Cesium for Omniverse v0.30.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.26.1

CesiumJS 1.147

3D Tiles

X3DOM developers can now stream and visualize large 3D Tiles datasets directly within declarative X3D scenes. The capability was developed by the Web3D Consortium through a Cesium Ecosystem Grant, expanding interoperability between two open standards for web-based 3D geospatial applications.

Stream massive geospatial datasets in X3DOM with 3D Tiles, as with this view of Angkor Wat, Planet Labs Open Data, CC-BY 4.0. Courtesy Andreas Plesch.

X3D is an open standard for representing interactive 3D scenes, including applications in visualization, simulation, and digital twins. With 3D Tiles support in X3DOM, developers can bring heterogeneous geospatial datasets, such as buildings, terrain, photogrammetry, and point clouds, into X3D applications while taking advantage of X3D's mature, interactive and declarative authoring model.

The Web3D Consortium received a Cesium Ecosystem Grant in August 2025 to advance support for 3D Tiles, an Open Geospatial Consortium community standard, in X3D formats. The completed implementation introduces core 3D Tiles 1.1 functionality to X3DOM and includes test datasets, code repositories, demos and educational materials to help developers explore the new functionality.

This project was led by Anita Havele, Executive Director of the Web3D Consortium. The technical lead was Andreas Plesch, EarthStruct LLC, who presented their progress on October 14 at the Web3D 2026 Conference in Doha, Qatar. Read more about the work in the Web3D article: OGC 3D Tiles in X3DOM.

3D Tiles are now supported in X3DOM. Here a Lyon GIS dataset, with >7 million points, is streamed in X3DOM with 3D Tiles. Courtesy Andreas Plesch.

By aligning open standards, this work increases interoperability and expands deployment options for 3D geospatial content. Every new implementation of 3D Tiles increases the value of open geospatial data pipelines. Developers gain more deployment options, organizations gain greater flexibility, and users benefit from access to rich 3D geospatial experiences across more environments.

Have an open-source project that could expand access to 3D Tiles or improve interoperability across the 3D geospatial ecosystem? Learn more about Cesium Ecosystem Grants.

This month’s Cesium releases make it easier to build design-driven applications that connect engineering models with real-world context and turn design data into actionable information. New and enhanced capabilities automatically generate clipping footprints, query and calculate quantities from engineering data, navigate complex models through model hierarchies, and measure more precisely with snapping. Together, these updates reduce manual work and give developers more powerful ways to build interactive workflows around infrastructure design data. Look for an in-depth blog post and tutorials later this week. 

If you’re at FOSS4G NA in Sacramento, join us at 4:30 p.m. PST on Tuesday, November 3, for Gabby’s talk, and stop by the Cesium table to chat with the team.

Cesium ion APIs enable a new generation of design-driven applications, such as this rebar takeoff for a proposed bridge design, showing calculated bar counts, weights, and lengths. Model courtesy JMT. 

Gabby Getz and Luke McKinstry are at FOSS4G NA in Sacramento, California, USA.

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 1.147 is now available. This month's release includes new support for Cesium ion's Element Service, allowing easy access to new APIs for querying and performing calculations on BIM/CAD model properties and to build BIM-style tree views for end user navigation. It also includes several bug fixes and memory management improvements. 

Fixed undeclared dependencies earcut, mersenne-twister, and urijs. #13955 

Added experimental IonAssetElementService for querying, filtering, aggregating, and navigating element metadata for Cesium ion assets backed by BIM/CAD databases, along with the extensible ElementService base class.#13995 

Added support for glTF models with the KHR_materials_emissive_strength extension to improve control over the lighting pipeline. #13961 

Fixed czm_passOverlay and czm_passCesium3DTileEdgesDirect GLSL constants not matching czm_pass during their respective passes. Removed the unused czm_passClassification constant. #13657 

Fixed dynamic environment lighting on models and tilesets near or below the ellipsoid surface. #13988 

Fixed pointCloudShading.backFaceCulling not hiding back-facing points on some platforms. #13989 

Fixed Cesium3DTileset repeatedly loading and unloading the same tiles when they don't fit within cacheBytes plus maximumCacheOverflowBytes. #13999 

Added edge snapping to all measurement tools. Snapping is enabled by default, can be temporarily disabled while placing points, and supports optional server-side refinement for BIM/CAD assets. 

