I'd spent countless hours playing this game as a kid and when I bought it on GOG and played it, I thought to myself: "Hmm... I recall this game looking a bit better".

I know it's a common phenomenon when you play an old game and get surprised at the gfx because you remember it better but this time I recalled specific things and compared it to old screenshots of the game.

I was right. The GOG release looks considerably worse than the original.

Exhaust effects in enemy racers are missing, the models get blocky way too quickly (I know it's a built-in optimization feature of this and many other games for models to get blockier the further away they are but you need to be within like 2 meters of them to get the full detail in this case) and the electric connection effect is either missing or black-and-white in enemy racers and it's static instead of animated.

I have all the graphics settings set to max in the options within the game. I also opened the video.cfg file with notepad, changed everything to "ON" and set all the values to 3 (which, I think, is the maximum allowed) but it made no difference.

I tried running the .exe with Windows 98 compatibility mode but, other than reducing the performance to a slideshow, it also didn't make any difference.

I'm running Windows 10 x64 and installed the game via GOG Galaxy.


Is there any way to get the full graphical features of the original in this release?

The followig is to the best of my knowledge. I did check original footage from the N64 version and I know how the PC renderer works. However, I did not re-run the game on a PC of the era. So there can be incorrect information here.
Still, I'm very confident in the contents of this post. This is unfortunate, but I believe you are really misremembering. What was your reference? Did you fire up a PC from the era to compare it?
If you checked a videos online, then it's likely you are seeing a community-patched / modded N64 version which addresses some of these issues. The PC version received no such complicated patches yes.
So the GOG.com version is as good as it gets and ever has been on Windows.

There is 1 (!) feature I can think of, which is a lot worse on PC than on N64: Reflections.
The N64 version does a reflection effect on metallic objects like the podracers and some moving parts in the level.
That effect is simply missing on PC.
However, this also has never worked in the Windows version - not even in 1999. This is not an issue with the GOG.com release - it's just always been broken.
I've looked at N64 videos and it's the same thing. Yes, and the reason you didn't notice it back then was because you ran the game at 640x480. So everything was a blocky mess anyway. However, it was also a problem back then.
But this is something I'd expect GOG.com to fix actually. The magbeams were never animated for enemies in general, this is not an issue with the GOG.com version.
This look the same in the N64 version and on PCs from the era.

The magbeams being black seems to be a problem of the PC version. I don't think that's specific to the GOG.com version either, because my own DirectX emulation in OpenSWE1R produces the exact same issue.
I believe this is actually a bug in the Windows version of the game - since the very beginning.
The N64 version does have the correct color, but it's still not animated.
I'd expect GOG.com to patch the color (but animation will probably still be missing). Yes, because you already get (almost )the best graphics possible.
There are some things you can change in video.cfg - check other threads in this forum for more information.
It still won't fix the issues you talk about. Yes. You already do - this is the original 1999 release with the 2002 patch applied (and minor other patches which make the GOG.com version slightly better)
.
The DirectX hook included with the GOG.com version might not be 100% compatible, but it's not bad either (meaning you don't get many bugs which weren't already in the original).
Their DirectX hook (which is responsible for the graphics) is certainly on the same level or better than what I have seen natively on nvidia, WINE and most other hooks (which really lack features).
Even on PCs from the era you'd get issues due to driver incompatibility.

I don't think it's a priority for GOG.com to work specifically on one game (which is also fairly cheap and can easily be pirated). So I wouldn't expect many enhancements (other than fixing game breaking bugs) anytime soon.

However, PeterLemon hosts a patch for the N64 version to address some of the original issues.
You can keep your fingers crossed that GOG.com or someone in the community does something similar in the future.

There's also work going on in OpenSWE1R to document this sort of stuff (which will eventually lead to fixing - although that's not a priority for us as we don't have enough helpers). So if anybody is looking into making a community patch, join our chat.