The view distance and simulation distance settings control how many chunks are sent to players and how many chunks are ticked on the server. Lowering these values can significantly reduce lag, while increasing them allows players to see further and keep mechanisms active at a distance. This guide explains what these settings do and how to adjust them.
What Do View Distance and Simulation Distance Do?
- View distance determines the radius of chunks (16 × 16 block areas) that the server sends to the client around each player. If set to 10, the server sends a 21 × 21 chunk area. Higher values allow players to see further but require more server memory and bandwidth.
- Simulation distance determines the radius of chunks that the server actively ticks (updates crops, mobs and redstone) even if they are not visible to the player. Entities and block updates outside this radius are paused until a player gets closer. Running with a high simulation distance uses more CPU.
Players can set their own render distance in the client options, but the server will never send more chunks than its view distance. Therefore increasing server view distance only benefits players whose client settings are high enough to display those chunks.
Changing the Distances
- Navigate to the Wabbanode Control Panel and Stop your server. Changing configuration values while running may cause them to reset.
- Open Files and open the
server.propertiesfile. - Locate the line beginning with
view-distance=. Set the value after the equals sign to a number between 1 and 32. The default is 10. Values above 12 can lead to lag unless you have a high‑performance server. For most servers a value between 8 and 12 provides a good balance. - Locate
simulation-distance=. Set this to the number of chunks to tick. Valid values are also 1 to 32. On Paper servers, the simulation distance defaults to 10. Lower values reduce CPU usage by pausing distant chunk updates. - Save the file and Start your server to apply the changes.
Tips for Optimising Performance
- Test incremental changes. Gradually lower view distance if you experience lag; raising it too high can strain the server. Similarly, adjust simulation distance cautiously because too low may pause redstone farms unexpectedly.
- Consider player count. The more players online, the more chunks the server must send and tick. Lower distances can help maintain performance when the server is busy.
- Use performance monitoring plugins. Plugins such as Spark or Timings can help identify if view distance or simulation distance is causing lag.
By adjusting the view distance and simulation distance in server.properties, you can tune your Minecraft server for the right balance between performance and render distance. Remember to stop the server before making changes and restart it afterwards to see the effect.
