Registration is now open for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference! Save your spot.

Cesium for Omniverse v0.25.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.16.0

CesiumJS 1.129

3D Tiles

GEOINT Symposium is one of my favorite events of the year. It’s where the geospatial intelligence community comes together to share how we’re advancing national security through geospatial innovation, and Cesium is proud to once again sponsor and participate. 

Next week, May 19-21, you can find us in St. Louis at BOOTH 2231, where we’ll showcase the latest from Cesium’s 3D geospatial platform, from open standards to secure, mission-ready deployments, from seabed to space.

Visit Cesium in BOOTH 2231 at GEOINT Symposium 2025.

our Moon Lander Game, built with Cesium for Unreal and Cesium Moon Terrain,

One World Terrain Well Formed Format, powered by 3D Tiles, and

daily partner demos, including Ansys, Sedaro, The Weather Company, and more.

Working in a disconnected or classified environment? We’ll also highlight Cesium ion Self-Hosted and how it's supporting high-side workflows today.

You’ll also get a look at CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, Cesium for Omniverse, and the new 3D Tiles for Godot plugin, developed through our ecosystem grant program.

Don’t miss Patrick Cozzi’s keynote on Monday, May 19, at 1:30 p.m. in the Government Hub, and the USGIF Modeling, Simulation & Gaming Working Group on Tuesday, May 20, at 4:15 p.m.

And, of course, join a great crew from across the geospatial community at the Cesium Reception Monday night at the Marriott St. Louis Grand, from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. 

Stop by BOOTH 2231 or reach out to schedule time with the team. We look forward to connecting with you at GEOINT.

We're excited to announce the release of 3D Tiles for Godot, an open source plugin for Godot Engine built by Battle Road through the support of a Cesium Ecosystem Grant. 

The 3D Tiles for Godot plugin brings real-world 3D geospatial data to the Godot Asset Library. Courtesy Battle Road.

Announcing 3D Tiles for Godot, an open source plugin for Godot Engine built by Battle Road through the support of a Cesium Ecosystem Grant. 

3D Tiles for Godot

Godot Engine is the largest cross-platform, free, and open source game engine. The 3D Tiles for Godot plugin brings the most performant and precise 3D data to this global developer community, with a high-accuracy WGS84 globe and support for 3D Tiles. Godot users can easily integrate curated geospatial content via Cesium ion, such as terrain, imagery, and buildings, as well as Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles, along with their own data. 

3D Tiles for Godot is the latest entrant in a growing ecosystem of open source applications supported by the Cesium Native library, which includes Cesium's plugins for Unreal, Unity, Omniverse, and other third-party applications. These efforts have benefited from cross-engine functional exchanges enabled by open source. 

Battle Road, developer of AtomEngine, a platform for modeling and simulation at planet scale, created the open source plugin for the Godot Asset Library, available here.  

New York City, New York, USA, visualized with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via 3D Tiles for Godot. Courtesy Battle Road.

“At Battle Road, we reap the benefits of open source software every day and we’re honored to have an opportunity to give back. Over the past few months, we’ve worked closely with Cesium and Godot—both icons of the open source community—to bring the innovative capabilities of 3D Tiles to Godot, accelerated by Cesium Native. We believe Godot is the best open source game engine out there, and with new datasets like Cesium World Terrain, Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles, and more now at your fingertips, the possibilities are endless,” said Josh Henderson, Battle Road CEO and co-founder. 

“It’s collaboration and innovation from the community that build the 3D geospatial ecosystem, with openness and interoperability at the heart of the work. Battle Road’s contribution enables Godot’s global developer community to build projects that bridge the built and natural environments and efficiently stream massive datasets using 3D Tiles,” said Patrick Cozzi, Bentley Systems chief platform officer and Cesium founder. 

Farm visualized with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via 3D Tiles for Godot. Courtesy Battle Road.

Take a look at Battle Road’s guide to launching 3D Tiles for Godot for your next project. The Battle Road team is committed to maintaining and updating the plugin. There is now also a category on Cesium’s community forum to interact with the plugin’s creators and with other Cesium users getting started on 3D geospatial projects in Godot.  

