[poll] What render distance do you play at?
Poll: What render distance do you play at?
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What render distance do you play at? - Multiple Choice
- 2 Tiny 2.5% of Users - 9 votes
- 3 Tiny+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 4 Short 0.8% of Users - 3 votes
- 5 Short+ 0.3% of Users - 1 votes
- 6 Short+ 2.5% of Users - 9 votes
- 7 Short+ 0.8% of Users - 3 votes
- 8 Normal 11.2% of Users - 40 votes
- 9 Normal+ 2% of Users - 7 votes
- 10 Normal+ 4.8% of Users - 17 votes
- 11 Normal+ 2.2% of Users - 8 votes
- 12 Normal+ 16.9% of Users - 60 votes
- 13 Normal+ 1.1% of Users - 4 votes
- 14 Normal+ 2% of Users - 7 votes
- 15 Normal+ 3.4% of Users - 12 votes
- 16 Far 23.9% of Users - 85 votes
- 17 Far+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 18-19 Far+ 3.9% of Users - 14 votes
- 20-21 Far+ 6.7% of Users - 24 votes
- 22-23 Far+ 3.7% of Users - 13 votes
- 24-25 Far+ 5.9% of Users - 21 votes
- 26-27 Far+ 1.4% of Users - 5 votes
- 28-29 Far+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 30-31 Far+ 1.7% of Users - 6 votes
- 32 Extreme 9% of Users - 32 votes
- 33-35 Extreme+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 36-38 Extreme+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 39-41 Extreme+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 42-44 Extreme+ 0.8% of Users - 3 votes
- 45-47 Extreme+ 0.3% of Users - 1 votes
- 48-51 Insane/Insane+ 1.7% of Users - 6 votes
- 52-55 Insane+ 0.6% of Users - 2 votes
- 56-59 Insane+ 1.1% of Users - 4 votes
- 60-63 Insane+ 0.3% of Users - 1 votes
- 64 Ludicrous 9.3% of Users - 33 votes
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Reasons behind the poll
While playing I thought about how different my world would appear if another player was in the same world using a different render distance.
I looked in the Video Settings and was surprised what I use (16) is so far from what is labelled normal.
This made me curious and wondering, what would be the average setting among the survival players here?
I searched for similar threads and found one, but its poll options excluded many values. I think a more accurate survey can be of more general interest. I still boxed the higher values to keep the poll length down. All options are separate until 17. I apologize if anyone is upset that their favorite choice got mingled in with a nearby number
It would be interesting to hear your reasons for your preferred choices. I have played at 16 for a long time, without really thinking it through. Perhaps it is just a subconscious preference for binary base numbers that often comes when working a lot with computers. I might reconsider.
Investigations on varying render distance and FOV
It is possible to use the extreme settings even if the processor speed is not the best as long as you have RAM. 3GB allocated in the launcher is enough for me to enable the Ludicrous setting with Optifine installed and move around without too much lag on Fast graphics on my gaming laptop from 2012ish, upgraded with SSD and RAM. Although I don't have the patience to wait for the full distance to render in fully, it means that the full range of distances is available to experiment with.
I think there are occasions when higher render distances can be useful. Here are some things that came to mind
A more narrow FOV (field-of-view) seems to make rendering faster.
To explore more in practice I pillared up in my base and looked towards the nearest village. I set FOV to 45. At render distance 35 the village is not visible, and at 38 it comes into view within the fog.
Now after all this I started wondering if everyone plays at FOV 70 or something else. Personally, I only change from 70 for screenshots; wide for indoors and narrow for specific targets outdoors.
PMC's Pumpkin Carving Solo Contest Entry
I have always played on Normal / 8 chunks and 70 FOV, in part because the previous computer that I had did not run Far as well as I'd like (60+ FPS) and both of my computers have 32 bit OSes (versions prior to 1.7 actually give you a warning if you use Far render distance with 32 bit Java), which limits the maximum process memory (this is more of an issue than the Java heap space; I've gotten a "Minecraft has run out of memory" error screen despite F3 showing plenty of free memory. Even the latest developmental version of my "personal version" mod only actually needs around 256 MB of RAM (even after flying around for thousands of blocks it had only increased to 300 MB) despite adding hundreds of new blocks/items/biomes/etc; I've never been able to comprehend why even big modpacks require gigabytes of RAM and this is one reason why I never really got into mods other than my own, besides the fact that there are few mods that appeal to me).
Another reason is because when you spend all of your time underground you rarely ever see far enough to see into unloaded chunks, aside from the rare double-ended ravine, or the giant caves in my mods, and in-game maps only render an 8 chunk radius; by modding the game so the view distance is 8 instead of 10 (the fixed setting that 1.6.4 uses; this means that "Far" render distance is actually only 10 chunks) and reducing the spawn/despawn radius of mobs to 96 blocks to avoid an issue with mob spawning (this affects singleplayer since 1.7.4 but it had been an issue on dedicated servers long before then. I first reduced it in my mods to increase the density of mobs around the player) this also ensures that I can make renderings of my worlds without showing anything that I haven't seen on in-game maps (aside from a bit at the corners since maps render a circle while chunks load in a square).
Also, in the case of my modded worlds being unable to see the other end of a huge cave helps put its scale into perspective; for example, these are of the same cave (from opposite ends) on 8 and 12 chunks (using a self-patched version of Optifine; the 1.6.4 version of Optifine is broken in that it does not increase the view distance past 10 until you set render distance to 17 chunks or more. The largest caves/ravines in my mod are so vast that you'd need 21 chunk render distance to see the other end, or 10 to see both ends from the middle):
(in vanilla 1.6.4 void fog limits your view distance in Survival to as little as a few blocks at the lowest depths, but I have used Optifine to remove it ever since I started playing, later permanently disabling it in my mods, where the deeper caves/lower lava level would make it much more apparent)
Also, while not directly related, several other settings I use are the result of long-term preference, such as Fast graphics, with most of the individual settings set to Fancy except for leaves and clouds (with Optifine. The difference between Fancy with Fast leaves/clouds and Fast with everything else set to Fancy is that the darkening/vignette around the edges of the screen only occurs on Fancy and I find this objectionable), brightness set to Bright as I find the way light drops off around light sources on Moody to be ugly and limiting and it makes it very hard to see changes in light levels lower than 12-13 or so since most of the decrease occurs over the highest few levels, while Bright gives a linear curve (many say they can see just fine in a dark cave on Bright but it is partly a result of bad monitor calibration; I set the gamma nearly as low as it can go in the Windows display calibration tool, which gives a "good" result according to the test example. Since I got a new computer I also modded the game so a light level of 0 is actually completely dark; "brightness", which is actually called gamma internally, then works as intended, which is to change the gamma ramp, not the min/max brightness). I've also always used the default resource pack with only a few changes to several textures (I originally replaced steve.png with my own skin as insurance against server outages but a month or so ago the old skin server that 1.6.4 used was permanently shut down; I actually replaced the textures inside my modded jar instead of using a resource pack so these are considered to be the "default" textures).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I chose a render distance of 4, because that's what I usually use since my computer isn't that great. However, if I'm using mods, sometimes I'll drop the render distance down to 2 while my computer cools down, then turn it back up to 4 if I think it will work well.
I rarely use render distances above 4, and if I do, it usually comes with a framerate drop. Which is sad, because you need a render distance of 10 to properly use mob farms. (TheMasterCaver knows more about this than I do, if he chooses to post here he'll probably be able to detail this issue with Minecraft.)
EDIT: Literally Ninja'd by the man himself!
My avatar is a texture from a small block game I made in Python. It's not very good and it probably won't work if you install it.
I'm very alone in my Minecraft worlds as I don't have a very good internet connection to run a server. If you're like me, you might be interested in my Posse mod suggestion.
I use a render distance of 16 chunks. If my computer could handle it without any issues, I'd probably choose 64 chunks. (Not that my computer has problems beyond/at 16 chunks, but 16 is nice enough for me and doesn't have any issues on my computer, while I don't know at which point my computer would start to struggle (perhaps 24, or 32, or maybe 50?).)
So in other words, I use a render distance of 16 chunks because that's enough for me while I don't know just how much my computer can handle.
Edit: As for the field-of-view I use... I use 80 (at a 16:9 aspect ratio game resolution, giving a total field-of-view of about 112 degrees or so).
I usually keep it on or around 22/23, I like to be able to see far and my computer (Bought new tower in Dec 2016) is fairly decent. Before this for years I made do with a not so great computer and always had the render distance at 16. For FOV, I have it on normal but more often than not, I'm starting to use 90 for screenshots,
Closed old thread
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16yrs+ only
This happens because entities are only processed (including despawning) if a 5x5 chunk area around them is loaded, and since hostile mobs can exist up to 128 blocks or 8 chunks way from the player this means that the view distance must be at least 10 chunks in order to ensure they despawn; since all entities in loaded chunks count to the mob cap this causes them to accumulate in chunks they can't despawn in and eventually spawning ceases. This is made worse when the render distance is less than 9 since entities spawn within a +/-7 chunk radius around the player, so they immediately freeze as soon as they spawn, and the effect worsens at lower render distances as more and more of the despawn radius lies outside of the active chunk area (a 128 block circular radius is about 91 blocks in two dimensions, which requires a 6 chunk radius to accommodate, 8 when including the 2 chunk border required, thus at lower render distance no mobs can spawn far enough away to immediately despawn. Since the world is 3D you can lessen this effect by being high above the ground but mobs will still spawn within a 7 chunk radius (or the view distance if it is less) of the player. The minimum view distance is 3 chunks, even if the render distance is 2, which only allows entities to despawn within 18% of loaded chunks).
A simple way to fix this without loading at least 10 chunks regardless of render distance (this can have a major performance impact on lower render distances; the minimum view distance of 3 loads 49 chunks, as opposed to 441 on 10, a 9-fold difference. Even 8 chunks reduces loaded chunks by a third, though I don't notice any difference) is to have the instant despawn radius depend on view distance; as mentioned before I changed it to 96 blocks (6 chunks) which enables 8 chunk render distance to work without any problems (even Ghasts only attack the player from up to 64 blocks away, 100 is the distance at which they will lock onto a target, and 1.6.4 has a fixed chunk ticking radius of 7 chunks so this has no effect on crop growth and the like while still providing a 1 chunk margin so blocks next to unloaded chunks can't be ticked (I've noticed that the edges of generated chunks have random chunks sticking out in newer versions, whereas 1.6.4 has nice straight edges aside from the occasional water flowing into unloaded chunks); conversely, you could use Optifine to get 32 chunk render distance but the game will not tick chunks past 7 chunks).
Note that the mob cap depends on the number of chunks loaded, out to a maximum of 289 per player (this is set to be one more than the spawn radius), so it automatically scales with view distance to keep the density of mobs the same (with my change the adjusted mob cap is 54 since the spawn radius is 6; in TMCW I changed the calculation so it gives 70; vanilla 1.6.4 actually calculates the caps to be 79 / 61 due to incorrectly using 256 instead of 289 as a divisor, which was corrected in 1.8), which can also affect mob farms since they usually don't kill mobs as soon as they spawn.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
My computer is pretty good, so I'll have it set somewhere between 8 and 32. Even with Shaders I can maintain 60 fps unless I go above 28 (It would go much higher, but I have the maximum framerate set to V-sync), in which case it'll drop between 20 and 40 fps depending on how high my render distance is.
I set my FOV to 90. I did this originally because my old monitor had a square screen, which made it hard for me to see at the default of 70. I still have it set to 90 even though I am using a normal-looking "monitor" (Though sadly it doesn't support 1080p for some odd reason, even though it's actually a TV that works in 1080p just fine with my cable and Nintendo Switch, but whatever...)
Check out my Youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKgkHO1PUgitEdM6su0P8pg
24 usually. 32 if traipsing through mountains and wanting to see views.
Thanks to everone commenting and answering the poll so far! It is enriching to hear from such a variety of perspective and play styles.
You and Penguinish have convinced me to try this.
My screen is 16:9 as well, I will go exploring with FOV 80 to see how it feels
Thanks to creating this thread I stumbled upon an old installation of shaders which actually work on the version I play on (1.12.2)
So now I am sketching on this new adaptive setting:
low render distance (4-6)+no shaders for recording
low render distance (4-8)+shaders when building indoors, taking screenshots of builds and perhaps also when caving (atmosphere?!)
medium render distance (12-16)+no shaders when building. This seems where most people have their render distance set. I also like the fog setting in around here.
higher distance+no shaders when exploring the world. I love gazing at distant mountains! I have to experiment to see what distance gives acceptable performance while moving, hopefully I can go up to 20+
PMC's Pumpkin Carving Solo Contest Entry
I have a package computer I bought from Best Buy (it was an emergency purchase, as my prior machine converted all of its 1s and 0s to 2s and accidentally deleted itself from existence). It has an AMD FX 8310 3.4Ghz 8-core processor, 8gigs of RAM, and an AMD Radeon R7 240 (which I assume is the graphics card that came with the package). It's a decent computer (and rather old by now), but certainly not a gaming computer.
I play with a render distance of 10 because I prefer it, but with Optifine allowing me to turn off the Terrain animated option I can easily ramp that up to a render distance of 20. This is for vanilla and modded Minecraft up through version 1.12, with the improvements made for 1.13 I'm not sure what I can crank things up to.
Default: Render=12, FOV=70 (mostly*)
*When surveying during exploration trips I'll set the render distance up and I change FOV for some screen shots.
FOV=70 seems to be just 'habit', but other FOVs tend to look 'strange'
My answer changes by version and map type, but usually 12, so long as I have optifine.
I drop it to 8 - 10 when playing snapshots or without optifine installed.
I play at 28-29 render distance.
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21Z2rupws5IulGQMxB1Plg
I play at 8-12 render distance.
owo
- written by person
OptiFine allows for a render distance above 32 chunks now? Wow, I think I remember asking if it'd support up to at least 48 chunks a time back since the game itself has long since natively supported up to 32, which was OptiFine's old limit. Might have to update OptiFine to see (hopefully the updates for 1.10 allow this, if not it's fine). Even if I don't play like that normally, it'd be nice to take in some of the views to see how they look and/or for screenshots.
Anyway, I play on a Render Distance of 32 right now. It used to be between 24 and 28 in versions 1.7.x with my old graphics card (GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 1 GB VRAM), but this one does fine with 32 even in the more performance demanding post-1.8 versions. If I dropped the anti-aliasing/supersampling, I might be able to go up a bit more but I'm not sure how fast it quickly becomes too demanding as that's an exponential performance increase for a diminishing return on quality (making the overall thing more exponential and probably outside practicality for anyone not running serious CPU/GPU). On the other hand, I couldn't go without anti-aliasing; it matters more than diminishing returns in view distance (but I want to see how expansive the view is from high elevation at, say even 48 chunks).
I use a FOV of 85 (this is on an older 16:10 ratio display). If I go too much higher it starts becoming too fish eye looking for my taste.
Edit: Yay, the new farther render distances were even updated to some of the older versions, I was surprised. I must admit, for having times and a half the render distance (I tried 48), it barely seemed to add much compared to what I am used to seeing (in fact, at first I thought it was bugged and not showing over 32), but my frame rate drop sure made itself known. It took longer to load it up too of course. It was nice to see though! You really need to go high in elevation to make these render distances even show their differences for that performance drop.
Weird, i play at 8, i thought that would be the most normal one LOL, I run max graphics shaders though!
Well, it sort of is! Even though I start feeling claustrophobic below 16 to 24 or so (only because I became accustomed to more), there's nothing wrong with 8 chunks. I voted, and the majority, though the pole has low results for now and isn't encompassing of all players, seems to be in the 8 to 12 ("normal" and midway) to 12 to 16 (midway to "far") range. This is about what I would guess where most players do play as well. I'm surprised a few answers here said things like 2 and 4 chunks though. I can only imagine your pain for those having to do that!
The pole options though will mislead one to think 8 is way, way low since the results go up to a massive 64, but the game is probably made more around the idea that most players will use between 8 and 16 (I would try and not go below 10 myself though), even if the game officially goes up to 32 now, which even if most of my PC is older now and can do it, 32 chunks still requires a lot to do!
I also tried further, and now I fell in love with these views. Sadly, it's too much, and it makes me wonder if something like 64 chunks is actually "playable" on any PC (on mine, it's basically constantly 12 FPS while walking around). Strictly for curiosity sake, anyone out there able to, say in day to day and without bad frame rate, play at, say... even 40 to 48 and not drop too bad? I would be impressed even with that. Unless I am underestimating someone with a 5GHz+ Core i7 from the last year or two able to do it, I imagine 64 chunks is unplayable.
