How to Optimize View and Simulation Distance to Reduce Server Lag

If your Minecraft server is experiencing lag or running out of RAM, the first two settings you should check are the View Distance and Simulation Distance.

These two settings control how many chunks the server has to load and actively process around each player. By optimizing these numbers, you can massively improve your server's performance without ruining the gameplay experience.

Understanding the Difference

Before you start changing settings, it is important to understand the difference between the two distances.

View Distance (Render Distance)

This setting controls how many chunks the server sends to the player's client.

A view distance of 10 means the server will load and send a 10-chunk radius around the player so they can see the terrain.
Impact: View distance primarily consumes RAM and network bandwidth.

Simulation Distance

Introduced in Minecraft 1.18, this setting controls how many chunks around the player are actively ticking.

In ticking chunks, crops grow, furnaces smelt, redstone fires, and mobs move. If a chunk is within the View Distance but outside the Simulation Distance, the player can see the terrain, but time effectively stands still there.
Impact: Simulation distance heavily consumes CPU.

Tip: By setting a high View Distance and a low Simulation Distance, players can see far into the horizon (beautiful views!) while the server only processes entities right next to them (saving massive amounts of CPU).

How to Adjust the Distances

You can change both of these settings globally for your server via your main configuration file.

Go to your Cubes Hosting Game Panel and open the File Manager.
Locate the server.properties file in your root directory and open it.

Find the following two lines:

view-distance=10
simulation-distance=10

Change the numbers to your desired values (see our recommendations below).
Save the file and Restart your server.

Recommended Settings

Finding the perfect balance depends on how much RAM your Cubes Hosting plan has and what type of server you are running.

1. The Balanced Survival Server (Recommended)

This is the sweet spot for a standard SMP (Survival Multiplayer) server. Players get to see moderately far, but the server doesn't get overloaded processing distant mobs.

view-distance=8
simulation-distance=4 or 5

2. The Performance / Minigame Server

If you are running a PvP server, Skyblock, or a lobby where long sightlines don't matter, you can drop these extremely low to maximize TPS (Ticks Per Second) and support tons of players.

view-distance=4 or 6
simulation-distance=3 or 4

3. The High-End Exploration Server

If you have a premium Cubes Hosting plan with plenty of RAM and CPU power, and you want your players to enjoy breathtaking views while exploring oceans and mountains:

view-distance=12 to 16
simulation-distance=6 to 8

Warning: Do not set these values to massive numbers like 32. Minecraft's chunk loading increases exponentially (a radius of 32 means loading over 4,000 chunks per player). Setting this too high is the fastest way to crash your server!