Two emissive models with different emissive strengths, showcasing the new support for the KHR_materials_emissive_strength glTF extension. Models courtesy Khronos Group. 

Cesium for Unreal v2.31.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Added a button to refresh the Blueprint style instance on CesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent, allowing it to apply changes in Editor and at runtime. 

Fixed compile errors when building the plugin from source with Unreal Engine's unreachable-code warnings treated as errors. 

Fixed an out-of-bounds access in UCesiumGeoJsonObjectBlueprintLibrary::GetObjectAsMultiLineString. 

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 Marketplace

New York City 3D Buildings in Cesium for Unreal, streamed from Cesium ion and styled by building ownership through Blueprints. 

Cesium for Unity v1.26.1 is now available. This release updates cesium-native from v0.65.0 to v0.66.0, which includes bugfixes such as: 

Fixed potential integer overflow and out-of-bounds write while decoding glTFs with EXT_meshopt_compression. 

Fixed potential heap overflow and added other safeguards when decoding Draco-compressed glTFs. 

See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

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

Cesium for Omniverse v0.30.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Breaking change: Cesium for Omniverse now requires a C++ 20 compiler. For Windows builds, MSVC 14.29 is required. 

Cesium for Omniverse no longer provides its own certificates; instead, it uses a list of common search paths for various OSs to locate certificates. 

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

Download the Cesium for Omniverse extension

Download the Cesium for Omniverse samples

**Cesium ion SaaS**

- Now in General Availability: Cesium ion BIM/CAD tiler and iModel import from Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. In combination with other features in this and recent releases, Cesium is enabling a new generation of design-driven applications. Look for a blog post and tutorials later this week.  
- The Cesium ion Asset Elements query routes have advanced to General Availability. Enhancements make more engineering data available for querying across supported design formats. With a more complete view of each element, applications can make greater use of the original design information across querying, visualization, and calculation workflows. Corresponding CesiumJS JavaScript wrappers make it easy to use these routes in your applications. 
- Added experimental API routes to build familiar BIM-style tree views in end user applications. A corresponding CesiumJS JavaScript wrapper makes it easy to use in your applications.  
- Added "Clipping assist" to Cesium ion. For geolocated 3D Tiles assets with mesh data, select the asset in My Assets and choose "Clipping assist" in the right-hand details pane. Cesium ion will create a clipping polygon and save it as a new GeoJSON asset. This generated suggestion is a starting point, so review the clip's boundaries before use. You can also create clips via API. 

**Tilers**

- Fixed an issue where an invalid CRS could cause a crash rather than reporting an error. 
- 3D Tiling Pipeline: Fixed an issue on Windows where certain filesystem checks would fail for paths with non-ASCII characters. 

The Cesium ion clipping assist feature created a generated clip of your 3D Tiles model.

CNN journalists worked with Kayhan Space to verify Russian satellite capabilities and behavior. Kayhan Space's Satcat uses CesiumJS. 

Rockpile Solutions uses CesiumJS to fuse drone scans, Bing Maps, and precise GPS positioning for real-time 3D tracking of earthworks fleets. 

TruGolf uses Cesium for Unreal to fuse custom and global datasets, placing virtual golf courses in their exact real-world locations for an immersive player experience. 

The student-run Space Technologies Laboratory at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal to test the camera system on EagleCam 2.0 before it flies on the IM-3 mission—and takes the first lunar selfie. 

What does a Moon landing look like? The student-run Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal to test the camera system on EagleCam 2.0 before it flies on the IM-3 mission—and takes the first lunar selfie. 

STL used Cesium to build a digital twin of the camera system and large-scale lunar terrain to test settings and learn when to apply adjustments during the mission. Courtesy Embry-Riddle Space Technologies Laboratory.

The student-run Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal to test the camera system on EagleCam 2.0 before it flies on the IM-3 mission—and takes the first lunar selfie.

