When placing a spawn beacon or a enemy motion sensor as a sniper, the devices would appear red indicating that it could not be placed in that location. When the device could be placed, it would turn yellow. Very helpful visual cue as the beta gave no cue.
Your player screen loses color saturation as a new visual indicator (besides the timer) when you go out of bounds.
Same sort of visual indicator as the out of bounds screen appears but with blood surrounding it when you're low on health.
Hit boxes were dramatically improved. My bullets didn't magically go through enemies' torsos.
When running as the assault/medic class, the visual indicator of an incapacitated teammate is more prominent with a circle surrounding the defrib symbol now.
Jet stick controls on console are similar to BF1943 on console. If you don't prefer those controls, they are completely customizable. Also, when your jet is low on health, it becomes a little more difficult to control until it is completely incapacitated and falls from the sky. Y (or triangle) switches between your heat-seeking missiles and your cannon. R-bumper (or R1) deploys smoke.
Flying choppers felt almost exactly like BFBC2. Was able to fly right away.
Changing views in the vehicles has been moved back to the R-stick much like BFBC1 unlike up on the D-pad on BFBC2.
Parachutes take little longer to deploy than BFBC2, and while in the air they are a little harder to control to your destination.
Death animations look more realistic. No more funky physics where their body flies 30 feet across the screen after being killed. Player's eyes are closed when they die.
Knifing animation looks a lot better, especially when knifing someone on the ground.
Frostbite 2 was in full effect in terms of destruction. Buildings were tumbling down, everything was being destroyed around me in most every map I played.
The amount of damage it takes to kill an enemy on regular mode seems a little less than the beta.
I was able to equip the knife on the PS3 build. Not sure about the Xbox 360.