I can't explain this any better than that. The whole place looks washed out, lack of detail, grainy and flashy. For example, from the tower I can't make out any real detail of aircraft on the runways. I can't even tell what plane type it is just that there is a plane on the runway.
I have the detail sliders all the way to the left.
If I zoom right in on an object it appears perfectly detailed and clear. Distance view there is no detail, more like scratchy lines. By distance I mean more than about a k.
Things improve if I choose one of the very high resolutions (normally i have 1024X768) but then frame rate drops down into the 30's instead of being in the 80s. I have a GeForce 7900 GS, Athlon 3700, 2GB of RAM.