Render Distance limited to 6 instead of 14

I'm having this issue on Galaxy S5, so please don't say it's only ios!

Affect iOS and Android.

Still not fixed on 1.2.1. iPhone 7 and iPad Pro 10.5

Even on 1.2.1, this bug is still occurring. Restarting my iPhone SE did not fix this bug.

Still not fixed in idevices from 2014-2015

The bug occur when try to changing tge render in main menu but seem can adjust im game world to 14 chunk.Max I got 16 chunk but too lag.

That doesn’t work for me

The render distance on my ipad shouldn't be limited to just 6. I used to have 14 as max render distance.

I dont know,the game lock the render to 6 on some phone.Maybe due insufficient RAM,GPU limit or the phone totally bottleneck

I had format my device and seem the bug is fixed but still occur if my RAM full.

Still an issue on 1.2.2 iPad Pro iOS 10.3.3

Initial load display a maxed line with stops at 4, 5, and 6 chunks.

Close world, open settings reset video to default. Quit game.

Open back up, slider goes up to 14, but that still seems limited. Before 1.2, I could get a lot further on this device.

nope doesn't work this game should work on all iPhones from the iPhone 6 and up because their still more powerful than most android devices

I guess the game developed with win10.Because phone cpu not greater than pc cpu,it locked the render distance.My second predictios,because phone cpu do not have heatsink,the game was optimized to lock the max render to avoid overheating and drop performance on some phone.My prediction.

Still exists in 1.2.2 on first gen iPad Air running iOS 11. Even trying to reset the settings didn’t work. This bug needs to be fixed!

Thomas, I’m pretty sure that an iPad Pro could run 22 chunks easily due to the power of it, because 14 chunks sounds more like something my iPad Air should be running at normally.

Thanks Travis, that is what I thought too, last I looked the tablet had GPU benchmarks better than ps3 xbox 360 consoles so it should definitely have little problem with 14.

I paid a little more attention this weekend, and I noticed that when I shut the cover and the magnetic case locks the iPhone screen it seems to take a long time to wake up. Sometimes it comes back at render distance of 6 and I have to do the dance of reset, quit, then I get 14 chunks again.

I think that memory pressure might be tickling something to make the game think it doesn't have the resources to run more chunks. I know iOS expects apps to adapt and doesn't really let them know anything about other running apps, but it seems like basic model information should be good enough to bypass whatever the GPU throttling code thinks the tablet is capable of. I would expect the game to eventually render out to my max distance after resuming because it wouldn't be memory constrained as the foreground app.

Minecraft is a cpu and Ram intensive game not a gpu even an old intel Celeron can play the game perfectly at 14 chunks and it only has 2 cores and 1 graphics core paired with 64MB of VRAM and 2GB of ram which is shared with the gpu. so an iPhone 5s should be able to play the game over 6 chunks

Intel CPU has better fab than ARM CPU. Second,due ARM CPU especially for low power devices (phone),they run at low frequency than pc CPU. Third,PC has 2-5x better speed of RAM.Forth, PC run at maintain speed.Example,you have pc that run at 3.5Ghz,the pc run at 3.5Ghz exactly unless phone,phone CPU run at various of frequency to keep phone at the best performance but stuck at battery performance.

Back to the game,I got pissed off my phone run well at 6 render distance but FPS stuck at 60 ,never get below than 60 FPS and something I realize new brand of Minecraft less consume my phone battery than before.

Ok,I hope the dev got fix this issue before the winter coming.

I had set render distance at 22 chunks before the Bedrock upgrade. Now I'm stuck at 14, and even 6 chunks sometimes. It really damages my experience with the game.

I own an iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 11.0.2 and Minecraft PE v1.2.2.

Still not fixed, I had a max render distance of 22 myself and now it only maxes at 6. I'm on beta 1.2.5.0 And I'm running on Android 6.0.1. It's been 4 weeks and keep getting a email it's resolved but it isn't. FIX IT! It is really frustrating when youre trying to be nice and all you get is automatic crap.

I’ve been playing Minecraft PE on my iPad for years. I have a brand new iPad Pro 10.5 and I’m stuck at 6 chunks, 14 if I’m lucky. Before bedrock I was always at 22 chucks. I had an iPad Pro 12.9 before this and always ran at 22.

So is Mojang claiming this is not a bug, and is working properly? I’ve been patiently waiting for this to be fixed since bedrock came out. I’ve probably spent over $20 in the store and feel completely ripped off. I’m livid right now. This needs to be fixed now or refund my money!!!

