Java Edition distance effects

In, certain game mechanics start to break down as the player's distance from the center of the world increases.

Entities

 * Projectiles seem to collide incorrectly with entities above 8,388,608 blocks.
 * Item drops from blocks are created at the wrong positions.

Rendering

 * Rain and snow appear stretched out at large heights.
 * Translucent blocks can sometimes occlude other translucent blocks behind them depending on player position.

Sounds

 * Many break down slightly
 * Becomes considerably more pronounced beyond vanilla bounds at 2 (268 million blocks).

World

 * Temperature distribution breaks at high distances, which can be easily noticed with the creation of snow and ice in biomes such as Mountains appearing blockier due to both world generation and subsequent regeneration from snowfall or freezing.

Beyond the vanilla world boundary (X/Z ±29,999,984–2,147,483,647)
Horizontal distances far beyond 30 million blocks cannot be reached.

Rendering

 * Rain and snow fade at certain horizontal distances.

Entities

 * The player can easily get stuck in the positive sides of blocks after 2 (1.073 billion blocks).

Beyond the 32-bit limit (X/Z ±2,147,483,648-9,223,372,036,854,775,807)
The standard format for doubles dedicates 52 bits to the fraction, as opposed to the 23 bits used by the 32-bit float. As a result, beyond 2^30 or 1,073,741,824 blocks, the player would only be off by (2^30)/ (2^52) = 1/2^22 = 1/4194304 blocks, which is absolutely indistinguishable from the distance back at spawn. This is around equivalent to the precision of 2 to 4 blocks out on Bedrock Edition.

Each doubling, however, will indeed half the precision used, up to a point where every single element of the game ends up breaking down.

64-bit precision loss
Minecraft: Java Edition uses 64-bit floating point precision for entity positions and other calculations. Several mechanics which do not break down within vanilla bounds break down at very high distances similarly to Bedrock Edition.

Entity movement
On the X axis:


 * Jitter is noticeable at 2^48, or 281,474,970,710,656 blocks out, which is roughly the equivalent of 524,288 blocks in Bedrock Edition.
 * The skybox starts to flash random colors when the player's camera moves in modern versions.
 * This effect becomes worse the further out the player travels.
 * The player and all entities that have a hitbox equal to or smaller than 1 block will fall through the world at 2^52, or 4,503,599,627,370,496 blocks out.
 * Stripe Lands occur at 2^53, or 9,007,199,254,740,992 blocks out.
 * Far Lands occur roughly 53 quadrillion blocks out in older versions, but due to recent terrain generation changes, the Far Lands now occur 500x further out, rendering them unreachable.
 * At around 150 quadrillion blocks out, the Far Lands start to repeat segments of the broken terrain that generates.
 * Rendering issues are also noticeable where chunks start to disappear from the players vision.
 * At around 4.311 quintillion blocks out, the repeating patterns entirely stop and leave no variation in the strips that generate.
 * When 2^63 is reached, the game will immediately crash when loading chunks beyond that point.

On the Y axis:
 * Flying upwards or downwards in Creative becomes impossible after 2^52 blocks.
 * Falling downwards becomes impossible after 2^55 blocks.
 * In recent versions, NBT editing the player's position past 20,000,000 blocks on the Y axis will automatically teleport the player downward.

Stripe Lands
As 52 bits are dedicated to the fraction in the double format rather than 23 in the single format, after 2^53 or 9,007,199,254,740,992 blocks out, precision breaks to consider only every second block, and so on. The rendering breaks down in an effectively identical manner to Bedrock Edition and yields the famous Stripe Lands as a result.

Fluids break down differently from blocks; while block rendering breaks down to form the usual stripes, fluids will instead stretch to the size of the precision loss, with the initiation of the Stripe Lands causing each liquid to become two blocks long, then four at the next doubling, and so on.

In modern versions of the game, when the Stripe Lands are rendered, the game immediately crashes. As such, a Stripe Lands rendering fix is required to traverse further.

Beyond the 64-bit Limit (X/Z ±9,223,372,036,854,775,808-2^1024)
Beyond the 64-bit integer limit, the precision loss becomes greater by every passing exponent of two that is passed.

On the X/Z Axis


 * More precision is lost, resulting is bigger rendering slices.
 * Fringe Lands start to generate at roughly 8.175 quindecillion blocks out on the X axis, and breaks in stages (9.176 quindecillion for the second stage, 9.576 quindecillion for the third stage, 10.296 quindecillion for the 4th stage). They also start to generate at roughly 9.17 quindecillion blocks out on the Z axis.
 * Terrain generation on the X axis stops completely at around 20.596 quindecillion blocks out leaving an empty ocean with a bedrock floor, though on the Z axis it just gradually breaks down, and around 560 quindecillion (probably further if you were lucky enough), it stops too.
 * 2^1024 is the limit for floats, meaning that this limit cannot be surpassed without a rework of the entire coordinate system.

