The game loads a fair distance away from the player to keep things fluid, I was seeing people say that once you've gotten within 500m of something the game has loaded it and locked it in stone.

Originally posted by VolOpt:

The game loads a fair distance away from the player to keep things fluid, I was seeing people say that once you've gotten within 500m of something the game has loaded it and locked it in stone.

I am wondering about that too, anybody did tests about it? Also how is 500m compared to the map discovery

"Also how is 500m compared to the map discovery?" AFAIK, the map has a diameter of 20000 "meters" (= radius of 10000 meters).
The map area you discover without actually walking "into it" is about 75-150 meters or so (there is at least one mod that extends that area; i think the default area was something around the mentioned 75-150 meters).

The 500m I believe is about double the size of the fog you remove circle, I found a new frost cave and tar pit roughly this distance in from an unremoved fog

https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Zones#Distance