Minecraft – What exactly is affected by a higher view-distance on the server side

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TL;DR: What are the elements that are different from a server with view-distance 32 compared to a server with 12 (or something else), except for the fact that you can see further?

Explanation:
So I bought a new server and set up a max view-distance. It is amazing and a much better experience, but I wonder how this affects the world.

What I know until now (always talking from the server side):
– If your view-distance is set to 4 and you stand 5 chunks away from your corn, it will not grow (because the server doesn't render that chunk).
– Mobs will despawn 128 blocks away from the player.
– The bigger your view-distance, the more traffic you server creates.

If your view-distance is set to 32, will corn grow if a player stays 31 chunks away from his corn-field? Will the server just send more static junks which he hasn't to "manage" until some player gets near it? If you can only partly answer, that's totally fine too. But please don't answer based on assumptions.

Best Answer

From the Minecraft wiki, the view-distance attribute in server.properties means:

Sets the amount of world data the server sends the client, measured in chunks in each direction of the player (radius, not diameter). It determines the server-side viewing distance. (see Render distance) 10 is the default/recommended. If you have major lag, reduce this value.

In other words, the server will always send the player a certain amount of chunks, determined by that value (by the way, that value can be between 3-15). The client can decide what to do with it: load it, or disregard it.

Now, about what chunks are loaded. Wheat grows when its chunks are loaded. The Minecraft Wiki says (got this quote from this answer):

In multiplayer mode, a grid with a default radius of 10 (for a total of 21x21 or 441 chunks) is loaded around each player and sent to the player by default, although this radius can be configured to be between 3 and 15, usually only lowered with a poor connection home server. These chunks may have activity (mobs spawning, trees growing, water flowing, dropped items disappearing etc.)

The value they talk about - 3 to 15 - is the view-distance attribute. This means that the number of chunks said is loaded around the player at any given moment.

Just to answer that 32 view distance question, a believe Minecraft will send you the view distance to be 15, instead of 32, because 15 is the max value.

Note: 15 may not be the max value anymore, as indicated by @TrudleR

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