Embry-Riddle STL EagleCam 2.0

IM-3 is part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, expected to fly before the end of 2026, and EagleCam 2.0’s job is gathering information-rich images for examination post flight. Instead of building a physical prototype of Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander to assess mounting configurations, spending limited lab budget on the wrong lenses, and imaging ground that doesn’t match that of Earth’s natural satellite, STL used Cesium to build a digital twin of the camera system and large-scale lunar terrain to test settings and learn when to apply adjustments during the mission. 

STL develops hardware for commercial missions and research partners and has 15-20 students, undergrads through PhD candidates, actively working on the 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm EagleCam. Two to three of those students work on the digital twin. EagleCam is fully student designed, built, and operated. 

This is the second time a university has sent a payload to the Moon; the first was EagleCam 1.0. 

Work on EagleCam 2.0 began in 2025. The challenges STL saw on EagleCam 1.0—such as predicting lunar lighting, camera placement, fisheye behavior, and coverage—pushed the team to build a digital twin to inform EagleCam 2.0’s life cycle. 

EagleCam is fully student designed, built, and operated. Courtesy Embry-Riddle Space Technologies Laboratory.

To see the Moon before IM-3 lands (or even lifts off), STL uses Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal. STL streams Cesium Moon—a single complete 3D Tileset composed of precise terrain and imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) program and other sources—via Cesium ion SaaS to the EagleCam digital twin in Unreal Engine. Individual students have their own ion accounts, so they can fuse assets relevant to their parts of the mission, like high-res geoTIFFs of the landing site. 

Because Cesium Moon is 3D Tiles, details load based on the active camera instead of forcing the lab to manage one enormous Moon mesh, improving development and navigation. 

On top of Cesium Moon, STL added the flight camera's sensor and lens properties, camera position and orientation, realistic exposure controls, roughly 100,000-lux sunlight, and time-based Sun–Earth–Moon geometry from NASA SPICE through the MaxQ Spaceflight Toolkit in Unreal Engine. Unreal produces six render targets per lens, combines them into a fisheye image, and can export image sets for calibration or NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline processing. The team also added orbit trajectories to test maneuvers and observe field of view (FOV) during them. 

Building out the digital twin took five to six months, but now Sam Nikolov and his labmates can add lens specs and get renderings in minutes. Cesium Moon provides the mission-relevant geospatial context as an accurate 3D base layer, STL’s camera model generates synthetic stereo images, and the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline reconstructs terrain from those images, all in Unreal Engine. (STL also uses Cesium for Unity for quick lens-shader prototyping.) Instead of a made-up lens paired with a random spot on the Moon to show what shots might look like, STL gets accurate predictions that support decisions on which lenses and what settings will achieve usable imagery. A 240,000-mile trip is not a simple service call; validating the hardware before launch is vital. 

Nikolov, who is dedicated to software development, including firmware on satellite, image processing, and digital twins at STL, explained: “Without Cesium, we would have had to find, process, package, georeference, stream, and render high-resolution lunar terrain ourselves. That would have taken a huge amount of effort and added risk before we even reached the camera problem we actually cared about. Cesium gave our two- to three-person subgroup the terrain, coordinate, LOD, and streaming backbone so we could focus on the lens, calibration, lighting, and operations use case. Cesium ion has never let us down.” 

The challenges STL saw on EagleCam 1.0 pushed the team to build a digital twin to inform EagleCam 2.0’s life cycle. Courtesy Embry-Riddle Space Technologies Laboratory.

Nikolov reports that the biggest success is that the simulated images look extremely close to the lab’s real camera references under matched settings. The lab selects a date and time, photographs the Moon outside, considers atmospheric conditions, and compares the result with the simulated view—both visually convincing and correct. 

As IM-3 flies to the Moon, STL can consult the digital twin to check expected camera settings and FOV and assess if the returned data will be sufficient for analysis. This means the digital twin supports EagleCam throughout its life cycle: design, hardware selection and placement, mission rehearsal, operations, and post-flight analysis. 

Watch Sam Nikolov’s 2026 Cesium Developer Conference lightning talk to learn about the role Cesium plays in EagleCam 2.0. 

