Minimize FBX file download time

I use an FBX file to display 3D content. Typically, my FBX files are around 40-50MB in size, and it takes approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute to download them. I would like to know how I can speed up the download process and reduce the time to just 10 seconds.Like using multithreaded downloading or something.

Those FBX files are too big. You can make sure you’re not waiting for one request to finish before the next starts, and that your hosting server is beefy, but ultimately it’s going to be a slow application if you are waiting for files this large.

A big part of why we encourage developers to use glTF is because the (1) the format is meant for fast loading on the web, and (2) there are lots of tools for optimizing the files when they’re too large. For FBX, there isn’t much you can do without re-working the file by hand in Blender, or some commercial optimization tools perhaps, and even then it doesn’t have any of the compression features that glTF offers.

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If you want to make download 6 times faster, you have few options:

  • reduce the file size (you can control this to some extent)
  • increase the download speed (this is almost beyond your control)
  • preload and/or cache the file (this will fake fast consequent downloads)
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I second the recommendation of using GLTF instead of FBX. There’s a good chance that a GLTF version of your assets can be shrunk down to 4 or 5 megs.

Doing parallel downloading might help a very little bit, but you’ll need faster hosting, it may complicate your code a bunch, and your users will still be downloading a lot of data, consuming bandwidth… and on mobile it may not help at all.

If you can link us to an example of one of your large FBX files we may be able to tell you how to go about reducing it ?

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