Accelerated Display and MPK Performance

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05-06-2013 10:54 AM
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BrianRassier
Occasional Contributor
Hello ???

We have noticed that when we use an MPK for our basemap, we frequently get white tiles when panning and zooming while things refresh.  We made some adjustments to use Accelerated Display, and we really don???t see much difference.  Is this expected?  Is there a way we can confirm that our Accelerated Display adjustments are in fact working? 

We were hoping to see a dramatic difference, but maybe that difference will only be seen when there are thousands of graphics in a GraphicsLayer like many of the Accelerated Display demos?

Thanks
-Brian
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MichaelBranscomb
Esri Frequent Contributor
Hi,

There isn't much that hardware acceleration can do for dynamic layers, because the majority of the time is spent rendering the map image in ArcGIS for Server or the RuntimeLocalServer. Typically you would use dynamic layers when the user needs to see the latest state of the data (e.g. they're editing or accessing a shared database which others are editing) or you want to enable greater interactivity in the app such as querying the layer or performing identify operations.

You can try the usual optimization techniques before you package the map, such as ensuring you have an attribute index on any fields which you use to render the data, turning off any redundant fields, simplifying the symbols used and ensuring the spatial index is calculated appropriately. If it's larger datasets, you should also make sure that the data is copied to a File Geodatabase (you may need to use the Package Map geoprocessing tool to get more control over the packaging process).

Cheers

Mike

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MichaelBranscomb
Esri Frequent Contributor
Hi,

For offline/local basemaps you should be using a Tile Package (.TPK), created with ArcMap or extracted from ArcGIS Server. You can also use "exploded" tile caches (i.e. a direct copy of an ArcGIS Server cache) as long as they use the compact cache format. Performance of these tile caches is usually very fast and you won't noticeably see any white space where you would expect to see tiles. You're correct that the accelerated display mode can't dramatically improve performance of tile packages, although it may be a little faster.

As you've noted, the area where the accelerated display does dramatically improve performance is with graphics (GraphicsLayers) and any layers which derive from graphics (e.g. FeatureLayers).

I would advise starting with the accelerated display enabled via the property on the Map and if you find layers or symbol types which you need to use that are not supported then consider whether there are alternative layers, or more likely, alternative symbols/renderers you can use which are supported. Typically this just means avoid creating custom symbols via ControlTemplates and stick to the esri symbol types (SimpleMarkerSymbol, PictureMarkerSymbol, etc).

Cheers

Mike
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BrianRassier
Occasional Contributor
Hi Mike -

Thanks so much for the response.  To clarify, we do use TPK's where we can, and that performance has been great.  However, we have customers with large data footprints, and the size of the TPK's becomes cumbersome at that point.  We're hoping to leverage MPK's in this scenario, but even with accelerated graphics turned on the white tile issue still remains.

Is it fair to say that MPK's were never meant for use as basemaps?

Thanks
-Brian
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MichaelBranscomb
Esri Frequent Contributor
Hi,

There isn't much that hardware acceleration can do for dynamic layers, because the majority of the time is spent rendering the map image in ArcGIS for Server or the RuntimeLocalServer. Typically you would use dynamic layers when the user needs to see the latest state of the data (e.g. they're editing or accessing a shared database which others are editing) or you want to enable greater interactivity in the app such as querying the layer or performing identify operations.

You can try the usual optimization techniques before you package the map, such as ensuring you have an attribute index on any fields which you use to render the data, turning off any redundant fields, simplifying the symbols used and ensuring the spatial index is calculated appropriately. If it's larger datasets, you should also make sure that the data is copied to a File Geodatabase (you may need to use the Package Map geoprocessing tool to get more control over the packaging process).

Cheers

Mike
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BrianRassier
Occasional Contributor
Thanks again Mike.  That insight helps a lot.
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