EntityCulling: The Bukkit Plugin That Supercharges Your Server’s Client FPS
If you have ever built a massive base in Minecraft with dozens of chests, complex redstone farms, and countless item frames, you know the pain. Your framerate tanks, the game stutters, and suddenly your cozy survival world feels like a slideshow. The culprit is often not your hardware but the way Minecraft’s client renders entities that you cannot even see. EntityCulling, a clever Bukkit plugin, tackles this problem head-on by performing server-side occlusion culling, dramatically boosting your FPS without touching a single block in your world.
What Is EntityCulling and How Does It Work?
EntityCulling is a lightweight server plugin designed for Paper, Spigot, and Bukkit servers running Minecraft version 1.16.4 or 1.16.5. Its core job is to hide entities and tile entities (like chests, furnaces, and item frames) that are completely blocked from a player’s view by solid blocks. This technique is known as occlusion culling. Normally, the Minecraft client does a poor job of skipping the rendering of hidden entities, wasting precious GPU and CPU cycles on things you cannot see. EntityCulling shifts that workload to the server, which calculates visibility using asynchronous ray tracing and then simply stops sending packets for those hidden entities to your client.
The result is a massive reduction in client-side rendering load. The plugin does not modify any blocks or entities in the world; it only suppresses network traffic for objects that are truly invisible. This means your builds remain intact, and the worst-case scenario is an occasional invisible mob due to a rare miscalculation, not permanent world corruption.
Why Your FPS Drops in Big Bases
Many players assume that a crowded base lags because of the sheer number of blocks. In reality, the biggest performance hit often comes from tile entities and mobs. Every chest, hopper, and item frame sends constant updates to your client, even when you are standing behind a solid wall. The vanilla client does a minimal job of culling these objects, leaving your GPU to render hundreds of invisible entities. EntityCulling intercepts these packets on the server side, so your client never even knows about the hidden chests and mobs, freeing up resources for what you actually see.
Performance Gains: From Unplayable to Buttery Smooth
The numbers speak for themselves. In real-world tests on a typical survival base filled with storage systems and animal farms, players reported FPS jumping from around 52 to over 270 at the same location with no other changes. That is a staggering 500% improvement. The plugin achieves this by running asynchronous occlusion checks on a separate thread, caching snapshots of the world, and only sending entity movement packets for visible objects. This means your client no longer wastes time processing hundreds of chests behind a wall, and your minimap mods or hack clients cannot see mobs or items through blocks either.
Requirements and Compatibility
Before you install EntityCulling, make sure your server meets these prerequisites:
- Server software: Bukkit, Spigot, or Paper 1.16.4 or 1.16.5
- Dependency: ProtocolLib must be installed on the server
- Player count: Best suited for small to medium servers (tested with up to 5 players, but may scale to around 30)
If you are running a server through a modern launcher like foxygame.net, you can easily install EntityCulling directly from the plugin library. The launcher’s built-in mod and plugin manager lets you search, download, and activate plugins without manually transferring files, making the whole process smooth and beginner-friendly.
Potential Drawbacks and Warnings
EntityCulling is still considered experimental software. The developer openly states that it has not been thoroughly tested with large player counts, so throwing it onto an 80-player public SMP could lead to unexpected issues. The main trade-off is server CPU usage: the plugin performs thousands of ray traces per second within a 100x100x100 block area centered on each player. On a small server, this overhead is negligible, but on a heavily populated one, it might strain the server’s processor. Additionally, the culling can cause a “pop-in” effect when you round a corner, as entities suddenly become visible. You may also encounter rare visual glitches, such as item frames with misaligned hitboxes after respawning, or leads that visually break when one attached entity is culled. The developer warns that an invisible creeper explosion is a possibility, so keep that in mind before relying on this plugin for hardcore survival.
Installation Steps
Setting up EntityCulling is straightforward if you are familiar with Bukkit plugins:
- Download the EntityCulling jar file from its official page (no link provided here, but you can find it on popular plugin repositories).
- Ensure you have ProtocolLib already installed in your server’s plugins folder.
- Place the EntityCulling jar into the same plugins directory.
- Restart or reload your server. The plugin is reload-safe, though a full restart is recommended to avoid minor visual artifacts.
- Verify that the plugin is active by checking the server console or using the
/pluginscommand.
No configuration file is needed; the plugin works out of the box with its default 100-block radius. If you are hosting a server through a platform like foxygame.net, the launcher’s plugin manager can handle the download and installation in a few clicks, sparing you the need to manually transfer files via FTP.
How It Improves Anti-Cheat and Minimap Fairness
An often-overlooked benefit of EntityCulling is its impact on client-side mods. Many minimap mods and even cheat clients rely on entity packets to display mobs, players, and chests through walls. Because the plugin never sends data about occluded entities, those tools simply cannot show what is behind a solid wall. This adds a layer of fairness to survival servers without needing a heavy anti-cheat system. Players can still hear hidden mobs and chests, so the auditory experience remains intact, but wallhacks become useless.
Is EntityCulling Right for Your Server?
This plugin shines on casual or cooperative SMP servers where players build large, entity-dense bases. If you and your friends love automating every farm and hoarding items in massive storage rooms, EntityCulling can keep your client FPS playable even when you are standing in the middle of the chaos. It is not a magic bullet for all lag—world generation and chunk loading still matter—but it removes a significant hidden bottleneck. For small communities, the server-side CPU cost is minimal, and the client-side gains are enormous.
However, if you run a public server with dozens of concurrent players, you should test carefully. The asynchronous ray tracing might not scale linearly, and the developer has not yet validated performance under heavy load. Start with a small group, monitor server TPS, and only expand usage if everything remains stable.
Final Thoughts
EntityCulling is a brilliant proof-of-concept that exposes how inefficient the vanilla client is at rendering hidden entities. By moving occlusion culling to the server side, it unlocks massive FPS improvements for players in entity-rich environments. The plugin is easy to install, requires zero configuration, and adds a subtle anti-cheat layer. While it carries an experimental label and a few known quirks, the risk is low because it never alters your world. If you are tired of slideshow framerates in your storage room, give EntityCulling a try—you might just see your FPS triple or more.