TAlso, (and I guess this must relate to rendering level), I had expected to see more actual realism in the landscape although the moving traffic and trains, etc. are fascinating.
Yes, some (most?) of your expectations will not be met.
You'll need to study the X-Plane 10 manual. Take a look at the keyboard shortcuts.
The X-Plane forum has a lot of good answers
One of the hardest things is to get the rendering right.
Most people start with the greatest rendering and work down.
It should be done the exact opposite way. Start with the lowest rendering and work your way up.
Rendering is covered in the X-Plane manual and there is very good discussion about it in the X-Plane forum.
For example:
It is suggested to start turning down the following parameters:
- number of objects (massive impact to FPS)
- number of cars to off, there has been known issues with car rendering that have considerable impact to FPS
- world detail distance. Again considerable impact to FPS
- antialiasing to 2x
- anisotropic filtering to 2x or 4x
- cloud detail to 10% perhaps