On the Y Axis


 * Entity Positions lose precision when the player passes every exponent of two.
 * The skybox flashing continues until 2^1024
 * The player cannot surpass 2^1024 on the Y axis as it is the position limit for floats.

Skygrid
The Skygrid is a theoretical distance effect that occurs in the corner Fringe Lands. This effect occurred on Bedrock Edition until the Far Lands' removal in the 1.17.30 bugfix update.

Analysis
Due to precision loss becoming more extreme at greater distances, features affected at it will behave different depending on how far out they are.

Rain/snow rendering
First affected bracket: First affected version: Unspecified Classic Last affected version: Indev 2010-02-14 2

Second affected bracket: First affected version: Alpha v1.0.4 Last affected version: Alpha v1.1.2_01

Third affected bracket: First affected version: Beta 1.6.5 Still affects the current release (1.19) and snapshot (1.19.1-rc1) Suspected to affect as far back as Beta 1.5, but cannot be reasonably tested due to crashes

Beyond this point on the Y axis one can start to see the first signs of snow/rain jittering. Up to 65,535 blocks. this can only be reasonably seen with snowflakes with a mainly horizontal trajectory, as vertical travelling snowflakes are moving at a speed where travel still appears mostly smooth. Beyond 65,536 and especially 131,072 blocks, the effect becomes very obvious for almost all snow.
 * 16,384 - 262,143 blocks

Above 262,144 blocks, the first signs of geometrical distortion in the snow itself can be seen - very little non-misshapen snow is present beyond here, and most of it has transformed into either lone rectangles, or the odd paired rectangles similar in shape to a pause button.
 * 262,144+ blocks

Deformity progresses after every power of two surpassed from this point. Past 16,777,216 blocks, snow becomes a near unrecognizable pattern of suspended vertical lines.

Translucent rendering breakdown
First affected version: 13w41a Still affects the current release (1.19) and snapshot (1.19.1-rc1)

The effects of this can first be seen after this point. The preferred method of testing this involves stacking two translucent blocks, such as two different colors of stained glass, in a square shape, and then walking up against this square to slow movement. When crossing from one block into another, the top face of the bottom block should not render at all until a certain distance is covered, at which point it should pop into view as expected.
 * 8,388,608 - 16,777,215 blocks

The buggy effect's precision is now halved, allowing for the tops of two blocks at a time to appear periodically invisible.
 * 16,777,216 - 33,554,431 blocks

The effect's intensity will again double for every power of two crossed beyond this point. It also becomes very obvious in natural generation at extreme distances, specifically in cold areas; as ice and water are both translucent blocks and are intended to be visible through each other, viewing them when at such far distances from the origin will make very exaggerated versions of this effect obvious.
 * 33,554,432+ blocks

Sound positioning errors
Becomes very severe beyond 2^28 blocks, where many sounds are simply no longer audible at all.

Temperature distribution breakdown
First affected version: 16w02a Still affects 1.19 and snapshot 1.19.1-rc1

As snowfall/rainfall is handled on a per-block basis, the effects of precision loss here can only be seen once precision itself can no longer represent blocks (integers) individually.
 * 16,777,216 - 33,554,431 blocks

Beyond this point, while perhaps not immediately obvious (especially due to the vertical variation in almost all biomes where this effect can be seen), the patterns resulting from snow landing on surfaces become much more angular than before, being commonly composed of large rectangles, thin lines and lone dots which are either filled with snow or have it completely absent. This is similarly true of water, with ice corresponding to cold blocks and water to warmer blocks.

As temperature varies with height, in order to properly see the effects of this, it is strongly recommended to build a flat plane for snow to accumulate on instead, or to generate a Superflat world with snow/ice set to generate with it as it would naturally. A modified Tunneler's Dream preset set to generate 94 layers of black concrete (Looking At Block should say 93 for the top concrete layer) is ideal for this case, providing a roughly 50/50 density of snowy and clear blocks, with black providing maximum contrast.

Teleporting to 16,777,216 on both axes should show four quadrants - one with normal looking snow/ice generation, and three with far more angular features due to the precision loss exceeding a full block. During times of precipitation, it can be seen that the blocky patterns of snow/ice match up with the weather directly above - snowy areas have snowfall where areas with no snow cover have rain. This is obviously true anywhere and is unrelated to precision loss, but (especially in the case of already-generated worlds) this can be used to prove that the precision loss lies with temperature calculation and is not merely a world generation issue disjoint from it.

Historical effects
Due to the incredibly large amount of documentation on effects in older versions of the game, all such content has been relocated to /Historical effects.