Rendering images on a FeatureLayer web map

[maksymshpak]

Hello guys,

I am newbie to ArcGIS and trying to resolve quite interesting challenge with that solid background, so the challenge is:

I am trying to render quite a large dataset (~100k points) and have been hurt by the performance of the GraphicsLayer. So the idea was to switch to the FeatureLayer and that’s when light of joy enlightened me by seeing non linear memory usage and viewport only rendering with batched updates.

But then the darkness of reality came down as I realised that by default FeatureLayer respects Graphic’s geometry which is the point but completely ignores PictureMarkerSymbol attributes.

What do you think needs to be done in order to render images (all unique, data injected into url property) on a FeatureLayer? Do I need to build a custom renderer? Do you have an idea how having images instead of point markers will affect the performance?

Extremely appreciated on ideas/docs/snippets.

[robertopepato_bizpoke]

Hi @maksymshpak , 

You did mention PictureMarkerSymbol so I'm assuming you are working from the API instead of ArcGIS Online web application directly, right?

If this is the case, I can tell you that the API works nicely with the PictureMarkerSymbol (and all other symbols). If you can share the code you are using to reference and render the feature service, I think it helps me to understand your context and try to help you.

Side-topic: did you consider using binning or clustering to support your visualization? Depending on the patterns you are looking for, it can be challenging to understand data of hundreds of thousands of features loaded at the same time. Does that make sense?