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Cesium Releases in August 2026

Jeshurun Hembd

In July, we released Sandcastle Copilot, an AI-assisted chat panel built into Sandcastle so developers can create, edit, and debug CesiumJS sandcastles; introduced CAD-style workflow extensions for glTF and 3D Tiles 2.0 to deepen and enhance the ties between infrastructure and interoperability; opened a joint office with Bentley and Seequent in Tokyo as a hub for the 3D geospatial ecosystem; and posted the recorded sessions from the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference, so the community can explore ideas at any time. 

In this month’s releases, we’re continuing to advance our work on BIM and CAD support and vector data in 3D Tiles by: 

  • Adding support for glTF extensions across Cesium viewers to support CAD-style rendering of design models. These extensions let engineering and design models render with the fills, lines, and points they were authored with. 
  • Adding support for clamping lines and polygons to terrain to drape vector datasets for accurate visualization. 
  • Improving performance and fixing bugs to enable loading even larger design models. 
A CAD model rendered in CesiumJS with visible edges drawn without any surfaces (wireframe style)

A CAD model rendered in CesiumJS with visible edges drawn without any surfaces (wireframe style).

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 1.144 release

CesiumJS 1.144 is now available. Highlights of the release include: 

  • To improve CAD-style rendering, CesiumJS adds support for the Bentley-contributed BENTLEY_materials_planar_fill glTF extension, bringing planar polygon fill with depth sorting and coplanar ordering that keep overlapping surfaces from flickering. 
  • Vector rendering now supports clamping vector polylines and polygons to terrain with screen-space-constant width lines and per-feature styling through Cesium3DTileStyle. This allows massive, tiled visualization of datasets like road connectivity, rivers, and census blocks that correctly overlay on top of terrain. 
  • Picking of metadata from WMTS imagery providers now works when the imagery layer is draped on 3D Tiles. 
  • Added a new Controller framework for creating custom camera controllers. It is more configurable and composable than the preview ScreenSpaceCameraController and is designed to serve asset inspection use cases, including underground models. 
  • Models using the EXT_mesh_primitive_edge_visibility extension now load with significantly less JavaScript heap (up to 19x less memory). 

For more details, see the changelog.

Download CesiumJS 1.144Open an issue or a PR
2D polygons and lines draped over Cesium World Terrain in CesiumJS.

2D polygons and lines draped over Cesium World Terrain.

Cesium for Unreal 2.29.0 release

Cesium for Unreal v2.29.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

  • Cesium Native and Cesium for Unreal added support for the Bentley Systems point style extension, enabling rendering points as circles with varying pixel diameters via the BENTLEY_materials_points_style glTF extension. 
  • GeoJSON Point and MultiPoint geometry is now rasterized and visualized alongside lines and polygons when loading vector tiles, useful for marking POIs or other locations in your scenes. 
  • Removed support for Unreal Engine 5.5. Unreal Engine 5.6 or later is now required. 

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 SamplesOpen an issue or a PR
Points with varying diameter, visualized in Cesium for Unreal on top of Cesium World Terrain draped with Google Maps 2D Contour imagery.

Points with varying diameter, visualized in Cesium for Unreal on top of Cesium World Terrain draped with Google Maps 2D Contour imagery.

Cesium for Unity 1.25.0 release

Cesium for Unity v1.25.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

  • You can now use Cesium for Unity on Linux x86-64. 
  • Added support for building and running the plugin in Unity 6.5. 
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the Cesium ion troubleshooting window from opening for a CesiumGeoJsonDocumentRasterOverlay. 

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 samplesOpen an issue or a PR
An ion Token Troubleshooting window, opened for a GeoJSON footprint draped on Cesium World Terrain.

An ion Token Troubleshooting window, opened for a GeoJSON footprint draped on Cesium World Terrain.

Cesium ion and tilers updates

Cesium ion Self-Hosted

  • Available this week: reconstruct 3D reality models from photos, with technology powered by iTwin Capture. Connect with your account manager for information and access. 

Design tiler

  • We removed an internal memory limit in the design tiler that could stall tiling on complex IFC files. The trigger was hard to predict from a file's size or contents, so more of these files now tile without hanging.
Sign up for Cesium ionDownload Cesium ion Self-Hosted

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RikiTraki 2.0 allows users to upload and share hikes they’ve gone on. RikiTraki has evolved alongside CesiumJS for over a decade, including improvements to performance, modularity, and scaling.  

RikiTraki Trillium Falls

Trillium Falls, California, USA. RikiTraki places geolocated photos from hikers’ treks at the appropriate spots on the trail. Courtesy Ricardo Morin.