I just paid for 6 months for my first foray into hosting a realm, and I'm trying to set the Simulation Distance to 10 chunks. Every time I save the game, however, and go into the save to edit the settings, the game is set to 4 chunks.
I also notice this with my hopper furnace in my mine, as when I'm at the end of a branch less than 100 blocks away, the furnace will stop smelting.
Is Simulation Distance not available in Realms? I can't find a decent answer anywhere, only speculation, some of it contradictory.
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I'm afraid to check, because there's an even bigger problem. When you reset the realm to an earlier version, you lose everything you were carrying, all your gear and inventory, and restart at spawn with nothing and no levels.
It even breaks the Conduits that were just added, because a fully powered conduit extends for 96 blocks, which is beyond 4 chunks, but after 4 chunks the conduit stops simulating.
I also have a redstone light grid in a town that I built, but the lights don't turn on at night if the daylight sensor is outside of the 4 chunk radius.
i'm just commenting so i can keep an eye on this as i still can't get simulation distance above 4 on realms.
I recently reset my realm using a backup from my computer. I first set the simulation distance to 6 chunks before uploading the backup (we've been having terrible lag issues, or I would have set it to 10). Yesterday, after a few days of us playing on the realm, I downloaded a copy of the realm. I checked the settings of this copy, and it's set to 4 chunks.
Still an issue in 1.12 bedrock edition.
Still an issue in 1.14...

We currently limit all Realms to a 4 chunk sim distance, so this is by design. We're interested in increasing the range in the future.
Thank you for your report!
However, this issue has been closed as Working as Intended.
We're very keen to hear your ideas though, so if this is a feature or change you would like to see added, please head over to the Minecraft Feedback Site where you can search and vote for existing topics, or add a new thread if necessary.
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This issue is still present in version 1.5.0