Bit of a necro, but even though I’m on an XB1 I can confirm what the OP is observing—about different power consoles seeing different render distances.
As I recall, the change which nerfed render distances was from around April or so? I think the update was more or less unannounced, took a ton of players completely by surprise… If I’m not mistaken, the update was supposed to be focused on improving performance, stability. The idea seemed to be that if a smaller radius around the player is loaded in (shorter render distance), fewer assets will be present, fewer machines will be active at any given moment, so performance/stability should improve. In some situations/areas, it might very well have made a positive impact…in those regards, only.
One bad side effect was, as the OP states, reduced render range means less effective range…because if the enemy isn’t spawned in, you can’t see it, you can’t shoot it, you can’t make use of long range weapons nearly as well as before.
Another bad side effect, arguably worse, is all the crazy rendering issues people have been having. Objects outside Vesslan blinking into and out of existence, objects ALL OVER the game world doing the same, and what might be most (in)famous example—the airfield control tower roof at Overby dropping players through and trapping them inside the building. It doesn’t happen with ALL/EVERY object, but if you look for it and pay attention, and you’re on a console that actually makes it painfully obvious, you’ll find it all over the place, in every region. Power poles leading out of Fiskeback, stone and wood walls at the west end of Overby airfield, the control tower roof I already mentioned, the stone monument/cairn west of a certain church in the northwest of the South Coast region, ski slope border markers over on Himfjall…it is a very widespread issue. Objects that just seem to have bad “spawn distance” data, or something…
I have only been playing the game for a little over a year, been part of and then left a club for the game on XBL, but when this ‘surprise hotfix’ landed a few other members of that club and I did some testing to compare things. Like the OP and I both have mentioned now, we noticed that different generation/power consoles get stuck with different render ranges. On the old XB1, before the update, I could see and engage targets up to about 470~480m. After the update, that range dropped to about HALF, around 225~250m. I forget the numbers the club owner reported on his XB1X, or again what he reported when he upgraded to a Series X, but the numbers were still lower than the ‘pre-update’ 480-or-so.
I really wish the devs had rolled that particular update back. I was happier with the crashes, believe it or not, when I could actually engage targets at longer range. Can’t even see enemies across many of the separate field plots in the Farmlands, etc, to see if there are targets around or not…
At the same time, ‘level of detail models’ of foliage and other objects also got much worse, so there is that too. Much fuzzier graphics, much closer than before. Before that update, the game was gorgeous. Afterwards, well…it IS still gorgeous…in some places…or if you just can’t see very far, like in the depths of a forest.
