View Distance Control

overview

Compatibility update for Paper 26.1.2, the first stable release under Minecraft's new year-based versioning scheme (formerly 1.21.x). No behaviour changes.

Changed

• Built and tested against Paper 26.1.2 (requires Java 25 server runtime).

overview

This release improves robustness around view distance clamping and fixes two bugs in the LuckPerms listener. A new debug config option makes it easier to diagnose when and why listeners fire without having to add temporary logging.

Added

• New debug config option (default: false) logs when each listener fires, so misfiring or missing events can be diagnosed without touching the code.

Changed

• Config defaults (default-view-distance, default-afk-view-distance) and permission-node-granted distances are now clamped to the server's view-distance setting, with a warning logged when clamping occurs.

Fixed

• Race condition in LuckPermsListener debounce logic: concurrent async UserDataRecalculateEvent firings could both see an empty pending map and schedule duplicate tasks. The remove→cancel→schedule→put sequence is now synchronized.
• LuckPermsListener no longer applies view distance if the player disconnects between when the event fires and when the scheduled task runs.

Added

• New afk-distance-delay config option (default: 5) delays AFK view distance reduction by a configurable number of seconds after a player goes AFK. Set to 0 for the previous immediate behaviour.
• New console-log config option (default: false) logs view distance changes to the server console.
• New /vdc list command shows every online player's current view distance at once.

Changed

• /vdc check <player> renamed to /vdc get <player>; the associated permission node is renamed from viewdistancecontrol.check to viewdistancecontrol.get.
• /vdc get (and /vdc list) now show (pending AFK) while the AFK delay is counting down, so the real AFK state is visible immediately even before the view distance switches.
• View distance is now only set on the player when the value actually changes; notifications and console logs are suppressed for no-op updates.

What's new

Bug fix: view distance applied multiple times per permission change

LuckPerms fires UserDataRecalculateEvent several times for a single permission mutation (due to internal cache invalidation steps). This caused the view distance notification message to appear multiple times simultaneously. The handler is now debounced so only the final event in each burst takes effect.

View distance cap (viewdistancecontrol.max.<N>)

You can now cap a player's view distance from above without touching their existing group permissions.

Assign viewdistancecontrol.max.<N> to a group and the resolved distance (from default.<N> / afk.<N> nodes and config defaults) will be clamped to at most N. If a player has multiple max nodes the lowest value wins (most restrictive). The cap applies in both normal and AFK states.

Example — limit a restricted group to at most 6 chunks regardless of other groups:

lp group restricted permission set viewdistancecontrol.max.6 true

Uses setSendViewDistance instead of setViewDistance, so AFK view distance reduction no longer unloads chunks on the server side.