None of my AFs are crystal clear but your far image does look a bit fuzzier than I get with mine. I don't know that I have anything useful to add but here are my thoughts anyway...

1) Would it be safe for me to assume that in your experiments with driver settings you have already tried turning AutoFocus OFF and manually setting the slider to a small number - perhaps even 0? 0 more or less = infinity, and I've never had good results from leaving AutoFocus turned ON.

2) It looks like the cam is looking out a window? If so does opening the window have any effect? Maybe the window glass distorts enough to affect the camera without being bad enough to see otherwise?

3) How long has this cam been looking at the outdoors? This is just an educated guess but to me it looks like the clear part of the "ball" is acrylic or polycarbonate. Neither of those plastics has good ultraviolet resistance over time. They deteriorate microscopically and eventually become visibly cloudy or yellowed from sun exposure - even from just the longer UV wavelengths that make it through window glass.