Our goal for Cesium Ecosystem Grants has been to address common challenges and opportunities through open source contributions and game-changing collaborations within the 3D geospatial ecosystem. The 3D Tiles for Godot plugin is this vision come to life. If you have a similar idea for expanding the 3D geospatial ecosystem and enhancing interoperability, apply for a grant.

Hear from Battle Road at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference. Register to join us in Philadelphia in June.

Introducing 3D Tiles for Godot by Battle Road 

This is a guest post by Nef Gonzalez Campos and Brent Elmer of Battle Road. Battle Road built the 3D Tiles for Godot plugin with support from a Cesium Ecosystem Grant.  

At Battle Road, we reap the benefits of open source software through technologies we love and use every day. Some of our favorites include Godot, Kubernetes, Nakama, and, of course, Cesium. That’s why we’re excited to be giving back with the 3D Tiles for Godot plugin, bringing the innovative capabilities of 3D Tiles to the Godot game engine.

This Godot implementation joins the family of Cesium Native offerings already available for other 3D creation engines: Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium for Omniverse. 

Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, visualized with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via 3D Tiles for Godot. Courtesy Battle Road.

Getting a project up and running with the plugin is simple. 

To begin, you need a stable release of Godot 4.1 or newer. Next, head to either the Godot Asset Library or the 3D Tiles for Godot GitHub repository Releases section to find the newest version of the plugin.  

Download the binaries and follow the README starting from the Setting Up a Project section. 

After importing everything to the project and signing into Cesium ion, you are ready to start adding and fetching your geospatial data and imagery! If you run into issues along the way, we invite you to open an issue in the GitHub repo.  

For questions about the plugin, connect with us in the 3D Tiles for Godot category on the Cesium community forum.   

When we issued the call for proposals for this first Cesium Developer Conference, we were curious how many talks we would receive and what themes would stand out. Cesium has a history in aerospace and now serves a thriving community of open source geospatial users across many different industries, including architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC).

We were happy to see submissions from longtime advocates of CesiumJS, 3D Tiles, and other complementary technologies and topics from the open community—and some surprises. In fact, we received so many abstracts that we expanded the total number of presentations from approximately 50 to 90! There will be a ton for attendees to explore at the event.

Register for the Cesium Developer Conference

The biggest concentration of talks came from AEC and digital twin implementations. We were able to accept 21 full sessions and five lightning talks for the conference from submitted AEC/digital twins abstracts. The sessions are split into three groups, two of which will have to run concurrently, because of the volume. It’s a great “problem” to have.

The topics for this category range from aggregating multiple project sites in a single geospatial experience to providing XR experiences for inspecting and exploring asset conditions in the context of a dynamically updated digital representation of a system. Some presenters will focus on using the rich information in building information modeling (BIM) data in geospatial context, while others will focus on using a 3D map as a communication vehicle.

There will be digital twin projects presented that focus on rail, roadways, buildings, campuses, and whole cities. We anticipate these presentations will drive conversations at the conference networking events about how to bring open geospatial concepts into even more corners of the AEC industry.

A few of the organizations who will present in the AEC and Digital Twins track: 

Arcadis will share how they are using Cesium for Unreal Engine for architectural visualization. 

Holosim will present an exciting story about using immersive gaming technologies and 3D Tiles to plan theme parks.

Pennoni will demonstrate how their team uses 3D Tiles and Cesium with game engine technologies to visualize future plans. 

EARTHBRAIN will demonstrate how they are digitalizing the construction process, especially around earth moving workflows. 

Mott MacDonald will discuss how they use Cesium for a web-based GIS for AEC. 

CalTa will demonstrate how they create digital twins from reality capture information to help customers manage real-world assets. 

Project Controls Cubed will present on how they are using iTwin and Cesium to modernize water treatment systems.

Proposed “dolphin” cylinder protection at Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA)’s Delaware Memorial Bridge. Courtesy Pennoni.

Where can I catch AEC and Digital Twins material at the conference?

