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Cesium Releases in November 2024

Luke McKinstry

In October, we discussed our collaborations with Esri, highlighted AERO AI’s work on reintegrating WebODM with Cesium ion, shared progress on the Cesium Revit Add-In, introduced Japan Regional Terrain and updates to Japan 3D Buildings, dove into how to become a Cesium Certified Developer in Japanese, and explained key updates to glTF rendering in CesiumJS.

We made improvements across Cesium this month. To get notifications about our monthly releases, you can subscribe to the Cesium release roundup thread on our community forum.

CesiumJS 1.123 Release

CesiumJS 1.123 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

  • Updated default 3D Tiles and Model lighting when using PBR in order to create a more realistic appearance. #12129
  • Added ScreenSpaceCameraController.maximumTiltAngle to limit how much the camera can tilt. #12169 by new contributor albek446
  • Updated Japan Buildings sandcastle to use Japan Regional Terrain. #12259
  • Moved Viewer functionality to CesiumWidget to increase usability. Makes the CesiumWidget closer to a drop in replacement for the Viewer when not utilizing the extra Viewer widgets. #11967.
  • Fixed flickering issue caused by bounding sphere retrieval being blocked by the bounding sphere of another entity. #12230

For more details, see the changelog.

Download CesiumJS 1.123
Updates to default 3D Tiles and Model lighting when using PBR create a more realistic appearance.

Updates to default 3D Tiles and Model lighting when using PBR create a more realistic appearance.

Cesium for Unreal 2.10.0 Release

Cesium for Unreal v2.10.0 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

  • Added a shared assets system that ensures external images referenced by different glTFs will only be loaded once per image. Previously, these images would be loaded again for each glTF that referenced them. This significantly reduces memory usage for tilesets that reuse the same textures.
  • Added CircumscribedGroundHeight property to CesiumSunSky. It defaults to 0, which is consistent with the previous behavior. It can be set to a larger value (like 40) to avoid dark splotchy artifacts when zoomed out far from the globe in certain tilesets where geometry extends very far beyond the ellipsoid in the low-detail representation, such as Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles.
  • Fixed a bug that caused incorrect lighting for tilesets using KHR_materials_unlit.
  • Reduced the memory used by tiles with KHR_materials_unlit.
  • CesiumGlobeAnchor properties are no longer shown on the main CesiumSunSky Details panel, because it is almost never necessary to set these. They can still be set on the component's own Details panel if needed.
  • Fixed error messages in the Unreal log about uninitialized fields in FCesiumSampleHeightResult.

Check the Cesium for Unreal release and the Cesium for Unreal Samples release for the full list of updates.

Download the Cesium for Unreal plugin from Epic MarketplaceDownload the Cesium for Unreal Samples
Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles captured from an outer space view, after improvements to its generated normals and surrounding atmosphere.

Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles captured from an outer space view, after improvements to its generated normals and surrounding atmosphere.

Cesium for Unity 1.13.1 Release

Cesium for Unity v1.13.1 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

  • Added restrictions to CesiumRuntime.asmdef to prevent the plugin from attempting to load on platforms not supported by Cesium Native.

Check the Cesium for Unity changelog for the full list of updates, and follow our Cesium for Unity tutorials to get started. 

Download the Cesium for Unity samples

Cesium for Omniverse 0.24.0 Release

Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

  • Fixed bug where smooth normals setting would crash.

Peruse the changelog for the full list of updates, and get started with our Cesium for Omniverse tutorials.

Download the Cesium for Omniverse extensionDownload the Cesium for Omniverse samples

Cesium ion Updates

Cesium ion SaaS

  • Japan Regional Terrain is now available in the Cesium ion Asset Depot. Details are in this blog post.
  • Japan 3D Buildings includes updated building heights and additional bridge features.
  • Available soon: adding annotations to Cesium Stories. Look for an announcement on the community forum and let us know what you think!

Asset Server

An improved Asset Server is now available. 

The Asset Server allows users to serve Cesium data like Cesium World Terrain, their own data, and other data in environments where Cesium ion Self-Hosted is not deployed. It’s included in subscriptions for Cesium ion Self-Hosted and data like Cesium World Terrain. If you license Cesium content and received an Asset Server from Cesium before September 2024, we recommend upgrading to this newer server. The Asset Server is available on the Downloads page now for current Cesium ion Self-Hosted users; it will soon be downloadable by users with a subscription to Cesium data. If you’d like to access it sooner, please contact your account team.

Improvements include:

  • Caching for improved performance
  • A smaller binary
  • Support for geopackage
  • Auto detection of file types
  • File watchers that update the content and cache as source files change

Check the changelogs for the full list of updates for Cesium ion SaaS and Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Sign up for Cesium ionDownload Cesium ion Self-Hosted

Powered by Cesium

“Reentry” blends a game with a simulator, so users learn to operate spacecraft with realistic procedures and, soon, Cesium Moon Terrain. Within a few hours of hearing about Cesium Moon Terrain, creator Petri Wilhelmsen began incorporating it into Reentry via Cesium ion and Cesium for Unity. Wilhelmsen reports it took only 30 minutes to replace his lower fidelity Moon with Cesium Moon Terrain.

The Lunar Module preparing for descent and landing on the lunar surface. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

The Lunar Module preparing for descent and landing on the lunar surface. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.