I’ve also been playing Minecraft PE for years and I have an iPhone 7 and I’m stuck with 6 chunks no matter what I do and before this update I ran 14 and even before then 14 on an iPhone 6. This is very annoying cause I can’t see anything and I’ve pretty much stopped playing the game cause of this issue. I’m hoping there’s something Mojang can do cause it’s putting me off from this game.

Come on guys. Still exists in 1.2.3! Fix it already!

Still on 1.2.3 on iPhone 6 Plus. As a temporary workaround, I closed every single app in the background, and restarted Minecraft. After restarting, the max render distance was 8 chunks. It goes back to 6 after opening a few apps though. It doesn't seem to work all the time.

If this is happening on an iPad Pro, that's pretty disappointing; it's most likely a bug. I have heard the render distance limit is determined by the total memory you have, not available memory. At least they are aware of the issue, check Aubrey Norris' twitter

Rest assured that the developers are aware of this problem and are working on a fix for devices that have more capability. No fix version cab be specified yet, but it's coming.

The maximum chunk render distance (6, 8 or 14 chunks) is determined by how much memory is being used when Minecraft is launched.

Is the chunks to render distance ratio actually accurate for the iPad Pro? When I free up memory and restart Minecraft, 14 chunks is smooth as butter, before bedrock, 16 - 22 chunks was just as smooth. Perhaps the ratio shouldn't be the same across all types of devices.

Finally managed to get 14 chunks but as the game progresses and Minecraft uses soooooo much RAM these days it crashes out and goes back to 6. I used to be able to have 16 x 3 maps explored now the most I can manage is 4 - at 6 chunks rendering. Pointless. Please Microsoft sort it out. Stop collecting so much information in RAM so that we can actually play the game.

Note also Mega_Spud mention 6, 8 or 14 chunks. We used to have 22 before Microsoft started fiddling and storing information to send back to MS when it crashed so it looks as though they aren't even attempting to get us back to where we were. Perhaps there ought to be an option to stop dump file collection so we can actually play the game instead.

When my device use 843/1000mb ram,the render sliding can go to 14 but when ram usage below than 800mb ram,the slider set to 6.The more interest me is I reinstall the game back,automatically get 14 render even have 80mb ram free.When open the second time,it back to default.

I check at Wikipedia about chunks render,I google and change game option.txt and modified the render code.And now fix but sometimes it don't work.

Is it possible to have 22 chunks of rendering distance like before if I have enough RAM? There is over 80GB free space on my iPhone 7 and the rendering distance is still 6 chunks.

Storage and RAM are two different things. The render distance is based of of total RAM available in your phone and how many apps are running in the background. An Apple iPhone 7 has 2GB of RAM

Thank you for your explanation, Ethan, but does 2GB ram deserve for only 6 chunks maximum when there is no apps running in the background?

I've seen this happen on an iPad Pro, which has 4GB of RAM. It's either a bug or they don't know how to optimize their apps.

Confirmed on iPhone X, until you close all apps, then max render distance goes back up to 14 chunks.

Can confirm on iPhone X and iPad Pro they have the same reb=Ned distance as my $50 amazon fire

iPhone X is more powerful than some high end laptops so why can it only do 6 chunks please fix also i think the issue is caused by minecraft not using apple’s metal api and not being optimized for A11 chip

All Mojang need to do is use apples metal api and optimize minecraft for 6 processing cires

Please fix just allow us to manually input s number in advanced settings if we want and deal with the lag

Still not fixed

Come on 1.2.5 and still not fixed!

In previous versions, there was a bug where if you changed the view distance in the options.txt file, nothing would happen. With the release of 1.2.5, this has been fixed, providing a nice workaround for this bug. If you access the options.txt in the app files using a program like iExplorer and change the gfx_viewdistance value to something higher (such as 160 for 10 chunks), the view distance actually changes to 10 chunks. You could probably even set a value higher than 224 (14 chunks) with this method. It seems to cause no issues on my phone, though logically, the battery will drain much faster.

Ethan, thanks for the input, but this is still a bug for users who’s devices like mine can do more than that. Plus some of us may not have access to a computer. Thank you for the input on the options.txt though!

I think there are one of three problems going on here(or even a combination of two or three):

1. Minecraft is not able to fully utilize the 6-8 cores of a modern mobile cpu and instead can only use 1-3 cores.
2. Minecraft’s ram management is broken and/or needs major overhauls.
3. (Sadly the most likely) Microsoft is intentionally limiting the mobile performance of the game so that phones cannot match or beat the Xbox ones 8-14 render distance. This would make sense as mobile cpus like the A11 and SP835 are multiple times faster than the 2012 midrange desktop cpu in the Xbox one. This to keep console sales up Microsoft limits mobile devices to 6-8 chunks.