Relevant AEC industry content will appear in user-submitted 20-minute sessions, in 5-minute lightning talks on the main stage, and in demonstrations from key customers and product teams from Bentley Systems and Cesium, showing off AEC capabilities that integrate with open geospatial technologies.

Of course, you’ll also be able to meet the speakers and other attendees at the conference’s socials and meals.

Will there be more than AEC and Digital Twins topics?

Yes. There are six tracks, represented in full sessions and lightning talks. Find out more about the themed tracks in our blog and on the conference pages.

Check regularly for more information about talks, speakers, and activities. 

We’re excited to bring the community together and see the fantastic work being done across the open ecosystem.

AEC and Digital Twins Galore at the Cesium Developer Conference

This summer’s inaugural Cesium Developer Conference, June 23-25 in Philadelphia, is an opportunity for developers to network and learn about the latest and greatest open geospatial tools, standards, and data. For attendees looking for a hands-on experience to learn Cesium, we are excited to offer the "Cesium Deep Dive," a pre-conference training full-day workshop on Monday, June 23.

Register and select the Cesium Deep Dive training

Northern California, USA, using Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles in CesiumJS.

If you are a burgeoning geospatial developer, this workshop is for you.

Bring your own laptop so you’re prepared to build, ask questions, and learn new skills to take your 3D geospatial projects to the next level.

Training includes intros to CesiumJS and Cesium ion, then explores deeper discussions on deploying Cesium Native and using 3D creation engine plugins. 

Engineers will present ready-to-try exercises and will be present to help you explore features of Cesium and 3D Tiles. There will also be opportunities for you to meet 1:1 with engineers if you need help with a specific question.

We’re excited to have two special guests presenting and mentoring attendees throughout the day:

Tim Woodard, Principal Solutions Architect at NVIDIA, will present an update on NVIDIA Omniverse and how using it can benefit open geospatial developers.

Stephen Phillips, Solution Architect at Epic Games, will give an overview of how Unreal Engine can be used in AEC and geospatial applications.

Using Cesium runtime plugins for geospatial context

Unreal Engine for geospatial and AEC applications

NVIDIA Omniverse architecture and applications

Prior to the workshop, the Cesium team will send out information to registered training attendees with instructions for downloads and device configuration so that you are ready when you arrive.

The Grand Canyon, USA, visualized with Cesium for Omniverse.

Will I become a Cesium Certified Developer?

We’ve been getting this question a lot: Will a workshop attendee automatically become a Cesium Certified Developer?

No. Certification is based on one's ability to deploy the skills covered throughout this workshop in their own work. You will learn many of the skills needed for certification over the course of the day, and then it will be up to you to put these skills into practice and submit your project. Our Certification team will be on site throughout the full conference to discuss certification. 

Learn more about becoming a Cesium Certified Developer here.

Sign up for the training through the regular conference registration process. There is an additional fee ($100) to attend the workshop because space is limited. Lunch and refreshments are provided.

Slots are filling up. We look forward to learning with you.

Register for the conference and add the workshop

Deep Dive Workshop at the Cesium Developer Conference

NASA calls the Moon “a treasure trove of science.” Buendea uses Cesium Moon Terrain to support NASA’s Advanced Operations Concepts Lab (NAOCL), ensuring astronauts’ virtual training accurately reflects the lunar environments they’ll encounter when they leave home.

Cesium Moon Terrain in XOSS supporting NASA’s Advanced Operations Concepts Lab. Courtesy Buendea and NAOCL. 

Buendea uses Cesium Moon Terrain to support NASA's Advanced Operations Concepts Lab, specifically the Artemis missions.

Buendea XOSS

Scientific discovery around life off Earth—rock samples and water, for example—will require specific tools and training. XR Operations Support System (XOSS) is a collaboration between Buendea and NAOCL, based out of Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, USA, to train astronauts in an accurate 3D lunar environment. 

