Uhm. I wouldn't go that far. But i know what you mean, i still think it looks better than most console games out there.
You have to remember that huge open world games are never going to be as pretty as there linear counterparts. In linear games, the developers can control what is going to happen next, they don't have to load a huge environment into ram either (so they can fill it with better textures instead, for example). Open world games anything can happen, and you can't load a huge environment which looks incredible all at the same time on consoles, they have too little ram. You can only do that on a modern gaming PC with 4gb+ of ram.
Another point to remember is bethesda have made Skyrim have a much further draw distance and LOD at large distances than Oblivion. So you have a choice, a super pretty game where you can only see 50 meters, or a fairly good looking game where you can see 500 meters, and more.