Yeah, but it seems to happen for larger and static objects you say. Well, I think it might be that the game engine automatically assumes statics can have LOD, and the "enable pop" is the same one used for showing higher quality levels as you get close, which are faded in to avoid weirdness if you have that setting enabled? I'm curious myself though, so I might test it too.
if you take my above examples, candlelanternwithcandles01 and candlelantern01 (iirc), the first one is fading, the second one is not.
they're exactly the same size, and from what i could see, there's no difference in their lod-behaviour either.
if you strip the first one off candles and glow in nifskope, you get something with _no_ relevant differences whatsoever i could find in their trishape-data or lighting shader properties.
still, it fades, why the original candleless lantern does not.
so, the one remaining difference i could see is, one (fading) is ol_static in nif and 'static' in ck, while the other (non-fading) is ol_clutter in nif and 'misc' in ck.
so i thought changing this both might fix this, but it didn't (gonna try this again though, the 'ol_static' is set in more than one places and i might well have overlooked stg, ain't that big in nifskope)
so after that, i have two seemingly _identlcal_ items, but still one fades and one doesn't. so, game engine or not, it has to decide on SOMETHING if it makes s*** fade, [censored]

i just can't believe nobody obviously encountered this problem so far, you'd get the effect on about any enabling-/disabling-switching you'd do, fallout-mods were full of lightswitches, hasn't anybody done some in ck really...? - yeah i'm aware you can't switch a candle. but blow it out, still

or am i maybe just missing out on some amazing new & better method to do such a thing?