Seeing the Moon before we get there: Game-engine digital twin for lunar imaging - Samuil Nikolov

With Cesium, STL’s EagleCam digital twin enables reduced risk, faster iteration, better design confidence, stronger research output, and a better foundation for future partnerships. It’s also an immersive, intuitive version of the students’ hard work on distortion curves and drawings.  

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

Embry-Riddle Uses Cesium Moon to Test EagleCam 2.0 Camera System

In mid-September we announced our second major technology preview focused on design model workflows in Cesium, including the ability to report on the differences between versions of BIM/CAD design models using the Cesium ion API. Cesium ion now also manages source files separately from tiled data.  

Our October runtime releases deliver many improvements and fixes, including enhancements for working with the new 3D Tiles 2.0 vector tiles data format in CesiumJS and the ability to use Blueprints to drive styling in Cesium for Unreal.  

We will also be hosting two webinars this month: on October 13 we'll be digging into our new vector tiles support, and on October 21 we’ll host our quarterly training and technical exchange for US government employees. We look forward to seeing you there! 

CesiumJS 1.146 is now available. This month's release focuses on improvements to vector tile rendering and extracts CesiumJS's fundamental math, geometry, and time primitives into a separate packages/core workspace to create a lightweight, dependency-isolated package that can be used independently by external consumers, advancing the long-term CesiumJS goal of publishing smaller, more modular packages.  

By isolating core functionality with no external dependencies, the new package gives consumers the option to adopt only the core mathematical utilities they need without the overhead of the entire engine, establishing a pattern for splitting out domain-specific code like glTF loading from @cesium/engine for easier updates and testing. 

CesiumJS now publishes a new package, @cesium/core, containing the math, geometry, time, and utility classes that were previously part of @cesium/engine. #13805 

Fixed draped polylines rendering at the wrong width at large widths, in both pixels and meters width units. #13737 

Added vectorBlendOption to Cesium3DTileset, for selecting opaque or translucent modes. blendOption can now also be changed after construction on BufferPointCollection, BufferPolylineCollection, and BufferPolygonCollection. This corrects an issue where rendering vector datasets resulted in incorrect blending. #13764 

Reduced load time and memory usage for implicitly tiled tilesets. The app now loads 23× faster and uses 13× less memory on a benchmark large building dataset. #13808 

Improved support in CesiumJS for rendering wide vector lines, in both "pixels" and "meters" width units. Data from HydroSHEDS version 1 database from © World Wildlife Fund, Inc. and Cesium World Terrain.

Cesium for Unreal v2.30.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Added support for styling features in ACesium3DTileset with Blueprints, using a specified BlueprintStyleClass that implements ICesium3DTilesStylingProvider on UCesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent. 

Added support for per-element styling on CesiumVectorTilesRasterOverlay, using either a specified Blueprint class implementing ICesiumVectorTilesStylingCallbacks or a C++ class derived from CesiumVectorOverlays::VectorStylingProvider. 

Fixed a bug that made FCesiumCamera use incorrect parameters when its source was set to ECameraParameterSource::CameraComponent. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.64.0 to v0.65.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Difficulty of ski runs at Mount Snow, Vermont, USA, visualized in Cesium for Unreal using the CesiumVectorTilesRasterOverlay’s new styling capabilities. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors and OpenSkiMap.org.

Cesium for Unity v1.26.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Added CesiumVectorPointStyle and a pointStyle field on CesiumVectorStyle, enabling CesiumGeoJsonDocumentRasterOverlay to render GeoJSON Point and MultiPoint features. 

Added support for loading CesiumCartographicPolygons from polygons in GeoJSON files. 

**Cesium ion SaaS** 

- Added the ability to create versions of BIM/CAD Database assets: Cesium ion now supports the re-upload of source files to update a BIM/CAD Database tileset which creates multiple versions of meshes from the database. 
- Improved file management: Cesium ion source files and tiled assets are now stored separately in Cesium ion, giving you more control over your storage quota and laying the foundation for new ion workflows. Read more and let us know what you think on [the community forum](https://community.cesium.com/t/improved-file-management-in-cesium-ion/47161). 
- Increase storage quotas: Your storage quota has been doubled! Look for an email from us with details. 
- Added a new API endpoint to search for valid CRS codes using geocode-scoped tokens. This enables developers to programmatically discover and validate CRS values when ingesting design models via the API. 
- Added new change detection API routes for mesh assets created from the same BIM/CAD Database asset. 