XOSS users have the entire Moon in their simulation and can further immerse themselves in nine potential landing and habitation sites near the lunar South Pole, where Cesium Moon Terrain has its highest resolution data and Buendea has added additional high-res surface data. In VR mode, astronauts learn to board rovers, use tools to repair equipment, and work together. Admins running the sessions can trigger equipment failures or weather events to provide safe, repeatable learning experiences. 

Buendea and NAOCL provide XOSS for other facilities to work with as a tool to integrate into their workflows for training and simulation. NASA Assessments of Physiology in Cognition for Hybrid Reality Environments (APACHE) carries out human performance studies using XOSS to prepare astronauts for traverses on the Moon, measuring biometric data and other outputs from these moonwalks. Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) and Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) are both habitat environments at JSC that use XOSS to carry out analog simulated activities for Moon and Mars surface operations. Other groups use XOSS as a digital twin to carry out ad-hoc or science activities for extravehicular activity and intravehicular activity (EVA/IVA). 

Buendea was an early adopter of Cesium Moon Terrain and has used this geospatial base since its August 2024 release. 

XOSS in VR mode. Courtesy Buendea and NAOCL.

Buendea founder Julian Reyes shared that the requirement from NASA was a platform that would deliver the entirety of the Moon in Unreal Engine. Reyes and his team were prepared to build a model of the Moon themselves. Today, XOSS accesses Cesium Moon Terrain via Cesium ion and Cesium for Unreal. 

“By integrating Cesium Moon Terrain into our Unreal XOSS project, we were able to stand up our base integration of the lunar deployment instantly. This enabled us to start with developing and adding in our high-resolution surface terrain tiles directly into the deployment—and effectively cut our development time by more than 50%,” said Reyes, who will present XOSS at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference. 

Cesium Moon Terrain is the first complete, accurate, and readily accessible 3D dataset of the Moon. Served as 3D Tiles via Cesium ion, it enables visualization, simulation, and analysis for advanced digital twin creation. 

XOSS currently accesses Cesium Moon Terrain via Cesium ion SaaS. In the near future, the platform will run internally at NASA via Cesium ion Self-Hosted to meet strict security requirements and enable a common workspace as more prototyping is done within XOSS. Buendea connects Cesium ion to its Unreal Engine projects via the open source Cesium for Unreal plugin, pulling in real-world content so astronauts learn among the terrain they expect to see. 

With an accurate lunar base already deployed, Buendea’s developers have been able to focus their time on incorporating additional surface data, including topographic images from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) and photogrammetry of sample rocks from the Apollo missions; adding accurate physics for dispersing regolith on moon when driving; integrating AI for robotics support and geological identification; and modifying lighting to accurately reflect the elongated shadows the lunar South Pole experiences. Fusing graphics capabilities and validated data from many sources in one platform means collaborating groups get a comprehensive view and can prototype and design within XOSS, all on top of Cesium Moon Terrain. 

XOSS users can immerse themselves in nine potential landing and habitation sites near the lunar South Pole. Courtesy Buendea and NAOCL.

Buendea plans to deploy XOSS internally at NASA, among commercial partners, and publicly, for open community development toward our shared future of human spaceflight. 

Both Buendea and Cesium are at the 40th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this week, April 7-10, 2025. Meet us in booth #628. 

To add Cesium Moon Terrain to your Cesium for Unreal projects, follow this guide. 

Buendea Supports NASA Advanced Operations Concepts Lab with Cesium Moon Terrain 

The Cesium Design Tiler now preserves metadata from Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) when tiling into 3D Tiles. This capability has been a popular request from our community and will enable new workflows in architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) projects combining the built and natural environment in a 3D geospatial context. 

Metadata support includes IFC attributes, property sets, and properties. Property sets are groups of related properties displayed under a common heading. When IFC data is converted into 3D Tiles, this common heading is prepended to the name of each property in the set, ensuring a unique name for each property within the tileset.

IFC attributes, property sets, and properties within 3D Tiles. Data source: BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International—accessible via GitHub.

Users can combine IFC metadata with styling and filtering in CesiumJS to show and hide content based on properties such as IFC class name, globally unique identifier (GUID), or other fields. This enhanced interactivity enables users to focus on the most relevant elements of a complex design model. 

