My eyes are pretty sharp (when I'm wearing the right glasses) but my Canon 5D with the "standard" 24-105 f/4L IS lens will resolve at least as much detail as I can see without optical aid when the zoom is set at 70mm or greater. And I've often used it, mounted on a telescope, to take images of comets which I can't see with the same telescope.

Photography, to me, is an extension of vision ... I'm simply not satisfied with image quality which is less than I can manage without the hardware.

Having said that, four thirds is not that all far behind - it's way, way ahead of the popular "grain of sand" compact & mobile phone cams. I see four thirds as a lightweight compact alternative to larger cameras, not as a direct competitor.

My personal opinion is that the E-3 (and the E-1 before it) are not adequate as competitors because they aren't light or compact enough, and that the "consumer" model Oly SLRs are hampered rather than helped by an excessive pixel count - I really like the image quality the 5MP sensor on the E-1 delivers. There's still time to deliver a product that consumers will love for its positive qualities, but attempting to compete with FF cameras on image quality terms alone is a recipe for disaster - it's a mismatch as bad as that between the bantamweight and heavyweight boxing world champions would be.