**Buildings tiler**

- Added limited support for CityGML 3.0 generic attributes and boundary surfaces. 

Space missions are complex to plan, execute, and communicate to audiences with varying knowledge and interests. To retain engineering accuracy while bringing charts and strings of numbers to life, Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon uses CesiumJS for mission plans and milestones. Views seamlessly transition from Earth centric to Moon centric—and beyond—to meet the needs of complex storytelling. Read about how Blacknight Space brings real-world understanding to complicated narratives with CesiumJS. 

To retain engineering accuracy while bringing charts and strings of numbers to life, Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon uses CesiumJS for mission plans and milestones.

User Story Trailer: Blacknight Space Event Horizon

Space missions are complex to plan, execute, and communicate to audiences with varying knowledge and interests. To retain engineering accuracy while bringing charts and strings of numbers to life, Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon uses CesiumJS for mission plans and milestones. 

Views in Event Horizon seamlessly transition from Earth centric to Moon centric—and beyond—to meet the needs of complex storytelling. Courtesy Blacknight Space.

Space missions are complex to plan, execute, and communicate to audiences with varying knowledge and interests. To retain engineering accuracy while bringing charts and strings of numbers to life, Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon uses CesiumJS for mission plans and milestones.

Blacknight Space Event Horizon

Event Horizon is an interactive, browser-based 3D mission visualization platform, designed for space operators, engineers, and technical marketers to deliver a dynamic showcase of mission plans and milestones. Teams can confirm trajectories, review events, and educate stakeholders and the public.  The application was recently released as an early beta version.

Blacknight Space supports commercial aerospace companies and US defense organizations, aiming to make the industry dramatically more efficient through digital engineering solutions. Blacknight is an Ansys partner for Digital Mission Engineering and shares AGI heritage with Cesium, championing tools for simulations in challenging environments. 

“Cesium technology is part of our DNA,” said Nate McBee, VP of product and engineering at Blacknight Space.

An Event Horizon overview highlights the Artemis II mission. Courtesy Blacknight Space. 

Blacknight has been developing Event Horizon on CesiumJS since day one, enabling users across the globe to explore live orbital telemetry, verified flight trajectories, and mission milestones in a browser. (Organizations with sensitive information can employ an on-prem version of Event Horizon.) Users have access to curated data from trusted public satellite databases and can bring their own data—trajectory, attitude, and error ellipsoids, among others. 

Event Horizon connects to Cesium ion to provide Cesium World Terrain plus satellite imagery; Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles; and Cesium Moon when mission views bring the user close to Earth or our moon, to ensure efficient streaming of these massive datasets over the web. Users can connect their own ion accounts, too. The app provides models of spacecraft, such as the International Space Station and satellites, and those are rendered as glTF/.glb.  

Views seamlessly transition from Earth centric to Moon centric—and beyond—to meet the needs of complex storytelling. Planners and communicators authoring mission narratives with Event Horizon can add saved views and notes to indicate plans and milestones, like stage separations, payload deployments, or rendezvous, in immersive 4D. Blacknight works closely with partners, such as Cesium and COMSPOC, on physics, ephemeris, and rendering, ensuring accurate representation. 

Event Horizon's web interface provides an interactive 3D representation of space operations, mission milestones, and analytics. Courtesy Blacknight Space. 

“Our end users and customers always comment on how nice the visualizations look, and, in the space industry, accurate visualization is a critical aspect of mission planning and situational awareness. Cesium helps us paint that accurate picture,” McBee said. 

With Cesium’s roots in aerospace and defense, CesiumJS brings out-of-the-box capability to Event Horizon, but its openness and extensibility mean Blacknight can mold it further, implementing unique visualizations and data streams. Blacknight has another advantage, though: two of the organization’s aerospace engineers are Cesium Certified Developers, and McBee estimates they can do in 25% of their time what would require someone else’s full-time efforts. The team gets to their aerospace expertise quickly, while Cesium handles the geospatial context and rendering. 

