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:

1. Turn DXT compression on.
   • DXT compression will compress 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, and activating the Globe Display tab in ArcGlobe. Check the check box for Enable rendering with compressed textures.
2. Increase the virtual memory size to at least twice as large as that of the physical memory.
   • 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.
   • You can access your virtual memory settings on the My Computer > Properties > Advanced tab.
3. Allocate more memory to textures and 3D geometries.
   • Increasing the system memory allocated for textures and 3D geometries will reduce paging to virtual memory.
   • You can configure ArcGlobe memory options by clicking Customize > ArcGlobe Options, then activating the Display Cache tab and clicking the Advanced button.
     • From the Advance Memory Cache Settings dialog box, you can configure memory allocation by data type.
   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.

4. 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 will free up more system resources and improve 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, and activating the Globe Display tab in ArcGlobe.
5. Use a machine with larger physical memory and texture memory on the graphics card.
   • Physical memory (RAM) is particularly important, as is the memory and OpenGL support 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.