Since the maintenance resp. patch of 28th of April 2021 the distant tree LOD and I think other far away objects do not display anymore.
Tried to switch characters, restard the game, restard my system, checked my graphics settings (did not change those in months btw), reset my graphics settings, cleared cache & tried to verify gamefiles via scan. 

I don't think this is a problem on my end -  I still hope it is though.  Edit: Multiple people I talked to experience the same issue.
(Please don't ask me if I have turned on "Faraway objects". It is turned on, alright. Never was turned off. xD )

Since maintenance resp. patch of  15th of February 2023 the distant tree and objects (mostly) LOD is back. There are a few issues which persist though.

Additionally certain objects (e.g. rocks ) do not change to a high-quality model when getting closer but stay in their low-res state und then pop to high-res only when coming very close.

Update: Since maintenance/update of 25th of August the distant LOD issue got way worse - on top of small distant objects being gone for quite some time, the gameworld now additionally has morphing holes in the landscape as well as other anomalies and entire mountains are missing, which leads to castles and other structures floating in mid air.

(first posts about the new issues start at page 4)

(Renamed thread title from "Far away trees resp. tree LOD gone since update | LOD issue worsened: holes in landscape; missing mountains" to "Distant LOD issues after 28.04. & 25.08. maintenance: missing distant trees, low-res objects when close by, holes in landscape, misplaced distant LOD objects, missing mountains, floating structures" for better recognizability.)

Other threads about these problems: 
did they do something to graphic Rendering seem different see a lot of mess up stuff

Graphic engine out of whack?

LOD Issues introduced with 25th of August maintenance fixed on the 2nd of September. Renamed thread accordingly.

What is this LOD anyway?

Screenshots for comparison:
(upper pic = now/bugged, lower pic = before/how it should look)

More examples

Velia LOD since maintenance:

Screenshot from a guildie:

Another example of missing distant LOD:

Screenshot from another player. No distant LOD resp. far away objects displayed as well. 

And a few more examples from yours truly:

In-depth comparison Drieghan:

Not only that as it seems since that maintenance many trees and in particular the ash tree all look square while chopping them. It sure is ugly and immersion breaking to see square trees.

+1

My guess is, that PA messed something up with codes on implementing the more fluid weather changes on elvia servers last week or two weeks ago.. 

I haven't noticed that yet. What I noticed was that some trees look squary(?) like maybe a distant model would look and pop into their normal model at an unusually close distance. 

Another player from my former guild sent me a screenshot as well:

No idea. Could be. I am 100% sure it was the update from the 28th of April though, since e.g. the Narcion comaprison screenshots, in which distant objects are still visible are from the 25th and 26th of April.

Yes! Thank you for this thread. 

I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I've done wrong. I completely deleted my game and reinstalled from scratch and it did not fix anything. I've fiddled with my in-game setting ad nauseum to no avail. Speaking to some other friends in-game it's happened to them too.

push, because I like to and it´s a big issue!

Same. Before I did a clean reinstallation other players confirmed that they experience the same thing.

smh

Far Away Objects option is messed up.