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Winter Code Sprint Trip Report

Erik Andersson

For this year’s Winter Code Sprint, the Cesium team once again went to the Pocono Mountains for a week of focused work and team building. As a new team member and first-time code sprint participant, this was a great opportunity to get to know the team. Also, as we are encouraged to work on something different from our day-to-day work, it was the perfect time to learn something new and contribute some exciting new functionality to Cesium.

Though we spent the days hard at work, we did have time for a bit of fun. The house we rented had a hot tub and a sauna, perfect for winding down in the evenings. The last night before leaving we went to Escape Poconos, an escape room, where we racked our brains solving puzzles to “rob a bank.” With just seconds to go, Tom cracked the final puzzle and we were able to escape.

Escape Poconos

Among the new feature highlights is Sean’s work on model coloring (#4547) and finishing silhouette contributed by Pelican Mapping (#4314). Sean began work on model coloring when this was requested on the forum, and this will be great for anyone visualizing groups of models.

Model Coloring

Model Translucency

Model silhouettes is another immensely useful addition to Cesium.@jasonbeverage started this, and Sean finalized it during the code sprint. Being able to show a model outline is perfect for cases where you’re working with many models, like buildings or satellites, and want to display the currently active or focused one and associated information.

Model Silhouettes

Two other very visual improvements were completed during the sprint: Hannah fixed rotating textures (#4725) and Ed introduced label backgrounds (#4715). Label backgrounds help make sure labels are clearly visibly regardless of the background imagery.

Texture Rotation

As for myself, I reworked the geocoder to enable autocomplete as well as using custom geocoding services (#4723). This frequently requested feature means it will be possible to connect the geocoder to external services like Mapbox, Nominatim or any other service that provides geocoding.

During the code sprint we also did various bug fixes, internal Cesium changes and work on internal tools and documentation. Hannah fixed a problem where polygon triangles would disappear when zooming out (#4751). Patrick reviewed pull requests and wrote Moving Graphics Research into Development. Rob continued work on glTF 1.1.

The code sprint was a perfect mix of work and fun, and the results will be available in Cesium 1.29, to be released in January. With all the great improvements and features from this sprint, we hope you look forward to it as much as we do!

Team Lunch