How to Change the Simulation Distance on a Minecraft Java Edition Server

What is the simulation distance?

The simulation-distance determines the radius around the player in which entities and game mechanics are actively ticked. This includes:

• Other players and mobs – they are only moved and shown within this area
• Redstone circuits
• Mob spawning
• Plant growth and ticks of fire, water, dripstone, etc.

Chunks outside the simulation distance are still loaded (as long as they are inside the view-distance), but are "frozen" – no active processing happens.

Effects on the server

• Values that are too low cause farms, redstone, mobs or players outside the player to be inactive.
• Higher values mean more server load, especially with many players or large systems.

Change the simulation distance

1. Open server.properties
   Connect to your server via SFTP or use the file browser in the dashboard. Open the file server.properties.

2. Find the entry
   Search for the following entry:

   simulation-distance=16
   

3. Change the value
   Change the value as required (e.g. 8 or 12).

4. Restart the server
   Save the changes and restart the server.

Client-side note

For players to actually see the full distance, they also need to set the render distance in their video settings high enough. Otherwise they only see part of the world the server sends – no matter what you configure on the server side.