Yaar the washed out effect is intended. Do u think, in real life, if you were to stand up on a tower and look at such a big scenario then you would observe all the details at such minute levels. The HDR and SM3.0 functions allow the 6600GT to implement the desired effects without taking too much of a toll on the FPS. The same effect would be easily implemented on a SM2.0 card but there would be a big delta between the enabled/disabled images.
Hope that clears the doubts........
Hope that clears the doubts........