Minecraft View Distance vs Simulation Distance: What Each Setting Does

View distance is how far the server sends chunks to each player; simulation distance is how far the server actually runs the game in those chunks. Chunks inside the view distance but outside the simulation distance are visible but frozen: no mob movement, no crop growth, no redstone. Simulation distance is the setting that costs CPU; view distance mostly costs memory and bandwidth. That is why lowering simulation distance is one of the first things to try on a lagging server, while view distance can often stay higher so players still see the landscape.

Both live in server.properties on Java Edition, both default to 10, and both accept values from 3 to 32. There is no universally correct value; the right numbers depend on player count, CPU, world type and what your players do. This guide explains what each setting controls, what it costs, and how to choose.

What view-distance controls

view-distance is the radius, in chunks, of the area the server loads and sends to each player. With view-distance=10 the server keeps a 21×21 chunk square loaded around every player (441 chunks) and streams those chunks to the client. The player's own render distance setting cannot exceed the server's view distance: a client set to 16 on a server set to 8 sees fog at 8.

Costs of a higher view distance:

Memory. Loaded chunks live in RAM. Going from 8 to 16 roughly triples the chunks per player (289 → 1089).
Bandwidth. More chunk data is sent when players move, which matters most to players on slow connections.
Disk and chunk loading. More chunks are read from disk and, if they do not exist yet, generated. Generation is expensive; see the Minecraft server lag guide.

What it does not do: chunks beyond the simulation distance do not tick, so a high view distance alone does not run more farms or spawn more mobs.

What simulation-distance controls

simulation-distance is the radius, in chunks, within which the server runs game logic each tick. Inside it:

entities move and run AI
random ticks happen (crops grow, leaves decay, fire spreads)
redstone, hoppers and other block updates process
natural mob spawning is possible (spawning only happens in ticking chunks, so simulation distance caps the spawn area)

Outside it, up to the view distance, chunks are loaded and visible but inactive. Entities there stand still until a player gets closer.

This setting was added to Java Edition in 1.18. Before that, Paper offered a similar split through its "no-tick view distance" option; on current versions, use the Vanilla setting.

Performance impact: which one costs more?

Simulation distance drives CPU time on the main thread, because ticking chunks is the work. View distance drives memory and I/O. A quick way to picture it:

Setting	Main cost	Secondary cost	Scales with
`view-distance`	RAM (loaded chunks)	Bandwidth, disk reads, generation when exploring	(2 × distance + 1)² chunks per player
`simulation-distance`	CPU (ticked chunks, entities, random ticks)	Mob spawning volume	(2 × distance + 1)² chunks per player, but only the ones with activity cost much

Because the chunk count grows with the square of the distance, small changes matter. Dropping simulation distance from 10 to 6 reduces ticked chunks per player from 441 to 169. On a server where ten players are spread out, that is the difference between keeping up and not.

Server software matters too. Paper, Purpur and Fabric performance mods make each ticked chunk cheaper, which lets you afford a higher simulation distance on the same hardware; they do not change what the two settings mean. Measure the effect with /mspt and the Minecraft TPS and MSPT calculator before and after a change.

Player experience: what players notice

View distance is what players see. Below about 6 the world feels closed in; 8 to 10 looks normal on most terrain; above 12 is for scenic servers and screenshots.
Simulation distance is what players feel. Farms stop producing when their owner walks beyond the simulation distance; mobs freeze at the edge of it; crops grow only near someone. A simulation distance of 4 or 5 is fine for a survival server where people build near each other, but a farm-focused community will complain if their iron farm only runs when they stand next to it.

The common compromise is a view distance higher than the simulation distance: players see far, the server only simulates what is near them.

Entities, ticking and spawning

A few details that trip people up:

Mobs spawn only in ticking chunks, so simulation distance limits natural spawning. Spigot's mob-spawn-range (in spigot.yml, default 8) cannot effectively exceed it.
Spigot's entity-activation-range further reduces how far away entities run their full AI. It stacks with simulation distance, which is why two servers with the same simulation distance can have very different entity costs.
Hoppers, furnaces and other block entities tick only inside the simulation distance. A sorting system at the edge of it will run intermittently as players move.
Chunk loaders (loaded by a nether portal, a plugin or a mod) keep chunks ticking regardless of player distance and are a frequent hidden cost.

