Minecraft View Distance and Simulation Distance
View distance controls what players see. Simulation distance controls what the server actually processes. They are separate settings and do not need to match.
In Files, open server.properties, set your view distance, simulation distance per chunk value view-distance=10 and simulation-distance=10, then restart.
Before you start
You need a running Minecraft server and Files access in the panel. A restart is necessary after making a edit because it does not apply live.
Steps
Panel route
- 1Open the panel of your Minecraft Server.
- 2Go to Files and open
server.properties. - 3Find or add these two lines:
view-distance=10simulation-distance=10 - 4Save the file.
- 5Go to Console and click restart, or run
/stopif the server is currently online and your host auto restarts.
What each value actually does
view-distanceis how many chunks around a player get sent to their client to render. This is what shows up on screen, mountains, trees, other builds in the distance.simulation-distanceis how many chunks around a player the server actively ticks. This includes mob spawning, crop growth, redstone, water and lava flow, and hoppers.- Simulation distance is almost always the one costing you performance, not view distance.
Recommended values by player count
Players | View distance | Simulation distance |
|---|---|---|
1 to 4, small survival | 10 | 8 |
5 to 10, normal survival | 8 | 6 |
10+, public or PvP | 8 | 4 to 5 |
Redstone or mob farm heavy | 8 | 8 to 10 |
Per player view distance
Some players want to see far away without costing the server anything. There are two ways to do this without changing the server value for everyone:
- Bobby (client side mod) lets a player cache and render chunks even further than the server's view distance limit. This costs the player's own RAM, not the server's.
- Paper based server software (if your server runs Paper, Purpur, or Pufferfish instead of vanilla) lets you set view distance per world in
paper-world-defaults.yml, so a lobby world can run low and a build world can run higher.
Vanilla server.properties only supports one global value for the whole server.
Verify
Run tps or spark tps in console after restart. You want to see 20.0 or close to it under normal load. You can also check Console for a line confirming the values on startup, most server software logs the active view and simulation distance when it boots. Read our guide on fixing minecraft server lag
If it doesn't work
- Values didn't change after restart. You edited the file but the server started from a cached config, some panels overwrite server.properties from a separate startup variable. Check Startup in the panel for a view distance override field and clear it if present.
- TPS still drops even at low values. The bottleneck may not be chunk distance at all. Check for a single overloaded mob farm, a plugin with a memory leak, or a world that has never been pre generated, first time chunk generation is expensive regardless of these settings.
- Simulation distance set higher than view distance did nothing. The server clamps simulation distance to the view distance value automatically. Set view distance equal to or higher than simulation distance.
- Redstone or farms stop working far from players. This is expected behavior outside the simulation radius, not a bug. Raise simulation distance slightly if this matters for your build, or move the build closer to spawn.
