Java Edition Distance Effects

This article is about effects which arise due to precision loss. For effects which arise due to integer limits, see Java Edition hard limits.

See also: Bedrock Edition distance effects

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

Vanilla bounds (X/Y/Z ±0–29,999,984)

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.
  • This is minor within vanilla's bounds, but becomes very pronounced at much higher distances if using mods, notably over icy areas. Can also affect certain blocks by themselves like slime blocks and honey blocks at even more extreme distances.

Sounds

• Many break down slightly
  • Becomes considerably more pronounced beyond vanilla bounds at 2²⁸ (268 million blocks)
• The vibration feature for sculk sensors is created at the wrong position

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
  • As it is set to 60,000,000 by default, which is greater than 33,554,432, it can only be set to a multiple of four in areas near its default position.

Beyond the vanilla world boundary (X/Z ±29,999,984–2,147,483,647)

Horizontal distances far beyond 30 million blocks cannot be reached without game modification. Mods such as the FarLands mod can be used to move the world border further out to make these regions accessible. This lists effects that are completely exclusive to these distances and cannot be seen in any form in vanilla.

32-bit precision loss

Rendering

• Rain and snow fade at certain horizontal distances.

Unknown (possibly 64-bit?)

Entities

• The player can easily get stuck in the positive sides of blocks after 2³⁰ (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 or even slightly modded bounds break down at very high distances similarly to Bedrock Edition.

Entity movement

On the Y axis:

• Flying upwards or downwards in Creative becomes impossible after 2^52 blocks.
• Falling downwards becomes impossible after 2^55 blocks.

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.

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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 (1.17.1) and snapshot (1.17.1-rc2)
Suspected to affect as far back as Beta 1.5, but cannot be reasonably tested due to crashes

16,384 - 262,143 blocks

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.

262,144+ 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.

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

Translucent rendering breakdown

First affected version: 13w41a
Still affects the current release (1.17.1) and snapshot (1.17.1-rc2)

8,388,608 - 16,777,215 blocks

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.

16,777,216 - 33,554,431 blocks

The buggy effect's precision is now halved, allowing for the tops of two blocks at a time to appear periodically invisible.

33,554,432+ 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.

Sound positioning errors

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

Sculk vibration positioning errors

First affected version: 20w49a
Still affects the current release (1.17.1) and snapshot (1.17.1-rc2)

4,194,304 - 8,388,607 blocks

Precision will be a factor of two times as accurate for every power of two crossed before this point. Beyond 4,194,304 blocks, vibrations will only be able to come from one of three lines on a block - one for each edge, and another through the center. Past this on both axes, precision loss will allow vibrations to only originate from nine points on a block: the center, the middle of each of the four edges, and the four corners.

8,388,608 - 16,777,215 blocks

After this point, precision will be half as precise again. Vibrations will lose the ability to come from the center of blocks, being relegated to one of two edges, or, if beyond this on both axes, one of the four corners.

16,777,216 - 33,554,431 blocks

Beyond 16,777,216 blocks, vibrations can come from completely separate positions than the actual source. If a button is placed at (4x+1,4z+1), the vibration will first appear at the center of the four blocks directly northwest of it. However, this does not appear to allow the sculk sensor to detect vibrations from any farther away than it should.

Temperature distribution breakdown

First affected version: 16w02a
Still affects the current release (1.17.1) and snapshot (1.17.1-rc2)

16,777,216 - 33,554,431 blocks

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.

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.

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  An example of snow generated correctly near the spawn point.

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  An example of snow generated at high distances. Notice the differing consistency composed of squares and lines.

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  Snow generated in an extreme hills biome in 1.8, showing intended behavior

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  The exact same area as generated in 1.9, showing the newly broken generation

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.