You are right, its been quite a while since i have dealt with the cube-engine. The Level of detail mechanism just adds a constant to the formula- basically speeding up the n^3 voxel growth as the player explores the world in detail and distance at the same time in the worst case.

Looking at a ants-mandibles-mikro-biota, while observing a planet near the horizon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsjeiLklThY