Since I updated to 1.18, the maximum simulation distance has been limited from 40 chunks to 13, which is strange because modifying the distance in the game files to 40 still works quite well, just like before.
I play on an ipad air 4 (2020) and here are two photos, the first is from 1.17 and the second from 1.18.
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We're tracking this issue in MCPE-143378, so this ticket is being resolved and linked as a duplicate.
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