Optimizing 3D multipatch layers

Multipatch features may be very expensive to render, especially if they contain textures (or imagery) draped on their geometry. If you are experiencing poor performance with textured multipatches, you should try the following:

Turn DXT compression on

DXT compression compresses the texture image for optimum use with your graphics card. There will be a small drop in the texture resolution.

You can access the DXT compression setting by right-clicking the multipatch layer in the table of contents, clicking Properties, then activating the Globe Display tab in ArcGlobe. Check the Enable rendering with compressed textures check box.

Increase the virtual memory size

Virtual memory is used when your system runs out of physical memory. There must be enough virtual memory available to handle any data usage overflow from ArcGlobe. A general rule of thumb is to increase the size of the virtual memory to at least twice as large as the physical memory.

You can access your virtual memory settings from My Computer > Properties > Advanced.

Allocate more memory to textures and 3D geometries

Increasing the system memory allocated for textures and 3D geometries reduces paging to virtual memory. You can configure ArcGlobe memory options by clicking Customize > ArcGlobe Options, activating the Display Cache tab, then clicking the Advanced button.

Configure memory allocation by data type from the Advanced Memory Cache Settings dialog box.

Tip:

Since ArcScene is a memory-based application, it does not have cache configuration options per data type, so this option does not apply to ArcScene.

Disable or downscale the textures

Often, it is the textures stored on 3D multipatch features that are using much of the available system resources. Disabling or downscaling the textures frees up more system resources and improves the interactive performance of the 3D view. Disable or downscale the textures by right-clicking the multipatch layer in the table of contents, clicking Properties, then activating the Globe Display tab in ArcGlobe.

Upgrade support for physical memory and graphics card

Physical memory (RAM) is particularly important, as is the memory and OpenGL support on the graphics card. Consider using a machine with larger physical memory and texture memory on the graphics card. See FAQs for selecting graphics cards if you are considering upgrading your graphics card. This includes how to get updated drivers for your graphics card if it otherwise meets the requirements but you are still experiencing display issues.