Cactus grows faster with more chunks rendered?

Question

I'm playing 1.14.2, and I'm trying to figure out why my cactus grows faster when more chunks are rendered. My house is about 20 seconds away by running. Here is the numbers:

• Player is in house
  • 16 chunks rendered gives 5 cactus in 10 min
  • 32 chunks rendered gives 17 cactus in 10 min
• Player is next to farm
  • 16 chunks rendered gives 27 cactus in 10 min
  • 32 chunks rendered gives 22 cactus per 10 min

The 27->22 for being next to the farm might be from randomness or render distance affecting ticks.

The strange thing is that only 5 cactus gets created, even though the farm is visible to me; so shouldn't the farm also be rendered? Does anyone know why increasing the chunks rendered, although not increasing the farm's visibility, increases the cactus from 5->17?

I've considered that maybe, although visible, most of my farm isn't actually active because the game has a different mechanic for cactus growth.

Answer 1

This is a case of randomness. Rebuild your exact farm in a creative world, but much bigger. Then download carpet mod and tickwarp the game to see If it has any impact. I would tickwarp for about a week or so to get a good test. (Tickwarping is a plugin that makes the game faster, so you can run a farm and get the rates of a week in an hour)

I believe that the chunks rendered will have no impact on the farm

Also having it in the distance might make it in the lazy chunks, which is a whole new topic that's hard to explain here.

Answer 2

the farm being "Visible" doesn't necessarily mean that it's loaded. your Minecraft character loads Everything that's within "48" blocks from you, 3 chunks. even if you can "Render" & See stuff that is further away, they aren't really Loaded, that's why the farm makes more when you're NOT at your house and you're near the farm. I still find it weird that you're able to get Up to 17 cactus when you're at your house. and for the other part "27>22" that's probably just randomness because your render distance doesn't affect at all (because of lazy chunks, i.e. chunks you can see but aren't technically loaded). and if it Ever did effect, the effect should be NEGATIVE and NOT positive, so that's probably just out of randomness, if you try the same test with an hour instead of 10 minutes you can get more accurate answers.