3D world render

The fullscreen POV draws your bot's world in 3D, live, in your browser: the blocks around it in the game's own textures, the sky at the server's time of day, mobs, players in their skins and armour, and the items on the ground. This page covers what that picture shows and leaves out, how far it reaches, how it keeps up and what slows it.

What you need

• Every plan, like the rest of the POV.
• The bot online, with physics on. With physics off the bot keeps no copy of the world to draw, and the view says "Physics is disabled. Enable it in Settings to use the world view." See What are bot physics?
• The fullscreen view, from the fullscreen button on a bot's card on the POV page, or a tap on the card on a phone. The cards themselves show a still picture.
• A browser that can draw 3D. One that can't says "This browser cannot draw the world view."

Grid pictures and fullscreen

Each card in the grid shows a still picture of what its bot is looking at, made on our servers: small, soft, and the terrain alone, with no mobs, players or items. Only cards on screen ask for one, and only while the bot is online. It's redrawn at most about every ten seconds, only when something around the bot may have changed, and never while the tab is in the background. An offline bot, or one with physics off, shows only the sky. The POV picture a Discord webhook attaches is the same kind.

Fullscreen draws the live world in 3D for the one bot you opened, which keeps a profile with hundreds of accounts cheap to leave open.

What it draws

• Blocks, in the game's own textures and models: leaves and glass you can see through, ice and stained glass you can see into, and water that slopes where it flows.
• Chests, shulker boxes, signs, beds, banners, heads and decorated pots in their real shapes.
• The sky, with the game's sun and clouds.
• Mobs in their models and textures, legs swinging as they walk, with what they wear and hold. A mob with no model is a box in roughly its colour.
• Players in the skins the server gives them, with their armour, elytra and held items, crouching and crawling, and name tags up to 64 blocks away.
• Dropped items, turning and bobbing, a big stack as up to five copies.
• Maps in item frames, and the crack on the block your bot is breaking (not other players').

What it leaves out

• Light. Torches light nothing and caves are as bright as the open ground. Only the time of day dims the picture, never below about a third of daylight.
• The sky's motion. The sun stays mid-morning and fades as it gets dark, with no moon or stars.
• Weather, particles and shadows, and moving textures: water, lava, fire and portals show a still frame.
• Biomes. Grass, leaves, water and the sky are plains-coloured everywhere.
• Resource packs. Only the game's own textures.
• Sign text, banner patterns and pot sherds, and a player head's owner: every one wears Steve.
• What mobs are doing. No attacking, sitting or riding, and heads face the way bodies do. Other players' heads never tilt up or down. A few mobs (camels, frogs and rabbits among them) glide without moving their legs.
• Capes, and the glint, dye or potion colour of a dropped item.

How far it reaches

The view holds the chunk the bot is in and four chunks out on every side, a square 144 blocks across, normally from the bottom of the world to the top. There's no fog: the far edge is a straight cut. When the bot nears it, a new area loads around the bot, with "Loading the new area…" in the corner.

A server with a short view distance sends the bot less than that, and the chunks it doesn't send are left out, with "N chunks not loaded by the bot" in the corner. The freecam can't fly past the edge.

How it stays live

The view follows the bot while it's open and its tab is in front. A background tab gets nothing, and catches up when you come back.

On a farm changing blocks faster than the area can reload, a few blocks can lag by up to half a minute.

Versions and editions

Every supported version is drawn, though not all the same way:

• Java 1.8 to 26.3: the textures of the bot's own version, so a 1.8 server looks like 1.8. Before 1.13, signs, beds, banners and heads are plain boxes.
• Java 1.7: blocks in the plain colours a filled map uses, with glass, torches and rails as outlines. Players and mobs have no armour or held items, and dropped items are small boxes.
• Bedrock: each block as the Java block it matches, in Java 26.3's textures. A Bedrock bot's grid picture is still plain grey.

Mobs use one recent release's models on every version, so on an old server they can look the way they do today.

View settings

The Game Menu (Esc) changes how the view draws, never the bot, and keeps your choices in this browser. See The Game Menu.

• FOV, 30 to 110, sets how wide the view is, and holding Z narrows it to a quarter.
• View Bobbing sways the view and the hand as the bot walks, whoever is walking it. Not in the freecam.
• Time, in Video Settings...: Server follows the server's clock (daylight if the server never says), Day keeps noon and Night midnight.
• Clouds, in Video Settings..., shows or hides them.

First and third person

F5 steps through first person and the two third-person views.

• First person shows the bot's hand: its arm, or the item it holds, swinging as it hits and mines, raised to eat or drawing a bow.
• Third person puts the camera 4 blocks away, closer when a wall is in the way, and shows the bot: in its account's skin with Classic arms, wearing its armour, holding its items, crouching as it sneaks and tilting its head as it looks. There's no crosshair, and only first person can click a block or a mob.

Frame rate

The view draws a new picture only when something changes, so a still bot with nothing moving near it costs next to nothing. What keeps it busy:

• Looking around and walking, which draw every frame your screen shows.
• Items on the ground and enchanted gear within 32 blocks, which keep it drawing about 30 times a second.
• Building the area when the view opens or the bot reaches a new one: a few hundred milliseconds on a desktop, up to a few seconds on a slow laptop or phone. On opening, the part nearest the bot shows first.

F3 shows your browser's frame rate on its second line. It's about your computer, not the bot.

If it looks wrong

• Plain colours instead of textures. Normal on 1.7. Elsewhere the textures didn't load, so reload the page.
• Mobs as coloured boxes. Still loading, or there's no model for that mob. If every mob stays a box, reload the page.
• A player in the default Steve or Alex skin. The server didn't send theirs, or it didn't load. On 1.7 every player is.
• Never dark, or always dark. Check Time in Video Settings....
• Stuck on a place the bot has left. Close fullscreen and open it again to load the area fresh.
• "This browser cannot draw the world view." Update the browser or try another.

For the notes in the view's corners, see If the view looks wrong.