In Fallout 3, we could change the value of the GMST fActivatePickLength and it would change the activatable distance the player had to be from in-world objects.

I tried changing this in Fallout 4, but the distance did not appear to change.

Does anyone know if this can be changed in FO4, or if the variable has changed to something else?

It's actually iActivatePickLength, not fActivatePickLength. Although I don't know if it works with FO4 or not...

EDIT: You're right - it doesn't seem to work with FO4. GetGameSetting iActivatePickLength returns a value of 150. Cutting it in half - I can still pick up things from the ground fairly far in front of myself. Maybe you need to save and reload for it to take effect.

Perhaps the variables are interchangeable, because I looked at my mod in FO3 and it was the 'f' version. It also contains a value of 150 by default.

Besides using SetGS, I also tried placing it in the Fallout4Prefs.ini file.

[Interface]
fActivatePickLength=200.0000
fActivatePickRadius=16.0000

Neither seemed to change the activate distance.

I'm afraid this time around a bunch of variables we used to tamper with have been hardcoded in the engine. I gave a few a try, it looks like there's no way to disable map borders either, and I fear I have yet to discover 1% of all the variables that have no effect anymore.