You may encounter the following issues when working with scenes, hosted 3D layers, or 3D data in the portal website. Possible solutions to these common issues are proposed.
Scene Viewer
- Point symbols and labels do not appear in the scene.
- My elevation layer doesn’t display correctly in the scene.
- My scene does not display layers in the same order as shown in the Contents pane.
- My layers aren't supported in Scene Viewer.
- I can't add a 3D layer to Scene Viewer if the layer source is a 3D tiles service.
- My layer is only partially drawn.
- Neither my gamepad nor SpaceMouse device navigates in Scene Viewer.
Hosted 3D layers
- After ArcGIS Enterprise was upgraded, I am unable to publish hosted 3D layers.
- Publishing a hosted 3D layer takes a long time and the process times out before completion.
- When publishing a hosted 3D layer, I receive a message that the portal token expired and publishing fails.
- The colors or textures on my multipatch features appear to flicker or continuously switch colors.
- The buildings in my hosted 3D layer are not draped correctly over the elevation surface; for example, they appear to float above the ground or to be partially buried.
Hosted 3D cache management
Scene Viewer
Some devices automatically switch between integrated graphics and dedicated graphics cards to render 3D graphics. Scene Viewer (and scene-based apps) work best with a dedicated graphics card; therefore, in your graphics card driver settings, make sure the per-application settings for your web browser are set to the dedicated graphics card. How you configure per-application settings for your graphics card varies depending on the type and version of graphics card driver you use.
Scene Viewer has a built-in hierarchy for ordering layers. The viewer displays the layers in the order listed below. Within each of these groups, you can order the layers in the scene.
- 3D-enabled layers—This includes 3D data with z-values and 2D data that has the Elevation mode option set to Relative to ground or Absolute height.
- Next, Scene Viewer displays dynamic map services and 2D feature layers with the Elevation mode option set to On the ground.
- Finally, Scene Viewer displays hosted tile layers and cached map services.
For example, a dynamic layer of hurricanes always displays on top of a cached map service (tile layer) of population density even if the hurricane layer is at the bottom of the Contents pane.
Often layers are released in ArcGIS Online before ArcGIS Enterprise. Here are Scene Viewer layer types with release information for ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online:
| Layer | ArcGIS Enterprise version | ArcGIS Online release |
|---|---|---|
Begin transition of scene layer and 3D tiles layer names to 3D layer. Integrated mesh changed to mesh. | 12.0 | October 2025 |
OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) | 11.5 | February 2025 |
Oriented imagery layer | 11.5 | November 2024 |
Catalog layer | 11.4 | June 2024 |
Media layer | 11.4 | June 2024 |
3D tiles layer: integrated mesh | 11.4 | March 2024 |
Scene layer: voxel | 11.0 | March 2022 |
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) | 11.0 | September 2021 |
Scene layer: building | 10.7 | December 2018 |
OGC Web Map Service (WMS) | 10.6 | September 2017 |
OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) | 10.5.1 | December 2016 |
Scene layer: point cloud | 10.5.1 | December 2016 |
Vector tile layer | 10.5.1 | December 2016 |
Scene layer: integrated mesh | 10.5 | June 2016 |
Scene layer: point | 10.4 | November 2015 |
Scene layer: 3D object | 10.3.1 | March 2015 |
Elevation layer | 10.3.1 | March 2015 |
Feature layer | 10.3.1 | March 2015 |
Imagery layer | 10.3.1 | March 2015 |
Map Image layer | 10.3.1 | March 2015 |
Tile layer | 10.3.1 | March 2015 |
—Mesh
—3D objectA layer may have too many features for Scene Viewer to display at one time due to performance reasons. When this occurs, a message appears in Scene Viewer warning that the layer is only partially drawn. To see the omitted features, zoom in and move around the scene.
3D symbology affects the number of features shown. Also, changing to complex 3D symbols, such as from cubes to trees, can cause fewer features to be drawn because trees require more vertices to be rendered.
Scene Viewer supports navigation for most gamepads and 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse devices. Support for navigation with devices other than a standard mouse depends on the operating system, browser, and device. The following are the supported devices by operating system and browser:
Windows
- Chrome—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4); 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse
- Firefox—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One)
- Edge—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One)
macOS
- Chrome—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4); 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse
Note:
- The Safari browser doesn't support gamepad or 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse navigation in Scene Viewer.
- You may need to restart your browser after connecting the device to enable navigation.
- To navigate with your device, ensure the Scene Viewer browser window is active.
Hosted 3D layers
The data used for hosted 3D layers is large and complex; it can take a long time to publish and create caches for this data. If you find publishing takes longer than the maximum usage time set on the portal's hosting server, increase the maximum usage time value. The default time value is 12 hours.
Alternatively, you can create caches and place them in a folder or cloud storage data store and publish a 3D layer that references the precreated cache instead of publishing a hosted layer.
When publishing a hosted 3D layer, I receive a message that the portal token expired and publishing fails.
Hosted 3D layers (scene services and 3D tiles services) are published to the hosting server. Authorization of the hosting server is dependent on a token from the portal. If the publishing process for the hosted layer does not complete before the portal token expires, publishing will fail and you will see an error message in the ArcGIS Server logs for the hosting server that token renewal failed.
The organization administrator can increase the token expiration to allow publishing to complete. Contact your organization administrator and ask them to increase the token expiration setting. Instructions can be found in Specify the maximum token expiration time.
The buildings in my hosted 3D layer are not draped correctly over the elevation surface; for example, they appear to float above the ground or to be partially buried.
You must use absolute elevation values from the geometries' z-values when publishing multipatch data. To correct this, use the Layer 3D To Feature Class geoprocessing tool in ArcGIS Pro to create a new multipatch feature class that uses an absolute height and republish the layer from the new multipatch data.
Hosted 3D cache management
The backup size grows with the amount of data in each hosted 3D layer and the number of hosted 3D layers that you publish. If you find you are running out of disk space on the backup machine, the ArcGIS Data Store administrator can adjust backup frequency, retention times, or both for the object store.