World boundary



The world boundary is the area at the edge of the playable map, at and around X/Z 29,999,999.

Effects
There are some strange effects that happen at and around the world boundary:

On blocks and items


Past a certain point, most blocks will stop functioning normally.


 * The fire of torches will appear in/on a block next to the torch, instead of on the torch itself.
 * Torch flames stop centering on torches after block X/Z of ± 8,388,607.
 * On the ± X axis, it will render on the center of the X edge; on the -X side for odd blocks, and on the +X side for even blocks.
 * On the ± Z axis, it will render on the center of the Z edge; on the -Z side for odd blocks, and on the +Z side for even blocks.
 * In the corner past X/Z of ± 8,388,607 it will render in the corner of the block; on the +X/Z corner for odd X/Z blocks, the -X +Z corner for even X odd Z blocks, the -X -Z corner for even X even Z blocks, and the +X -Z corner for odd X even Z blocks.
 * Gravity-effected blocks will only fall when placed on certain blocks, may stay in the air on others, and may immediately drop as an item on other sides; there is no particular pattern.
 * At 12,550,821 and past all falling sand entities drop as dropped items when landing, no matter what they land on. Just before that point all falling sand entities refuse to fall at all when blocks below them are removed.
 * Water and lava's visual overlays do not render at all.
 * After a player goes past the 20,000 mark on any coordinate the insides of water change into void particles.
 * Ladders do not have hitboxes.
 * Making a nether portal at X/Z: ±29,999,999 and going through it will take you to around X/Z: ±3,700,000 in the Nether.
 * At and past X/Z of ± 8,388,607 lit TNT will jump to the corner of the cell it was lit in. This means TNT cannons are impossible.
 * Piston heads will disappear when the block is activated, and will have the same effect as sand does when falling (then disappears).
 * Piston shafts stop rendering correctly after X/Z of ± 2,097,151.
 * They render 2 dimensionally in non-corners between X/Z of ± 2,097,151 and X/Z of ± 8,388,607.
 * They do not render at all in corners between X/Z of ± 2,097,151 and X/Z of ± 8,388,607.
 * They render as 3 dimensional rectangles in non-corners after X/Z of ± 8,388,607.
 * When facing up or down, they render as 3 dimensional squares (full block size) in corners after X/Z of ± 8,388,607.
 * Paintings can be placed over other paintings near the far lands.
 * After X/Z ±20,000,650, item frames look extremely distorted.
 * They will be very close to you and move every time you move. They also disappear when you are near a wall.
 * The floating book on the enchantment table seems to behave abnormally when a player is moving near it.
 * Redstone occasionally appears extremely distorted, with stretched graphics. It can also appear misplaced, or completely invisible, but the highlight box still appears indicating where redstone is placed.
 * Redstone stops rendering and connecting correctly after block X/Z of ± 4,194,303.
 * After X/Z of ± 1,048,576, redstone starts to stretch and distort. After X/Z of ± 4,194,303 it gets as big as one block, and at X/Z of ± 8,388,607 it stretches even more until you get to X/Z of ± 16,777,216, where the redstone stretches outside the block boundary, could only render in certain places, and when placed, is sometimes offset with the block. The hitbox is still the same.
 * Redstone ore particles only appear in the corners.
 * Flower pots, cauldrons and hoppers, when looked from the inside, one of the sides is translucent, and the graphics for that side appear one block away on the opposite side of where the texture is missing from.
 * Highlight box for cake fails to appear correctly.
 * Lily pads fail to appear.
 * Flames from a mob spawner only appear on one side of the block.
 * The graphic for the End portal block fails to appear correctly.
 * Spawn eggs fail to spawn mobs.

On entities

 * Past the point of 12,550,868 X/Z, villager arms will fail to render. However the rest of the body loads perfectly.
 * Vehicles are placed incorrectly.
 * After X/Z ±29,999,999, fake clientside mobs will render and they cannot move and cannot despawn or be killed.

On the environment



 * At excessive X/Z positions, weather particles (rain, water, snow, etc.) fail to appear staggered, instead forming rows of flat "panes".
 * At about Y=200,000, snow particles begin to appear distorted. At Y=30,000,000, the snow appears to be stretched along the Y axis. At Y=2,147,483,647, snow no longer appears.
 * Rain stops falling in random patterns after X/Z of ± 8,388,607. In non-corners it falls in rows on the side of the blocks. In corners it falls on just the corner of every block.
 * Structures will not generate, and structure parts that generate at X/Z= >30,000,000 will be removed.
 * Fall particles do not appear under the users feet when they land.
 * Unloaded chunks/chunk errors may appear.

Fake chunks


After X/Z ±30,000,000, the world will start generating "fake chunks". Lighting does not function in fake chunks, appearing at level 15 constantly during the day, and 4 constantly during the night. Fake chunks are composed of a basic surface layer, and no foliage or buildings will generate. Naturally generated terrain structures like caves and ravines form as they would in real chunks, but they are devoid of all ores.

Fake chunks are non-solid; no blocks can be placed or removed, and players who enter them will fall into the Void.

The maximum possible altitude is at Y = 1.797x10308, the limit where mathematics break down in the game's code. If the player attempts to teleport beyond this limit, the game will disconnect the player with a Invalid move packet received client error. The only way to fix this is by moving a player back with an external program.

Trivia

 * Traveling from one edge of the world to the opposite edge by powered rail (the fastest possible method) would take 35 days and 10 hours. Building the rails for such a trip would require enough iron and/or gold to fill over  723 double chests even when packed into blocks, as well as sticks made from enough wood to fill over  135 double chests (as log blocks, not as wood planks, and excluding the redstone torches). ( 53 stacks of logs would be required just to make enough chests to hold all the building materials for this rail track.) If already crafted, the rails required would fill  17,361 double chests. If you had to gather the materials to make all those rails, you'd wear out  14,404 diamond pickaxes and  300 diamond axes (on average, about  3,601 diamond pickaxes and   75 diamond axes, both enchanted with Unbreaking 3).
 * There's also the obvious fact that even if one were to amass all these materials, actually laying said track would require the player to travel the entire distance through other means anyway. As such, while this may be the fastest method, it is impossible unless you have already been there at least once.
 * Then there's the obvious fact that you need redstone torches. A torch can optimally light 17 blocks, so 3,529,412 torches are required. That requires 55,148 sticks/redstone dusts, which requires 2042 large chests, which requires 128 stacks of log blocks to make the chests (which requires 3 large chests!).

Gallery
世界界限