Filtering model content based on IFC class name and GUID in CesiumJS. Data source: BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International—accessible via GitHub.  

Filtering model content based on IFC class name and GUID. Data source: BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International—accessible via GitHub.  

Cesium Design Tiler: IFC Metadata Filtering

IFC metadata can also be used to shade content based on length, area, volume, and other properties. Shading helps AECO project stakeholders visualize and understand the underlying metadata, so they get the insights they need from the model. 

Color ramp shading based on an IFC length property in Cesium for Unreal. Data source: BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International—accessible via GitHub.

The Design Tiler is available via Cesium ion SaaS and Cesium ion Self-Hosted 1.6, and we’ll share its performance in an upcoming blog post. 

Create a Cesium ion account and upload your IFC data to unlock the potential of your design data as 3D Tiles. 

Cesium Design Tiler Now Supports IFC Metadata

Siloed approaches to architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) can lead to poor communication and collaboration across all phases of projects, resulting in delays and increased costs. DroneDeploy enables stakeholders to examine the entire life cycle of a project with its drone software and viewer, which use 3D Tiles and Cesium ion Self-Hosted to make massive photogrammetry datasets manageable and accessible.

Capture high-resolution aerial data to align teams and keep AEC projects on track. Courtesy DroneDeploy.

DroneDeploy Map Engine

Founded in 2013, DroneDeploy has been using Cesium since 2018. With solutions for construction, agriculture, and insurance, DroneDeploy has built a platform for drone operators to host, visualize, and analyze their aerial imagery and photogrammetry, often on mobile devices. 3D comes into play for these users with accurate models and measurements of new schools or surveys for homeowners who are considering solar panels, for example. Teams can regularly refer to and update the models, examining change over time, making informed decisions, and staying on schedule.

The company has users in 180 countries, who have scanned 1.7 million jobsites, including 2D imagery and 3D models. It has the world’s largest drone data repository.

Photogrammetry of a new high school tiled as 3D Tiles and streamed to DroneDeploy’s custom viewer. Courtesy DroneDeploy.

Operators run DroneDeploy’s software on their drones, capturing buildings and surroundings exactly as they are in the real world. This data is uploaded as aerial imagery or photogrammetry to DroneDeploy’s processing pipeline, which relies on Cesium’s 3D models tiler and point cloud tiler via Cesium ion Self-Hosted in their own environment, and is then available in DroneDeploy’s viewer for analysis and sharing.

Because users’ untiled models are multiple gigabytes, computers and networks might struggle with these massive datasets, especially phones or tablets. Using 3D Tiles means this data is optimized for streaming and designed for precision. 

“Customer datasets vary in size. For bigger datasets—like an entire construction site, multiple square kilometers—getting detail in an untiled model is nearly impossible. Tiling with Cesium allows us to get it in quickly and then refine while maintaining high quality and a high level of performance,” said Joseph Sullivan, DroneDeploy’s 3D engineering lead.

DroneDeploy unifies all its customers’ reality capture data—from drones, robots, 360 cameras, or smartphones—in one platform. Courtesy DroneDeploy.

DroneDeploy: Unified Reality Capture Data

With Cesium’s 3D Tiling Pipeline, DroneDeploy puts its engineering resources into its custom viewer rather than model processing, and users get photorealistic 3D models for decisions based on reality.

To easily bring massive datasets to AEC stakeholders, sign up for a free Cesium ion account.

DroneDeploy Visualizes Construction Sites with Cesium

On any given Sunday, Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles are used to orient and immerse FOX Sports' football fans.

Atlanta to Hollywood on FOX NFL SUNDAY. Courtesy FOX Sports.

FOX NFL SUNDAY Atlanta to Hollywood

For FOX NFL SUNDAY, the XR team builds virtual 3D cities to highlight team locations and then fly to the studio in Los Angeles, where the crew of analysts and Hall-of-Famers comments on the matchups of the day. These immersive 3D models are a new feature this season, enabling FOX Sports to visualize specific skylines and customize them with lighting and atmosphere each week for the best production quality and value. Designed for city scale, Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles show viewers the details they would encounter in the real world and reduce FOX’s need to acquire data in other ways.

