I made one character and rushed through the MQ. After finishing it, I made a second character to take my time with. I noticed when lifting the Pipboy it appears distant from the screen, allowing me to see more of the arm. I realize there are two distances, closer and further away, but I'm not talking about that. With my first character the PB was very close and shifting to the further position made it just a little less close, but both still almost filled the screen. With the new character it was further away in both positions.

Well, I didn't like how this new character looked so I went to the Nexus and downloaded about eight character saves to see if I liked any of them. And I tested the PB in all of them. Some had the PB in the close position, some in the far position. Again let me reiterate this is not the same as the function where you can change the distance yourself by clicking, but a default view that's sometimes close and sometimes far. Obviously this information is in the save file but I see no way of controlling it. I like the more distant view actually and I'm wondering if anyone knows what's going on?

Do you think it might have something to do with the body/weight of your character?

If you are on PC hit the V button and it will change how far the pipboy is from the screen.

That'd be my guess, but have only played with my one character so can't confirm it. Makes sense that if anything would change that, it would be a thicker arm though.

On Xbox you hit the select button when it's up and it can zoom in and out

Interesting. I'll have to test this. Thanks.

EDIT: Just made changes to body weight using console command showlooksmenu 14 and the PB was the same distance each time.

EDIT 2: Might have something to do with FOV. In fact yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it. When I started my first character I was in default FOV, and since then I've been using the FO4 config tool which allows you to change it, and that info is surely saved in the save file. That explains why I saw different views for different third party save games.

EDIT 3: Yes, confirmed. It's FOV. This is like the scene in Slingblade where they can't get the lawnmoder started and Karl Childers takes one look at it and says, "It ain't got no gas in it."