Distant Horizons
Distant Horizons is a client-side mod that can render the landscape into the far distance — instead of a handful of chunks around you, you see mountains, towns and sea all the way to the horizon, just in a coarser "low-detail" form (LOD). But for the mod to know what that distance actually looks like, it needs data from the server — and that's exactly what this companion supplies. Without it each client only guesses the distance from the little it has walked past; with it you get the real shape of our world, and it updates live as people build and dig. Here the maximum view distance is set very high (up to 1024 chunks), the overworld is built by a fast builder, and the Nether uses a shorter distance (you wouldn't see far there anyway). One nice touch: we deliberately hide iron and diamond in the far LODs (they're replaced with stone) so nobody can "x-ray" valuable ores from across the map. You need to install the Distant Horizons client mod once; anyone without it plays completely normally, just with ordinary view distance.
How to use
- 1Download and install the Distant Horizons client mod for your game's version and loader (Fabric / Forge / NeoForge).
- 2In the mod's settings turn on "Distant Generation" and join the server as usual — LOD data starts streaming automatically.
- 3In the Distant Horizons settings crank the view distance as high as you like (the server caps you at its maximum).
- 4Look around — the distant landscape fills in and changes live as people build and dig nearby.
This is a client-side thing — the server only supplies the data, so without the Distant Horizons mod you won't see any extra view distance (and it's not the web Map, which works entirely differently). Don't count on spotting ore from afar either: iron and diamond in the distant LODs are deliberately hidden as stone.