The generation of real-time 3D graphics scenes normally demands high computational requirements. Several applications can benefit from efficient algorithms for rendering complex virtual environments, such as computer games, terrain visualization, virtual reality and visual simulation. This paper describes an improved view frustum culling method using spatial partitioning based on octrees for 3D real-time rendering. The proposed method is compared against two other approaches. Experiments using four different scenes are conducted to evaluate the performance of each tested method. Results demonstrate that the proposed method presents superior frame rate for all scenes.