FOX Sports' XR team uses Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles to build virtual 3D cities to highlight game locations, like the Steelers-Falcons matchup in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Courtesy FOX Sports.

The NFL's 32 teams have 30 full-time stadiums and cities among them, plus the occasional international trip. Because Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles pull from Google's extensive high-resolution imagery, FOX Sports is well covered with game locations, and draping this imagery over 3D mesh and formatting it as 3D Tiles provides accurate geospatial context for fans, optimized for streaming for the on-air graphics team.

FOX Sports' XR specialists combine Photorealistic 3D Tiles; their own 2D imagery; and 3D models of clouds, water, watercraft, and hand-modeled trees in Unreal Engine, fusing these disparate datasets of varying sizes, georeferencing them, and streaming them via Cesium ion and Cesium for Unreal. Fans see a polished, realistic scene that seamlessly transitions to commentators in the studio.

“In the past, we’ve used aerial imagery, but we have not encountered a tool that has allowed us as much flexibility and detail as Cesium. We put a high value on our production quality, bringing out the most in our brand,” said Zac Fields, SVP of Graphic Technology at FOX Sports. “Beyond a cool visual, it’s very informative, showing cities around the world with context.”

After seeing the matchup location, the viewer flies to the studio in Los Angeles. Courtesy FOX Sports.

FOX NFL SUNDAY airs at 12 p.m. ET. Fields plans to extend the Cesium/Google combo to other sports, like international soccer and Major League Baseball. 

Learn to add Photorealistic 3D Tiles to your Unreal Engine project, and bring both art and information to your viewers.

Cesium Orients and Informs FOX Sports Football Fans

We are pleased to announce the release of the Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In. This release provides new tools to improve workflows and provide new capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context.

The Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In are now available.

Cesium Design Tiler

These tools transform IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets. 

The Design Tiler and Revit Add-In provide easier, more efficient workflows for sharing your design data via the web or other visualization platforms like Unreal Engine, Unity, and NVIDIA Omniverse. By incorporating Cesium and 3D Tiles, you are now able to quickly and easily share your data, making it more accessible while also creating more performant applications.

The new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In improve workflows and capabilities that place AECO content in a 3D geospatial context.

Benefit of streaming AECO designs via 3D Tiles

3D Tiles is an open standard for streaming massive, heterogeneous, 3D geospatial data, such as global terrain, entire 3D City models, and high resolution reality data captured from drones, LiDAR scanners, and mobile devices.

3D Tiles optimizes the streaming of complex design and geospatial data providing high performance visualization.

3D Tiles Visualization

3D Tiles are efficient for global data sets like Cesium World Terrain and Google’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles, as well as complex CAD/BIM data with hundreds of thousands of individual features and millions of individual triangles. By leveraging 3D Tiles, your complex design models can now be streamed efficiently to any number of 3D viewers that show your site within its geospatial context. For example, when streaming design data as 3D Tiles with Cesium for Unreal, there are 80-90% fewer draw calls and a 50% faster framerate compared to using untiled static meshes.

The Design Tiler, accessible through Cesium ion’s user interface or via API, adds the ability to quickly and easily convert from IFC to 3D Tiles. IFC is an open standard developed by buildingSMART International that is widely adopted across AECO and BIM. 

The Design Tiler ingests IFC data including entities, metadata, and the underlying parent and child relationships inherent in the IFC data structures. The initial release of the Design Tiler supports most IFC Geometry Types, Entity metadata and embedded geospatial information. We have been working with large federated IFC models containing over 100 individual building models, over 4 million individual objects and in excess of 800 million mesh triangles, all being performantly streamed via 3D Tiles. 

IFC Data model converted to 3D Tiles, manually positioned in Boston, MA, and combined with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles. Source - BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International, accessible via Github.

