  We present a systematic investigation of rotation curves (RCs) of fully
hydrodynamically simulated galaxies, including cooling, star formation with
associated feedback and galactic winds. Applying two commonly used fitting
formulae to characterize the RCs, we investigate systematic effects on the
shape of RCs both by observational constraints and internal properties of the
galaxies. We mainly focus on effects that occur in measurements of intermediate
and high redshift galaxies. We find that RC parameters are affected by the
observational setup, like slit misalignment or the spatial resolution and also
depend on the evolution of a galaxy. Therefore, a direct comparison of
quantities derived from measured RCs with predictions of semi-analytic models
is difficult. The virial velocity V_c, which is usually calculated and used by
semi-analytic models can differ significantly from fit parameters like V_max or
V_opt inferred from RCs. We find that V_c is usually lower than typical
characteristic velocities derived from RCs. V_max alone is in general not a
robust estimator for the virial mass.