First is 64 chunks, second is 32 which I normally play at. As you can see, diminishing returns on the visual extras for the huge performance drop, especially when you only make use of the extra distance at higher altitudes when your view isn't obstructed (for that matter, even 32 has diminishing returns in the same way).
I'm using a geforce gtx 1070 and a ryzen 5 1500x with 16gb of RAM but I can get down to 45fps sometimes when having render distance on 32...
When being in creative however I get around 200fps with 32 render distance when the chunks finish loading. So I personally like playing at around 16 render distance since I don't feel the need for having higher!
Specs: i7-4700 HQ, 16 GB DDR3 1,6 GHz, GT 750M + 2 GB DDR3, 465 GB EVO 850 SSD, fullHD display. 1.12.2+Forge (latest) and optifine (latest).
Usually something like 8, sometimes even 6, 4 or just 2 (explain later), maybe 12. But the problem is, that I have insane frame drops, if I do pretty much anything. I see you guys playing with render distance like 24 on much more garbage PC (no offense, but…let's be real here), without any problem. And I am here like…how is this even possible?
All I need to to to destroy my FPS, is to go to my new home. It's fairly big building, with 9 chunks going all the way up, and many more, like 20-ish to y=164. If I go there, my FPS is on 30.
If I go to my animal farm, where is now much more conservative ≈ 1000 animals (I used to have 2000. It's much better usage of my time. If I go there and do the reproducing and then killing (there is reason for this), then I have much more gain for my time there), then my FPS is totally rekt. Now, after some forge changes, I cannot exceed about 1250 animals. Awesome… Before someone asks, I have autocollecting system for eggs. Recenlty, the pigs population got to 8 and they're basically sealed, meaning I don't produce them (there, I have another place, where I have 1000 only pigs).
So… If there is anyone who can suggest JVM parameters, so I get stable FPS anywhere, It would be awesome.
However, I'm afraid it's not possible. MC doesn't seem to like large buildings, but I love them. MC doesn't seems to handle large numbers of animals well. That is the SW side. Then there is the HW side. My CPU, with all it's decency, is still just mobile CPU. I suspect having full desktop CPU could help. However, I've tested R7 2700X (with GTX 1070Ti), and…it was just a little bit better. So… If there would be anyone with some explanation, it would be helpful.
Now, why would I play with 4 or 2 chunks? Well…I wouldn't. Since I smelt things in masses (20 furnaces, each one might have like 20 or maybe even more stacks of stuff), I just go to my furnace room (which is about 3 chunks from animal farm) and set it to 2 chunks. Everything in render distance is the stuff I need and only stuff I need. And then…I go do something else.
6 chunks: I've used this when building stuff. Hostile mobs spawn with super-low probability in this setting, because they have much less space to spawn.
12: Don't use anymore, because…it's not playable. I get 30 FPS with drops to 15. Outside of my empire.
What have I tried: powerful PC. Did not help. Vanilla resource pack. Did not help.
I don't: use shaders (look what garbage GPU I have), use resource packs more than ×64, have a lot of mods.
For anyone interested: here are my parameters: -Xmx8G -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:G1ReservePercent=20 -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=50 -XX:G1HeapRegionSize=128M
I use java 1.8.191. Different java versions have no impact.
GPU is, for the most part, not utilized too much. So it's not the bottleneck. CPU seems to be.
Not the right forum for support, but have you tried the simple answer of updating your video card drivers? I was using Ubuntu's default open-source NVIDIA driver up until I realized it made Minecraft run at 20 FPS. Using the proprietary drivers made the thing smooth as butter.
OT: I feel like updating that despite the fact that I got a new computer, I find myself still running the game at low render distances for some reason. I've lived with old computers for so long that I feel like I have to make sure not to push the video card too hard. That being said, I'll play at render distances of 6 instead of 4 now unless the game is modded and I'm low on RAM. (I have yet to stick another 8GB stick of RAM in my computer because I'm lazy and I'm trying to save money for real life things)
My avatar is a texture from a small block game I made in Python. It's not very good and it probably won't work if you install it.
I'm very alone in my Minecraft worlds as I don't have a very good internet connection to run a server. If you're like me, you might be interested in my Posse mod suggestion.