The water looks fine if it was on a pond but the water turning white in the distance is hardly realistic and its way to smooth for the ocean

Realworld

Xplane

Completely agree with your observation, never understood that feature of the water with HDR on.

Could that be reflection form the sun in the distance ?

Unless there's a setting or 3rd party plugin I've missed, I think we're stuck with this, until a future version of X-Plane improves water textures with more variety. 

 

There is just that one texture and water color that gets used for everything, whether it's a tiny lake, a river, coastal water, or mid-ocean. So you get this effect where it looks like a sheet of aluminum when it's back-lit by the sun. You'd never see individual waves in real life at the altitude of that second screenshot, but it's still a rough enough surface that it wouldn't reflect like that.

 

Maybe when v11 shows up, they'll have done something about this and some other small annoyances, like that tan-colored "beach" that surrounds so many land features where they meet the water. 

I hate that beach!!

Are you using RealTerraHaze or any other plugin that modifies datarefs? Try lowering the "atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh" dataref and see if water improves. That dataref also effects atmospheric scattering though.

 

If you set "caps/use_reflective_water=0" you'll get an interesting water color, but in this case you lose all water reflections (including sun glitter).

Try with a bit of surface winds (waves)