“Being part of a company that's growing the Cesium ecosystem, after helping others share what they can do, shows how the Cesium community drives real progress,” said Kyle Heisey, director of operations at Blacknight Space. Heisey launched and managed the CCD program when he was a Cesium employee. 

Watch Klaus Konarkowski’s 2026 Cesium Developer Conference breakout session to learn about the role Cesium plays in Event Horizon.

Aerospace visualization with telemetry streaming, propagation and mission events - Klaus Konarkowski

As Blacknight continues its work on Event Horizon, the team is planning support for unique coordinate systems, relative orbit frames, and mobile performance.  

Bring real-world understanding to complicated narratives with CesiumJS and a Cesium ion account. 

Blacknight Space’s Event Horizon Showcases Mission Plans and Milestones with CesiumJS

Today, we are excited to announce the first public release of our Vector Tiles Technology Preview across the Cesium and 3D Tiles ecosystem. This preview is a major step toward our implementation of the 3D Tiles 2.0 standard.  

This update introduces an end-to-end pipeline for tiling massive vector datasets into 3D Tiles using Cesium ion and high-fidelity rendering, including hierarchical level of detail, clamping to terrain, and dynamic styling in CesiumJS and Cesium for Unreal.  

In June, we asked for your feedback on our vision for bringing 3D-native vector data to the 3D Tiles ecosystem. Thank you all for your inputs. From our conversations, we’ve identified and built around three key themes:  

The community needs a scalable way to stream massive, high-precision vector points, lines, and polygons that live in true 3D space while supporting existing 2D and 2.5D workflows such as placing vector data over 3D tilesets. 

To match existing conventions around symbology, styles, and colors, a flexible styling system is required to achieve the desired look with these vector data. 

Improved support for existing community adopted vector data formats is required. We need to be able to support importing those common formats and improve the rendering performance of formats we already support. 

A large vector tileset of global river flows dataset from HydroRIVER, styled by an average long-term discharge estimate for river reach. Zoomed in at the Mississippi River. 

A 3D-native vector tileset displayed along with a photogrammetry mesh of the Robert Street bridge in St. Paul, Minnesota. Shows cracks detected on the structure. Data courtesy of Collins Engineers, Inc. 

A unified workflow for massive 3D vector data 

With this release, you can add performant, global-scale vector rendering to your Cesium applications. You’ll be able to take advantage of the ease-of-use that you’ve come to expect from Cesium: drag-and-drop file upload of common vector data types into ion and add them to your scenes just like any other 3D Tiles asset. 

Cesium's introduction of vectors and CAD-style extensions into the 3D Tiles spec has unlocked the potential for us to provide our customers with highly detailed and faithful representations of the vector drawings they prefer to work with. By leveraging these features of 3D Tiles instead of developing our own proprietary spec, we are able to integrate into the wider open geospatial ecosystem, both contributing back and leveraging the innovations our colleagues in the field develop. 

Tiling vectors provides the best possible experience for our customers, by providing the ability to stream huge datasets, provide different levels of detail to suit the device viewing it, and to do so in a format that preserves the intricacies of the geometry, its styling and its metadata. The end result is a beautiful and performant viewing experience. 3D Tiles 2.0 is the first open specification that supports everything our application demands with extreme technical rigour - that is why we've picked it as our path towards precise, performant and beautifully-rendered vector graphics that rival native desktop solutions. 

Cesium ion has greatly accelerated our testing and prototyping pipeline, letting us focus on the outputs instead of the infrastructure, and rapidly iterate with the Cesium team on building tiling pipelines that suit our specialised needs. 

Harry Morris, Principal Engineer at Propeller Aero 

Progress towards 3D Tiles 2.0: Vector tiles are newly available with 3D Tiles 1.1 and extensions to glTF, and will be part of 3D Tiles 2.0 when ratified later this year. To support vector payloads that stream and render efficiently, we’ve contributed  KHR_mesh_primitive_restart and EXT_mesh_polygon, which can reduce glTF file size by up to 5x in common cases. By using glTF as the underlying tile payload, we ensure that vector data benefits from robust tooling available in the glTF ecosystem.

