What is simulation distance in minecraft
Andrew Vasquez
Updated on March 27, 2026

Simulation distance is a world-creation setting in Bedrock Edition that controls mob spawning and despawning, and tick updates. As of Java Edition 1.18, simulation distance was introduced as a video setting related to render distance, to restrict tick update distance.Bedrock EditionJava EditionThe simulation distance control appears in the settings page when creating a new world. The values that can be set range from 4 to 12 in increments of 2 (even numbers only).See more on minecraft.fandom.com · Text under CC-BY-SA license
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Simulation distance is an extension of that, deciding which chunks are subject to other forces in Minecraft’s engine. This includes interaction not only with time, but …
What is simulation distance in Minecraft? Simulation distance is how far away the game will actually load entities and apply changes to them. Render distance is how far away the game will load chunks and show the blocks. If you have a farm about 4 chunks from yourself and the simulation distance is 4 then the farm will grow.
One of the various options and settings in Minecraft 1.18 is a parameter called Simulation Distance. FOV, View Bobbing, UI Scales… you might already be familiar with most settings since other games also use those terms. But with Minecraft 1.18, you might be wondering what Simulation Distance settings are supposed to do. Here’s a (somewhat) simple …
To put things plainly, simulation distance is similar to render distance. Render distance dictates how far from the player the game renders visible chunks and loads them in, …
Minecraft Java 1.18 snapshot 21w38a introduced simulation distance which has been part of Bedrock Edition. In this video, we will talk about what simulation …
How big is the simulation distance? The simulation distance is the distance the game actually loads devices and makes changes. The render distance is the distance the game loads the bits and renders the blocks. What is the scale of the Minecraft GUI? Graphical user interface scale. Controls the scaling of the graphical user interface (GUI).
Simulation distance is how far away the game will actually load entities and apply changes to them. Render distance is how far away the game will load chunks and show the blocks. If you have a farm about 4 chunks from yourself and the simulation distance is 4 …
Distances in Minecraft are quite easy to measure. Officially [1], Minecraft uses the metric system, and each block is considered to be 1 cubic meter. When you measure long distances, it’s easier to count if you mark the terrain with a space of 4 blocks between each marked block. The first marker represents a zero.
Simulation Distance sets the number of chunks that will run in-game processes (even if they’re not visible): load entities, grow crops, run automatic contraptions, etc. These options can be found in the server.properties file located in the main / root directory of your Minecraft server.