Under specific circumstances, entities are not ticked if outside the host's render distance

Partner Rank:
1

Partner Team Reporting:

Everbloom Games

Verification builds:
1.17.30.25

Summary:
Under specific circumstances, entities outside the host's render distance (even in singleplayer) are not ticked, even if they're inside a ticking area, or loaded by another player.
Entities under this effect won't tick even if teleported to the host.

Impact:
The full impact is not known since this is so inconsistent, but this has serious effects, ESPECIALLY in multiplayer maps (or even survival multiplayer). If players are far away from each other, some players will be unable to interact with other entities, which is vital in our IP content. This will leave the player with a sour experience, making our map seem unprofessional and unstable.

Repro Steps:

1. Before entering the world, set your render distance to 24
2. Enter the provided world
3. Stand on the command block and run /summon test:tick
   The newly summoned entity will send a chat message every second, just like the command block it is on.
   This is in a ticking area, so this should run regardless of where you are.
4. Fly away such that it is more than 8 chunks away
5. Set your render distance to 8. Switch back and forth between 24 and 8.

 

Observed Results:

SOMETIMES, the entity stops sending chat messages when the render distance is 8, while the block continues sending messages.
The reproduction rate is pretty low in my experience, so please please keep attempting it.

Expected Results:

The entity keeps being ticked and sending messages, regardless of your render distance or where you are in the world.

Screenshots/Videos attached:

Repro 

Repro + teleporting the entity to self

 

Regression Build:

First time we ever came across this was in 1.17.30.25. Haven't had such issues before.

Notes:

This part is pure speculation but I've had the most luck reproducing this bug with these conditions:

1. The entity is spawned in the same session. If the entity was loaded from disk when you opened the world it doesn't seem to exhibit this behavior as often (although it still does), so try killing the entity before relogging and retrying the steps.