The Apple A11 chip in my iPhone X is faster than most laptops but can only do 6-8 chunks why? Even if this was poor optimization the A11 chip has enough power to even unoptomized run at 12 chunks or more so this is an artificial limitation placed here by Microsoft

Read for more info

I think there are one if the problems going on here(or even a combination of two or three):

1. Minecraft is not able to fully utilize the 6-8 cores of a modern mobile cpu and instead can only use 1-3 cores.
2. Minecraft’s ram management is broken and/or needs major overhauls.
3. (Sadly the most likely) Microsoft is intentionally limiting the mobile performance of the game so that phones cannot match or beat the Xbox ones 8-14 render distance. This would make sense as mobile cpus like the A11 and SP835 are multiple times faster than the 2012 midrange desktop cpu in the Xbox one. This to keep console sales up Microsoft limits mobile devices to 6-8 chunks.

I ran a few tests to back up my Microsoft artificially limiting systems theory.
If you would like to know the exact testing process comment on this post.

Using options.txt until drop below 60 FPS
Xbox one: max 22 chunks
Gaming of max : 300 chunks not a typo
iPhone X max 45 chunks
iPhone 7 Plus: 37 chunks
Galaxy s8: 39 chunks
One plus 5t: 40 chunks
Midrange 2017 laptop: 27 chunks
MacBook Pro 15: 140 chunks

Michael, you do make quite a good list of theories and tests there! I think the more likely option though would be that the ram management has been all messed up due to the fact that the Xbox One was put on the list. Xbox One is a very powerful system, probably more powerful than a phone or tablet. I have a PS4, and the PS4 version of Minecraft, and that’s the flagship of the original console versions mainly due to sheer power of the system. My iPad Air on an A7 chip could run 14 chunks, PS4 can run 18, and newer A10 devices could run 22. I think they need to get a balance set on devices that can use their full potential without underpowering systems because they have simply less power

Agree I really just think they should be able to fix it by now! They seem to be ignoring these kinds of bugs and just focusing on crashes. My iPhone X still does not fill the screen on Minecraft

I think they really need to us on fixing the performance of the new version before adding new features

Also why has no one fixed this or even promised a fix?

According to a very early post in Sept they said the developers were aware and working on a fix. However, I used to get more than 14 chunks on my old iPad in the good old days (22 I seem to remember) On a brand new iPad today, with no other apps opened, and only Minecraft downloaded I got 6 chunks max. NOT GOOD. It is something to do with Ram management although I still suspect that a lot of memory is being used to collect dump file data to send off to Microsoft in case of a crash. I am getting fed up with whizzy new 'features' e.g. daft new sounds etc. that just use up processing power when all we really want is some long outstanding bugs fixed and be able to render more than a worse than useless 6 chunks. It used to work well and now it doesn't please fix asap....

still here on 1.2.6

Please Fix This Issue It is so annoying

Still limitedied to 6 chunks on my iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2. IOS 11.2 Minecraft version 1.2.6. Before the better together update when it was still called Minecraft pocket edition I was getting about 20 or so chunks of render distance. The developers have known about this for a couple months and it still hasn't been fixed

This issue is occuring on my iPad Pro 10.5 inch running IOS 11.2.1 and using minecraft 1.2.8
And this issue is extremely annoying, I will not play until this is fixed.

I just realized this, what happened, is Mcpe going backwards, I had 14 render distance and then I slid it up to 6, not realizing I could not return back to 14.

On my brand new iPhone 8 Plus with 3GB of Ram and the A11 Bonic CPU (the fastest CPU in a smartphone) can only have a max of 14 render distance. Sometimes it will be 6 chunks but then when I clear the apps in the background I’ll be able to increase the render distance to 8-14 chunks. Like as you kidding me a $1000 phone should be able to run Minecraft at more than 14 chunks.

Sorry for off topic,
I have bad news for iPhone users,what I found is Apple fault itself.Apple responsible for this.They slowing down all old devices for making the batteries last longer.They capped your cpu clocked which the main 'Minecraft' brain to operate.Google yourself because many users going to rage today.

If you having a problem,please write your device model so I can know your device too old or else.

It doesn't have to do with the battery and apple slowing slow the CPU. My brand new iPhone 8 Plus maxes out at 14 chunks and sometimes it goes down to 6 chunks. I remember before the better together update my iPad Air 2 could have around 22 chunks and now it can only have 6 chunks. My iPad Air 2 had 2GB of ram and my iPhone 8 Plus has 3GB of ram. There is no reason why the iPhone 8 Plus with the A11 Bionic CPU which is the most powerful CPU in a phone can only have up to 14 chunks.

