Holy Smoke! This is unbelievable - two great finds in one thread! Thanks to you all. Sorry Jimi, no video, but if Senshi's thorough explanation wasn't enough, here's a pic that say's a thousand words.
This was most important to me and my Planet of the Apes mod where the servant apes team, for example, consists of random skins of the gorillas (red), orangutans (orange), and chimps (green - default). Before Senshi's fix, each of the apes faces shown would have been the default chimp face at any distance greater than 3 meters. Now with the fix in place (as shown), each display the corresponding face at any visible distance, in this case, 50 meters.