Firstly, your screenshots look great. But please understand that for me least, it is just not possible to recreate the pre SU5 experience simply by increasing the LOD (via menu or config file). I am a VR flyer for what it is worth.
As I understand it, previously you would get pop in /fade in as your aircraft moved closer to objects (although, to be honest I never really noticed it and that was running at an LOD of “just” 100). To see it, you would need to be looking at exactly the right place, at exactly the time that the building entered the LOD radius of your aircraft. Once the building was inside the LOD radius bubble, it would remain visible any time you looked towards it, unless you turned your plane round and moved further away again.
This contrasts to what we have now, where objects will pop in if you move your HEAD slightly (or camera, for non vr users). This means the same building will pop in time after time, as you glance down to check your instruments and then look back to check the runway or whatever. The net result is pop in occurring order of magnitudes more frequently. And by definition, this time it’s always happening in the direction you are looking in, because that’s what’s causing it to load in. As well as distant buildings appearing, nearby buildings/trees all wriggle/grow slightly as lower quality models are upgraded for higher quality models shortly after you turn your head.
Of course on top of this there’s also the normal pop in as the plane moves as well, the same as in the previous version.
Note this is particularly apparent in VR as
-The buildings and trees that pop in out of nowhere are life-size.
-Performance is already lower in VR so you cannot run some insane config LOD to try to push this pop in far back over the horizon. A very high LOD, but not over the horizon, in some cases makes it worse as the sim pops in objects that are somewhat further away, but more of them !
Finally… We use VR and deal with its annoyances (having a massive weight strapped to your head, all the effort in configuring and setting up, being unable to take a drink of coffee, find your keyboard, read your WhatsApp notification while playing… Oh and the considerable expense…) because the immersion and feeling of really being in that plane, in that place , in that weather was absolutely AWESOME. As an aviation lover, Asobo delivered the most astonishing experience I can recall in gaming/simmimg. It could really fool your brain at times. But I assure you one thing that quickly tells the brain that this is not real, is objects magically changing or appearing a few seconds after moving your head 
Heres a clip I took just now showing the effect with both 100 and 200 LOD. I don’t see the nearby tree issue here, but you can see the distant building issue. Also note from the FPS counter that the sim is using just 4gb of my available 32gb RAM, and 4gb of my 24gb available VRAM, so in my opinion this pop in should not be necessary…
Asobo we love the sim, please fix and soon! The longer it stays like this, the more I am really upset that I spent so much money on an expensive PC to enjoy it fully. Thank you!