Adjusting View Distance and Simulation Distance on Your Minecraft Server

View Distance sets the number of chunks that are visible in all directions around a player.

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 directory of your Minecraft server.

Although players can customize their client's render distance, the view distance and the simulation distance options can force a limit to the amount of world data that the server sends to every single computer/player connected to a Minecraft server. Doing so is a great way to reduce lag on your server.

You can manually change your server's view and simulation distance by following the steps below:

  1. on the control panel navigate to "File Manger"

  2. Locate the server.properties file and click to edit it. 

  3. Locate the option called View Distance or Simulation Distance and enter a number from 3 to 32. By default, these are set to 10. If you are experiencing lag on your server, it is recommended to choose a lower value than your current setting.

  4. Click save button at top right of the page to save your changes. 

  5. Restart your Minecraft server for the changes to apply.