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Why Is the Map Laggy?

Map performance depends on WebGL GPU rendering speed, VRAM, and browser memory. Map lag occurs when the browser's GPU rendering pipeline or memory bandwidth becomes saturated.

The primary causes and solutions differ depending on your session mode:

Single-Sample Sessions

Causes: Lag is usually driven by rendering millions of spatial points at low zoom levels, active RAW_PIXEL factor layers, or multiple stacked layers on a single canvas. CPU fallback occurs if browser hardware acceleration is disabled.

Solutions:

  1. Enable Hardware Acceleration: Ensure GPU acceleration is turned on in browser settings (chrome://settings/system).
  2. Switch Layer Modes: Use HEX or CELL layer modes for global overviews, reserving RAW_PIXEL for localized zoom-in inspection.
  3. Hide Inactive Layers: Turn off unused layers in the Layer Drawer to reduce frame re-rendering overhead.
  4. Zoom In: Narrows the spatial extent and lowers the rendered point count per frame.

Multi-Sample Sessions

Causes: Lag is caused by concurrent WebGL rendering across \(N \times M\) grid slots in Gallery Mode, or camera synchronization (Linked View) forcing simultaneous re-renders across all viewports during panning.

Solutions:

  1. Use Focus Mode or Dual-Focus Mode: Suspend off-screen WebGL instances by viewing 1 or 2 primary slides instead of rendering the full grid.
  2. Temporarily Unlink Views: Click Unlink Selected Views in the Map Toolkit sidebar when panning slides, then re-link when aligned.
  3. Reduce Grid Dimensions: Lower the grid layout count (e.g., from \(4 \times 4\) to \(2 \times 2\)) to decrease active WebGL canvas contexts.
  4. Hide Global Shared Layers: Turn off unused gene or factor layers to reduce GPU shader load across all grid slots.

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