Fixed in 1.2.8 but would like a up to 30 chunk option as an override in advanced settings like the pc

Bye the Apple cpu throttle only effects damaged batteries

PLZ FIX THIS ITS ANNOYING ME WAY TOO MUCH I CANT EVEN GET A GOOD VEIW OF ANY OF MY WORLDS ESPECIALLY WHEN IT RAINS

Still not fixed in 1.2.9

The issue is that Minecraft looks for avaliable "free RAM" at startup instead of the total amount of RAM.
But because "Free" (empty) RAM is a waste of resources, iOS utilize as much as possible of it to make things like loading times of often used apps as fast as possible.
And when you load a new app that require more RAM than is avaliable, the OS just closes unused things that are currently loaded into the memory. (memory=RAM)

Briefly explained. When an app asks for more RAM. The phone empty some unnesessary stuff from RAM to make more room for the app.

But when you open Minecraft, it looks at the amount of "free RAM" instead of total amount of RAM. Therefore the game sees only a fraction of the amount it could actually use if it asked for more.
So it is a huge design flaw in the memory management of the game.

I really hope this is only a winter thing and not permanent. Please bring it back by spring, because where I live, during the winter I see EVERYTHING, EVEN MORE THAN SUMMER! So please expand to 22 chunks, I will accept 14 and nothing less, the world is not Sweden!

Still not fixed in 1.2.10 beta 1

iPhone X only goes to 6 chunks!

iPhone 6 also has this issue, difficult to navigate my 3yr old world

With the most recent update, my Win 10 edition has a minimum render distance of 5 chunks and a maximum of 6, even though I have normally run at 24 chunks with no problems.

Is there going to be a fix for this?

@unknown: This issue was passed to the developers more than one year ago and they haven't yet closed it, so they are still looking for opportunities to make improvements. I do not have access to their system, so I can't provide any further status than that. I do know that this problem has seen improvements on some platforms and devices.

Based on reports you've submitted recently, I assume you're still using an iPad 3. The maximum render distance offered is calculated when the game starts, based on the CPU and total memory. As the game has grown so much over the last year, recent releases require more of these resources than they used to. It's therefore quite likely that an iPad 3 simply can't support a render distance of 16 at the present time. But the developers are always looking for ways to make the game more efficient so that these requirements are eased, and it may be that eventually a performance improvement will allow you to set your render distance higher. Unfortunately, it's common for problems like this to need several iterations of improvements, some of which are relatively easy while others require a lot of redesign. The easy ones have already been done (I assume), so further improvements can be expected to take considerable time.

It might be that older iPads have degraded batteries that always trigger cpu throttling. Perhaps a switch to turn off the calculation would “fix” the problem from user’s perspectives.

My iPod touch is on iOS 12 and minecraft 1.7.0 yet STILL the limit is 6 chunks crazy but I will delete more apps and see if it’s better

I remember render distance being up to 40-52 chunks or something like that on pc version so please at least support 32 chunks on 60fps and then even go further and warn people if they might have less fps.

My iPad 3 newest minecraft iOS 9.5 still has it maybe coz it’s too old

Already 1 year and 7 months and seems like older device can't go more than 6 chunks

Mobile Phone 2019 spec

Minimum spec:
Quad-core 1.8GHz
3GB RAM
Mali T660 MP4
1GB free disk space

Recommend spec:
Octa-core 2.1GHz or higher
6GB RAM
Mali G73 MP4
5GB free disk space

Also present on Poco f1 (a device released in 2018). I remember i used to get minimum render distance of 8 chunks and maximum render distance of 24 chunks. This bug happened to me in the update(1.13 for bedrock). Still not fixed yet.

Specs:

Snapdragon 845 Octacore (4x 2.8 cores, 4x 1.77 cores)

6GB Ram

Adreno 630 GPU

Android 10( had 2 software updates after the bug and was updated to Android 10)

Probably not a software level(software updates) issue but a application level one.

I have a samsung galaxy note 8 and last year I could render up to 96 chunks and it was great but for the past 4 months I cant get it over 6 no matter what I do please fix this already seems like it's been going on for a while I dont care even if I get an older version to even play I wish there was a way to get rid of the new updates all I wanna do it play without it looking I have a wall of fog in front of me

Looks like the render distance bug has finally been fixed with no mention in the change log (In Mc beta 1.16.0.55). Can you guys and girls also check whether the bug is fixed or not? If yes then, I would really hope that this update comes out soon😄..