Ok well I decided to install the patch as I wasn’t playing it anyway due to some issue I’d been having with the game.
The first thing I can say is that texture streaming has been significantly improved, at least on PS4 pro. The more detailed textures on buildings are visible from a greater distance and load in far more rapidly.
I need to do further testing to see if pop-in has been improved, but I’m hoping it has been been returned to what it was in the day one patch. Because one of the later patches made the pop-in far worse for me.
Something I am concerned about is that I have not had any random encounters since installing the patch. I did a fair amount of fast travelling and normal travel by horse and didn’t encounter one person on the road. Normally I would have expected to pass by 4 or 5 people in the distance I travelled. I expect this is the same issue that PC users have been complaining about since they had the patch a week ago. Hopefully the devs can release a hotfix soon because I’d prefer not to wait two weeks or more before the random encounters are reactivated.
I’d welcome any comments from other console users on any differences they’ve noticed since the patch.