As i said , there is no control over draw distance.That's what bothers me so much , it's really a big oversight.

Try adjusting the MeshDistanceScale setting in the user.ini file.

The videos I posted in the OP are with the meshdistancescale set to 3.6. Doesn't matter what setting it's at, it will always be the same.

I know ive gotten my pop in improved by upping my MeshDistanceScale=7.2 and i added FoliageDistanceScale=7.2
Now i just started playing with these numbers so what works best i have no idea.
I know at one point i just went nuts and set MeshDistanceScale=100 but it didnt really seem to make a difference.
So i decided to try and add FoliageDistanceScale= to the mix and see if i can get a happy balance with those two settings.
Seems to be making a difference walking around in forest in Flotsam, not perfect yet as shadow distance needs tweaked also, but its a start.

Alright, so I was wrong. The details popping in is the same in both versions but there is an error with shadows and textures in 1.1 that can stop high settings from taking effect. I just edited my ini file to use high settings and noticed a large difference in the game with shadows and textures.

Make sure you set your ini file to read-only to avoid it being changed by the config menu.

Makes no difference. This is my read-only .ini.

[Rendering]
TextureDownscale=0
AtlasTextureDownscale=0
DetailTextureDownscale=0
MaxTextureSize=2048
MaxAtlasTextureSize=4096
TextureMemoryBudget=1000
TextureTimeBudget=10
MaxCubeShadowSize=2048
MaxCubeShadowCount=4
MaxSpotShadowSize=2048
MaxSpotShadowCount=4
FoliageDistanceScale=7.2
MeshDistanceScale=7.2
CharacterLodGameplayDownscale=0
AllowBloom=1
AllowShafts=1
AllowAntialias=1
AllowBlur=1
AllowDOF=1
AllowDecals=1.0
AllowVignette=1
AllowSharpen=1
AllowRain=1
AllowSSAO=0
AllowMotionBlur=0
AllowScatterDOF=1
AllowCutsceneDOF=1
DanglesLimiter=0
ShadowQuality=3
ShadowedLights=3
Fullscreen=1
VSync=0
UberSampling=0

The mesh stuff makes no difference, but the texture and shadow settings certainly do. Despite being on ultra mine were set to "1" and "256" respectively. Changing them to "3" and "2048" made a world of difference in-game.

The rocks and such popping in was there from 1.0 and is not changed. The shadows and textures popping in was a bug with the settings which ini tweaks can fix.