[MCPE-25518] Render distance on W10 locked to max 16

I don't know when exactly this happened so it might have starter on an earlier build, but I can no longer set higher render distances than 16 chunks (gfx_viewdistance:256). If I do (by editing options.txt) it will only render up to 16.

I am very used to playing with 32 chunks (gfx_viewdistance:512), and the increased distance and performance has always been the one reason I moved from MCPC, but it seems to be clamped to 16 now?

I read that on mobile it was reduced to 6 which should be ridiculously close, there are a lot of reports of that, but I found none about the PC version also being clamped to 16. Please release this ASAP, it is the most redeeming quality of MCPE on PC over MCPC

i7-3770 16Gm RAM GT 750Ti - I could play up to 48 chunks with no lag before this "change"

Linked issues

is duplicated by 1

MCPE-27376 Unable to extend render distance via options.txt Resolved

relates to 1

MCPE-22290 Custom render distance Resolved

Attachments

Comments 16

Caleb Martin 2017-09-06T20:50:25Z

Max render distance is 30 for me in 1.2.0.25, though I could have sworn it was higher in an earlier version.

Nigel Patrick Clements 2017-09-07T09:28:05Z

Yup 16 is the maximum apparently!

[media]

bemoty 2017-09-10T10:44:07Z

Max. render distance on Windows 10 is 56 chunks for me.

PC_Screen 2017-09-10T14:06:36Z

Mine is limited to 16 as well on the beta

Caio Netto 2017-09-10T16:03:37Z

Bemoty, does it display on the settings or you found that out editing options.txt? The point of this bug report is not what the game "thinks" you can do but how it prevents you from tweaking options.txt to go higher

6 more comments

[Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay) 2017-09-12T18:37:06Z

Just tested this out again in 1.2.0.31 on Windows10, and I was able to adjust the render distance in the options.txt file to 56 chunks, and it rendered the trees I'd placed at 48 chunks:

[media]

Could you please confirm if this is an issue for you in 1.2.0.31?

Caio Netto 2017-09-27T20:50:22Z

Still affects me the exact same way on 1.2 and 1.2.1

Caio Netto 2017-09-27T21:35:30Z

Here, this will illustrate EVERYTHING: https://youtu.be/HD7Pm4GseZA

Shows the game allows me only 16 chunks
Shows it totally ignored options.txt twice (it does read, the display shows whatever I endered, but the game RENDERS only 16)
Shows my systems screen to prove my specs
Kicker: Shows JAVA unmodded allowing me to go to 32 at 60FPS

Richard Craig 2017-10-06T16:44:21Z

My in-game max is 56 chunks, but editing options.txt doesn't actually extend it any farther, even though my PC is more than capable. My Nvidia Shield TV has a max of 14, and it too won't extend any farther even if I edit options.txt to a longer render distance. The in-game options will show whatever distance I've put into options.txt, but the actual render distance is unaffected. I know from older versions that the Shield TV is more than capable of running as far as 30 chunks with no slowdown. It should be up to the user and not predetermined by some arbitrary calculation that's forced upon us.

Caio Netto 2017-10-18T20:59:55Z

And here we are at 1.2.3 and it has not been fixed, neither is the fact the calculated maximum chunks is still broken. I am still capped at 16 chunks on W10, meanwhile Java Edition + Optifine is now supporting 64 chunks. Stop being ridiculous Mojang!

HelenAngel 2017-10-18T22:48:46Z

We are looking into this.

[Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay) 2017-10-28T15:33:01Z

This should be fixed in 1.2.5 beta build 2!

Nickolas Azylanmik 2018-04-08T14:59:07Z

Well now my issue is that the minimum render distance is now stuck at 16 and there is no way of going under that 😢

Amine A. 2019-04-25T20:56:20Z

I have this very issue on one of my laptops with 1.11 . My other laptops are fine, but this one is stuck below 16. It wasn't like this before though, but I can't recall in which version it was fine.
Should I open a new issue maybe, since this one is really old ?

Jason 2020-12-19T17:30:24Z

This occurs in 1.16.201 now. This issue should be reopened.

Auldrick 2021-03-10T06:44:39Z

We would only reopen the ticket if we were pretty sure it's a regression of the same bug. I doubt that's true in this case, since regressions don't normally take 3 years to show up.

Plus, this may be an intentional change. The game is much larger than it was in 2017 when this bug was fixed, and it's going to get much larger still when we get 1.17. I can well imagine that only monster gaming PCs will be able to run with unlimited render distance in the future, and Mojang may be intentionally forcing us to use settings that can meet their performance goals for the kinds of devices we're using.

So we're going to need to track this as a separate report, because if it's not a regression there's no way we can give the new issue a different resolution unless we overwrite the old resolution, and we don't want to lose the history of the original bug.