Your lighting could be a big part of the issue. You need about 8 more lights in this thing to get it lit correctly. Did you get the latest copy of the Renderosity magazine? One of the articles in there shows how to light an outdoor scene. It was excellent. You need lights to simulate the radiosity from the sky, and the water. Are you using the wind thingy for the clouds? You can actually get reasonable clouds using one cloud primitive for the whole sky but you have to be smart about it and it costs in render time. -Kix

-Kix