Is there a way to get rid of the glassy look of the water?

[z06z33 763]

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

[alexcolka 183]

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

[hychewright 46]

Could that be reflection form the sun in the distance ?

[Paraffin 2,197]

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. 

[propsfan 52]

I hate that beach!!

[Murmur 3,943]

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).

[60North 120]

Try with a bit of surface winds (waves)