When cartographers talk about "optimizing a computer display", they're usually talking about how to see things better, i.e., remove fuzziness, ensure all the information is shown, etc. This contrasts with how computer technology folks use the term "optimize", which usually means make the screen display draw faster.

Faster screen drawing has a trade-off, which is decreased display quality. Here are a couple of screenshots of the same ArcScene document -- the first uses my laptop video card's default settings. The second uses some custom 3-D settings.

 

The image above uses my laptop video card's default settings. Note the ragged edges on the extruded states and the hit or miss look to the data spikes.

 

The image above shows ArcScene taking advantage of some of my graphics card’s custom 3D settings.

 

These graphics are based on a map that one of our users shared with us on Ask a Cartographer last week. So you can also gain some experience in this type of map and working with the 3-D settings, I zipped up a small ArcScene document and its data that you use to test the settings I describe.

I've got an NVIDIA graphics card, so I described how I improved my 3-D display based on this graphics card. Anyone with another sort of video card is invited to comment on the settings they find to similar effects. In addition, other NVIDIA tips are also welcome.

Here is what that map looks like zoomed in a little bit further using my graphics card’s default settings:

 

By using the Forced 3-D Quality on the maximum setting with my NVIDIA control panel, the following settings were changed:

  • Anisotropic Filtering = Application-controlled to 8x
  • Antialiasing Setting = Application-controlled to 4x

Here is the result (after restarting ArcScene):

 

To further enhance my display, I further increased the Antialiasing Setting from 4x to 8xS. The difference is that the size of the stairstep effect on diagonals is reduced, and the state outlines look smoother as well.


Here is how I made this map:

  1. I used data in the template data folder that is installed with ArcGIS (on my computer, the path is C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Bin\TemplateData). I copied the States, LandBnds and Cities into a new file geodatabase.
  2. Using the editor I moved the data from all the layers for Alaska and Hawaii, and shrunk Alaska (using the Scale tool; you can get to it by customizing—it’s in the Editor group), so that these states would be positioned where I wanted them to be in my final display.
  3. I dissolved the state polygons and use that output as the input to the Feature to Raster tool to create a raster that covered the extent of the U.S.
  4. I used the city points as the input to the Point to Raster tool, experimenting a bit before arriving at a useful output cell size of 0.1 decimal degrees. I set the raster analysis Mask to the U.S. raster I created above so that the extent of the final surface was limited to the U.S., and I also set the Cell Assignment parameter to Sum.
  5. I reclassified my raster to set the 0 values to equal 1 and the No Data values to equal 0 - this assured that there would be clear or empty No Data cells at the base of the spikes in the final raster surface.
  6. Check out the Base Heights tab of the Layer Properties for each of the layers in the ArcScene document to see how I displayed the population data to create the final map. Notice the progression of values: 0.4 for the population surface, 0.41 for the state tint, and 0.42 for the state boundaries, to ensure my layers drew correctly on top of each other.