There is nothing more frustrating than ploughing 10s or 100s hours into your Minecraft world, only to experience bugs and issues which prevent your world from rendering in correctly. Open world games, like Minecraft, are particularly prone to these kind of issues, due to their expansive nature, and the uniqueness of individual player’s save games.
Why Does my Minecraft World Bug Out?
There can be a huge array of reasons why your Minecraft world might bug out, or fail to load quite correctly. Thankfully reloading chunks can help to solve these problems. These issues might occur due to your PC running out of RAM or VRAM, your map size becoming too large or game coding errors.
Due to the huge, open world nature of Minecraft, your PC renders in only the bits of the map you are actually looking at or located within. Not only would this be inefficient, but it would also require a huge amount of processing power than most systems plainly don’t have.
You can tweak the render distance within the Minecraft settings menu, which adjusts how many chunks are rendered in at once. Those with less powerful gaming PCs, or laptops, will want to keep this lower, while powerful gaming rigs can often max this setting out.
What are Chunks in Minecraft, and How Do They Work?
Chunks are the most fundamental part of how a Minecraft world is developed. They extend from the bedrock at the very bottom of your Minecraft world, up to 256 blocks heigh. Each chunk is 16 x 16 blocks wide. That’s a lot of data!
With each chunk containing between 256 and 65,000 blocks, it can be easy to see how bugs can creep in every now and again.
How to Reload Chunks in Minecraft
Method 1: Reloading Chunks in Minecraft (Java Edition)
The clever devs at Minecraft have developed a really easy way to reload chunks in Minecraft’s Java Edition. To reload chunks you simply need to hit the ‘F3’ and ‘A’ keys simultaneously. This key combination will instruct the game’s engine to clear your existing chunks, and ushers in a new set of in game blocks which will hopefully help fix the problem.
“Not working?”
Sometimes, the F3 key on your keyboard can be paired up with alternate function. This might include volume controls or screen brightness. As such, the press sometimes doesn’t register, and you may need to press the ‘FN’ key at the same time to revert to the core ‘F3’ key. This would make the alternate combination ‘FN’ + ‘F3’ + ‘A’.
Method 2: Changing In-Game Settings
As much as this method might not be the news some readers will like to hear, if this issue persists you may simply need to reduce the render distance settings. This is because some systems simply won’t be powerful enough to reliably render in a huge number of chunks at once.
The higher the render distance, and subsequent chunks being loaded in, the harder your processor and graphics card (if you have one) are having to work. All of this data needs to be stored in the systems memory, and if this is also inadequate, you will face repeated issues.
Sometimes cranking the settings a little too high can lead to a far worse gaming experience. Don’t be ashamed if you need to town down settings like the render distance from time to time!
Method 3: Reboot Your Save Game or Minecraft Application
This next option might seem like the most basic principle of IT support, but rebooting the world, or, if that fails, the whole game is sometimes all it takes! Doing this will remove the world from your memory, and trigger the graphics in your system to render everything in from scratch.
“Game won’t close?”
If your game won’t close, or is becoming unresponsive, your game might have crashed. If this is the case, hit the ‘CTRL’ + ‘Shift’ + ‘Esc’ keys to load up Windows task manager. This key binding works in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8 & Windows 7. From there, find the row that says ‘Minecraft’, click it once and then select the ‘End Task’ button in the bottom right hand corner.
This will force the game to close a root level, and end the process. Beware that this method may lead to losing the save data from that gaming session, or since the last time you saved your world. Be sure that the game has definitely crashed and become unresponsive before taking this step.