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The Display tab's 3D Environment group contains checkboxes that let you toggle various effects that are visible when you set the map to display in 3D mode.

The group's Effects settings provide the means of adding stars and and an atmospheric halo to the map which can be seen in the view of the globe from space as well as on the horizon when looking from on or above the surface. Here is an illustration of the Stars and Atmospheric Halo effects:

Stars off | Stars on | Halo off | Halo on

When you click the 3D Environment group's dialog launcher you can control sun position and fog effects with more precision.

##### Set these options

- Sun Position
- Fog
- Vertical Exaggeration

##### Sun Position

Every 3D view needs a light source to illuminate it. You can configure this light source to achieve different effects.

Check Enable sun lighting to set the position of the light source based on the current time or a fixed time. This results in parts of the globe being brighter than others. For 3D faces, such as multipatches or extruded polygons, sun lighting will apply shading to the surfaces of the 3D shape. Sun lighting will not dynamically add shading to the 3D terrain.

In addition to sun lighting, you can instruct ArcGIS Explorer to use an ambient light source, which illuminates all sides of the globe equally. Use the slider to control the brightness of the ambient light by dragging the slider toward the darker or the brighter extreme of the range.

##### Fog

In addition to the stars and atmospheric halo effects, you can specify whether to include a fog effect that's visible at the globe's surface only when viewed from an oblique angle. Increasing the fog density setting obscures the scene more. Here is an illustration of increasing the fog density:

Fog disabled | Fog density set thinner | Fog density set thicker

##### Vertical Exaggeration

Vertical exaggeration can be used to emphasize subtle changes in a surface. This can be useful in creating visualizations of terrain where the horizontal extent of the surface is significantly greater than the amount of vertical change in the surface. Reducing vertical exaggeration can be used to flatten surfaces or features that have extreme vertical variation.

When you change the vertical exaggeration setting, you change the way the application renders the Z values of the elevation data for the current map; consequently, this affects all map layers. Setting this value to an extreme may produce undesirable results for some data.

To return the vertical exaggeration to its original value, simply drag the slider all the way to the left hand side.