From pictures I've seen (downloading the game from steam right now.. takes ages 100-200kb/s with my 100/10mb line) the foliage distance on PC seem pretty low... anyone know if there is anyway to increase it? Maybe in the .ini file or something? some other tweak? Or should I just wait for mods?

It was likely just the settings used by the person taking the screenshots, view distance for tress and foliage is fine.