Yes, yes, triple yes! Maybe they've deactivated SSAO / HBAO / etc... during overcast weather for whatever reason, but it's really ugly right now and the game really loses it's sex appeal and immersiveness.

Here's a more detailed description of the issue;

1. In first person view, when pressing b, the "equip binoculars animation" starts playing
2. When the binoculars are a few centimeters from the eyes of the player avatar, the is a very slight pause in the animation.
3. The magnified view shows up.

I'll post a video later so the people can confirm that it's only on my side.

@ViiK

In hindsight I don't thing it's related to SSD / HD loading, because I have ton's of VRAM / RAM (4gb/16Gb) and the objects LOD should be cached. Nevertheless I'll try to play with the detail settings later.

video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTqet_5p83g

You can clearly see that the lag is present in 1st person view, but not in 3rd person view.

Maybe that's the case, as I'm using a HD. Are you using an SSD?

I've noticed that if you use the binoculars while in 3rd person view, the game smoothly zooms in to the binoculars view.

The duration of the zoom seems to equal the slight pause felt when using the binoculars while in 1st person view, so maybe the game is invisibly trying to "zoom" in while in 1st person and that's what causing the delay.

Same here, flicker in vehicles showcase mission, in the vehicle, controlling the turrets.

SLI 2x GTX 670s