With this new tiling capability, you can easily drag and drop your IFC data into your Cesium ion account. The resulting data will be converted to 3D Tiles making it accessible as an asset for streaming into CesiumJS, our runtime integrations with Unreal, Unity, or NVIDIA Omniverse, or any other system that supports 3D Tiles v1.1. If your IFC data contains embedded coordinate reference system information, Cesium will use this information to place the 3D Tiles in the correct location on the globe. If this information is not available, you can use the Cesium ion 3D Tiles Location Editor to quickly and easily set its position, rotation, and scale on the globe. 

Through our AECO Tech Preview Program, Trendspek was given early access to the Design Tiler. Trendspek provides a suite of tools that empower owners, engineers, and contractors to manage infrastructure across the entire asset lifecycle using CesiumJS. Josh Sinclair, Head of Product at Trendspek, said, “The LoD generation is far superior to any BIM conversion tool we have used in the past. The output looks great.” With the Design Tiler, the Trendspek team was able to incorporate BIM data to communicate proposed remedial works packages to their users. 

Trendspek has been able to quickly incorporate BIM as 3D Tiles alongside a reality capture model in their inspection application which uses CesiumJS.

With support for IFC, 3D Tiles can now be generated from a wide range of AECO verticals, including architecture, structural engineering, and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) designs. With IFC data as 3D Tiles, there is greater performance, increased interoperability, and less manual effort to optimize this rich content for viewing and distribution.

Complementing the release of the Design Tiler, the Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In is now available. This Add-In provides a simple process to upload your current 3D View directly to Cesium ion as 3D Tiles. The Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In connects directly to your existing Cesium ion account and leverages the Design Tiler to generate 3D Tiles. This Add-In is available free and open source under the Apache 2.0 License.

The Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In connects directly to your existing Cesium ion account and leverages the Design Tiler to generate 3D Tiles.

Autodesk Revit to Cesium ion December 2024

The conversion process is configurable, allowing you to export visible geometry and textures along with all element parameters as metadata to 3D Tiles. The Revit Add-in allows AECO teams to send performant, interactive digital twins to partners over the web or into native runtime engines like Unreal Engine, Unity, or NVIDIA Omniverse via Cesium ion. The conversion and upload to Cesium ion is done transparently, letting architects and other AECO professionals focus on their designs and workflows.

View your Revit models anywhere in the world with accurate geospatial context.

The open source Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In continues our commitment to openness and interoperability. Download the Add-In directly from the Autodesk App Store, the Cesium downloads page, or the GitHub repo.

The addition of the Design Tiler and Revit Add-In provides a new set of tools for improving workflows that increase the accessibility and interoperability of your design data via open standards. These tools allow you to make your data available quickly and easily by leveraging open standards, combining it with global geospatial content and streaming into an accurate 3D view. 

Get started by creating a Cesium ion account and uploading your IFC data or download the Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In to unlock the potential of your design data as 3D Tiles.  

Looking for inspiration? Check out our AECO CesiumJS examples on the Cesium Sandcastle or our updated Cesium for Unreal Samples starter project.

If you have any suggestions or need support, please reach out on the Cesium Community Forum. We can’t wait to see what you create with these tools!

Now Available: Cesium Design Tiler and Add-In for Autodesk Revit

Join Cesium at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida, from December 2-5! I/ITSEC is the world’s largest gathering of professionals in modeling, simulation, and training, and we’re excited to be a part of it once again.

Stop by BOOTH 221 for Cesium demos curated specifically for the modeling, simulation, and training community.

Here’s a preview of what you can expect:

 I/ITSEC is a great opportunity to engage directly with our leadership and engineering teams. We look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions and demonstrate the latest capabilities from Cesium. 

We will also be hosting a Cesium Happy Hour at our booth on Tuesday from 3-5PM.

Announced last year at I/ITSEC, Cesium ion Self Hosted provides an offline capability for hosting, tiling, and streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets. When Cesium customers need to move their solution to the high side or a disconnected environment, Cesium ion Self-Hosted is the way to go. 

At I/ITSEC this year, we will feature a dedicated station where you can get hands-on experience with Cesium ion Self-Hosted. Like what you see and want to try it out in your environment? You can sign up for a free 30-day evaluation of Cesium ion Self-Hosted right at the booth.

