I think the major reason SSE looks poor for some people is because of the game engine that is used by the game itself. SH5, FSX,MAFIA II etc. have a very powerful game engine which as you said and others is able to deliver spectacular detail if you have a good rig. When they were about to release the game, they had ultra realistic bow wakes, but they cut down due to performance reasons, not even sure if they will make the wakes as good as they meant to be. And there are a ton more features I think have been left out because of this, I'm not sure why they used this game engine, the game puzzles me everyday