as the menu and UI goes. I am very impressed "so far". I have not dug very deep to see the options and feature set, I am only commenting on it from a visual aspect.
Based on my ONE race, I would agree that this game has a more "realistic" look to it compared to FM7. This is based on playing on the PS Pro on my 70 inch 4K UHD HDR TV, but I chose SDR during setup and not HDR, as the particular port that my PS Pro is plugged into on my TV does not support HDR (I have my Xbox One S plugged into that port). I will have to swap ports at some point to see how the game looks in HDR. I have FM7 running with HDR, but that is on the Xbox One S of course. When it gets 4K assets next month, I will have to compare them again.
I have posted some screenshots below from my experience. None of them are from actual IN GAME while I am racing because I didn't know how to do that yet. I took pictures during the replay.