Cesium ion, the solution for hosting, tiling, and streaming 3D geospatial data, is now available for your own environment as Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted

Explore Cesium Global 3D Content and Tiled Partner Data

We’ll also have all the Cesium Global 3D Content offline locally in our booth. This is the same data we ship to our Cesium ion Self-Hosted customers for hosting in their own local environment. 

Interact with these datasets in a Cesium Story hosted locally by Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Cesium Moon Terrain: the first complete, accurate, and readily-accessible 3D dataset of the moon.

Cesium World Bathymetry:  a global bathymetry and topographic terrain tileset that enables 3D visualizations, simulations, and analytics for use cases like oil and gas exploration, navigation for unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), managing offshore wind farms, and analyzing essential climate science.

Japan 3D Buildings and Regional Terrain Data: Providing a foundation for building digital twin applications and solutions in Japan.

Vexcel 3D Cities: High-quality 3D data models for more than 60 metro areas across the globe available for offline use with Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Live demos of Cesium’s open source plugins for today’s leading creation engines like Unreal Engine and Unity

Built on open standards and APIs, these plugins combine the 3D geospatial capability of Cesium and 3D Tiles with today’s leading creation engines.

Cesium for Unreal - Integrated with Unreal Engine Editor, Actors and Components, Blueprints, and other UE features to enable a high degree of interactivity, physical realism, and photorealism to create amazing experiences.

Cesium for Unity - Cesium for Unity is tightly integrated with Unity making it possible to visualize and interact with real-world content in editor and at runtime. The plugin also has support for Unity game objects, physics, collisions, and character interaction.

Cesium for Omniverse - Cesium for Omniverse enables users to visualize and interact with a full-scale, high fidelity WGS84 globe within NVIDIA Omniverse to create, visualize, and analyze simulations in their precise 3D geospatial context.

Cesium Native - Cesium Native powers Cesium's runtime integrations and is an open source foundational layer for any 3D geospatial software, especially those that want to stream 3D Tiles.

A First Look at Cesium’s all new Design Tiler

To improve workflows and capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context, Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program.

These tools transform IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets

Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program. These tools transform IFC and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets. Join us in connecting architecture and geospatial.

Connecting Architecture and Geospatial: AECO Tech Preview Program

CesiumJS Example with One World Terrain’s Well Formed Format based on 3D Tiles: 

The past year has seen many great developments for 3D Tiles, including its use by NBC Sports for broadcast coverage of the Paris Summer Games. 

At I/ITSEC, we will be showing how we continue to evolve this OGC Community Standard developed by Cesium including specific enhancements that are part of the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain Contract. Stop by our booth to see live demos of new features in the One World Terrain Well Formed Format (WFF),  an extension of 3D Tiles.

Once again Cesium will bring partners into the booth to showcase how they are utilizing the Cesium Platform. Stay tuned for specific days and times these demos will be shown. 

Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Gaming Research Integration Learning Laboratory (GRILL)  -  Presenting Glimmer, a VR application with Cesium Moon Terrain. (Wed. 1:30-6 pm; Thurs. 9:30 am- 3 pm)

Battle Road - Presenting AtomEngine, an Earth-scale realtime multiplayer simulation using Cesium World Terrain as well as their custom Cesium for Godot integration. (Tues. noon-6:30 pm; Wed. 9:30 am-1:30 pm)

Reveal - Presenting Farsight, a mobile first platform providing surveillance video, 2D, and 3D geospatial data for use in decentralized, comms-limited environments. (Tues. 2-6:30 pm; Wed. 1-30-6 pm)

Cesium at GEOINT 2025

Introducing 3D Tiles for Godot by Battle Road

Getting Started with 3D Tiles for Godot

AEC and Digital Twins Galore at the Cesium Developer Conference

Deep Dive Workshop at the Cesium Developer Conference

Buendea Supports NASA Advanced Operations Concepts Lab with Cesium Moon Terrain

Cesium Design Tiler Now Supports IFC Metadata