Dynamic "Level Of Detail" Questions

We seem to be having problems adjusting Model LOD levels lately.

The LOD levels show up in the Show Tool when we slide the bar manually... but not in the game. (Supplied models, ie, tree1-3 work fine, but not our game vehicles/objects.)

Also, when viewing the Model in the Show Tool using the the "automatic" mode... it doesn't seem to work or affect anything. (Poly count stays the same no matter how far the distance is set.)

The odd thing is, a truck model that shows LOD just fine in an older version of the game does not show LOD levels in our current game version ... but we can't seem to trace the point that it stopped working. (...and of course, we don't THINK that we've fiddled with anything that should have affected LOD levels.)

Anyone have any thoughts on what we might try?...
OR...
Has anything changed in recent updates that would change the way LOD works? (It seems to works fine in our original version---1.1.2)

Thanks,
Brian

(INFO--- currently Using v1.22--- 3D Studio Max Models, about 1200 polys to start, using 128 - 64 - 2 for detail thresholds.)