Adaptive Degradation

Status bar > Adaptive Degradation button Views menu > Adaptive Degradation Keyboard > O (the letter O)

Adaptive degradation can improve viewport performance when you transform geometry, change the view, or play back an animation. It does so by decreasing the visual fidelity of certain objects temporarily; for example, by drawing larger objects or those closer to the camera as bounding boxes instead of wireframes. Without adaptive degradation, the geometry is displayed as usual, even if that slows down viewport display and animation playback. Animation playback might drop frames if the graphics card cannot display the animation in real time.

Turn on adaptive degradation if you have large models you need to navigate around and if you are finding performance sluggish.

The Adaptive Degradation button on the status bar has three states:

• Off: No degradation occurs.
• On: Degradation can occur under the specified conditions. This is the default setting.
• Active: Degradation is being applied currently.

You can change the display options and set other adaptive degradation parameters, on the Viewport Configuration dialog (Customize menu > Viewport Configuration > Adaptive Degradation panel). Also, you can toggle adaptive degradation for individual objects with the Object Properties > Never Degrade setting.

Procedures

To toggle adaptive degradation, do one of the following:

• Choose Views menu > Adaptive Degradation.
• Press O (the letter O).

To change the level of adaptive degradation in the viewports:

1. Right-click the viewport label and choose Configure, or choose Customize > Viewport Configuration.
2. On the Viewport Configuration dialog, open the Adaptive Degradation panel and adjust the settings.

source : 3ds Max Help