Chunks: loaded, ticking and inaccessible

It helps to know the three states a chunk can be in around a player:

Ticking — inside the simulation distance. Fully simulated.
Loaded but not ticking — between the simulation distance and the view distance. Visible to players, blocks are solid, nothing runs.
Border or unloaded — beyond the view distance. Not sent to the player; unloaded when no one needs it.

Paper and Purpur expose extra settings around unloading and chunk-loading rates in their world configuration, but the two server.properties values remain the primary controls.

Practical starting ranges

These are starting points, not rules. Measure with /mspt under real load and adjust.

Server type	view-distance	simulation-distance	Why
Friends survival, 2–8 players, good single-core CPU	10	6–8	Players cluster; CPU has headroom; farms should keep working near base
Public survival or SMP, 20–50 players	6–8	4–5	Many players spread out multiply ticked chunks quickly
Minigame or lobby servers	6–8	3–4	Small maps, no farms, lots of players
Modded (Forge, NeoForge, Fabric packs)	8	5–6	Mods make every ticked chunk more expensive; generation is heavier too
Creative or building servers	10–12	3–4	Players want to see their builds; almost nothing needs to tick
Farm-heavy technical servers	8	8–10	Players expect farms to run; budget CPU for it and keep player counts low

If you lower simulation distance and MSPT does not improve, the cost is somewhere else: entity concentrations, a plugin or mod, world generation or garbage collection. Work through the troubleshooting sequence rather than pushing the value lower.

Why there is no universal best value

The same simulation-distance=6 is generous on a four-player server with a fast CPU and hopeless on a forty-player public server on a shared core. The variables that decide it:

how many players are online at peak and how spread out they are
how much each ticked chunk costs (Vanilla vs Paper vs a 200-mod pack)
single-core CPU speed, since the tick runs on one thread
what players expect (farms running vs a snappy lobby)
how much RAM you can give to loaded chunks (see the Minecraft RAM requirements guide and the RAM calculator)

Pick a starting value from the table, watch /mspt at peak, and move one step at a time.

Where to set them

Java Edition: server.properties → view-distance=10 and simulation-distance=10. Restart after changing. The Minecraft server.properties generator writes a correctly formatted file with both values.
Per world on Spigot, Paper and Purpur: spigot.yml → world-settings → <world name> → view-distance and simulation-distance. The value default means "use server.properties". Useful for a low simulation distance in a resource world and a higher one at spawn.
Bedrock Dedicated Server: the equivalent settings are view-distance and tick-distance in its server.properties; tick-distance plays the role of simulation distance and accepts 4 to 12.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good simulation distance for a Minecraft server? For most survival servers, 5 to 8. Go lower on busy public servers and lobbies, higher only when players rely on far-away farms and you have CPU to spare.

Does view distance affect server lag? Mostly through memory and chunk loading. A high view distance plus lots of exploration causes generation stalls; a high view distance with a low simulation distance on a pre-generated world is usually fine.

Should simulation distance be higher or lower than view distance? Lower or equal. The server treats a simulation distance above the view distance as equal to the view distance, because it cannot tick what it does not load.

Why do my farms stop working when I leave? The farm's chunks fell outside every player's simulation distance. Raise the value, stay closer, or (on servers that allow it) use a chunk loader.

Why can't players see as far as their render distance? The server's view distance caps what clients receive. Raise view-distance if memory and bandwidth allow.

Next step

Tune these two values first; they are free and reversible. If MSPT is still over 50 ms with a sensible simulation distance, the remaining cost is entities, add-ons, generation or hardware. Minecraft server hosting at LuxuryNodes runs on AMD Ryzen 9 5900X nodes, which helps the single thread that ticks all of those chunks, and the Paper and Purpur plans are the usual choice for survival servers that want higher simulation distances with plugins.