Vector tilesets in 3D Tiles 2.0 are glTF files, relying on a collection of old and new extensions to 3D Tiles 2.0 and glTF 2.1.

Tile and host vectors in Cesium ion: You can now upload a variety of vector files, including GeoJSON, GeoPackage, Geodatabase and Shapefiles, to Cesium ion to be processed into optimized 3D Tiles. This process preserves input vector properties, enabling semantic property-based LOD generation during tiling, and property-based operations and styling at runtime.

Tiling and hosting pipeline illustration. Various vector data formats are consumed with the geometry and property processed into 3D Tiles.

High-fidelity, high-precision visualization in CesiumJS: Experience high-performance rendering of massive vector datasets in the browser. Visualize 3D-native vectors directly in your geospatial context. Use the semantic metadata of the input vector data with Cesium’s styling capabilities to create dynamic, engaging visualizations.

Global river flows dataset from HydroRIVER. Showing North American view with fine LODs.

Initial support for Mapbox Vector Tiles (MVT) in CesiumJS: Load and drape existing 2D Mapbox vector tiles with 3D geospatial context, including streaming from existing third-party data sources. This was a popular request from the community, thanks again for your input!

The full OpenStreetMap road network for Philadelphia, styled by road class.

Cesium for Unreal (Engine Integration): Bring millimeter-precision vector data into Unreal Engine for immersive simulations and digital twins. This enables use cases like displaying complex road networks or AI-extracted infrastructure features directly within a game engine environment.

ODIS street segments for Berlin, styled by road class.

One of the most critical capabilities in this release is support for clamping vectors to terrain and 3D tiles. We know that for our users, precision is paramount. That’s why vector lines and polygons can now be clamped, or draped, to both global terrain and 3D Tiles types, such as high-resolution reality meshes and photogrammetry. Clamping 2D vectors directly to 3D Tiles allows for precisely aligning design strings to a scanned bridge or accurately overlaying AI-extracted features on a reality mesh. 

Polylines and polygons draped to Cesium World Terrain near Mount Hood, Oregon. 

Powerful, metadata-driven styling foundation 

A core benefit of our approach is the preservation of semantic metadata, which powers Cesium’s 3D Tiles Styling language. Using glTF extensions like EXT_mesh_features and EXT_structural_metadata enables you to style your data based on real-world attributes. 

Declarative styling in CesiumJS: Use JSON-based expressions to define rules for how features appear. For example, you can color building footprints by usage type or adjust line thickness based on traffic volume. 

Dynamic visuals: The preview supports sophisticated visuals at runtime, enabling styling that changes interactively, even for large datasets, for use cases like filters and animation. 

Per-feature control: Query and style individual elements enabling interactive visualizations where features respond to user input. 

Today's release contains our initial support for visual properties like line widths and colors, and we plan to add more styling capabilities, draping and styling support for points, and more over the coming months.

As we continue to build towards 3D Tiles 2.0 with vector tiles, we’d love your input to influence our roadmap. In particular: 

What styling capabilities will you need for your use cases? 

Are you using vector databases like GeoParquet or PostGIS? 

How does your application approach layering of vector data? 

We want to hear how you use these new styling, streaming, and clamping capabilities to solve your most complex geospatial challenges.  

Share your feedback on the Cesium Community Forum, we'd love to hear about your experiences. 

Documentation: Vector Tiles Technology Preview

Tutorial: Drape and style vector data on terrain and 3D Tiles

Tutorial: Load Mapbox Vector Tiles in CesiumJS

Tutorial: Vector Tiles in Cesium for Unreal

Sandcastle: Global Rivers Vector Tiles with Property-based LOD

Vector Tiles: A Technology Preview for Cesium and 3D Tiles 

In this month’s releases, we’re moving vector tiles, clipping polygons, design models, and asset management forward:  

This release contains our vector tiles technology preview, representing significant progress towards our implementation of 3D Tiles 2.0. You can now complete end-to-end vector workflows by uploading common vector data file formats into ion for tiling and then streaming those tiles to CesiumJS and Cesium for Unreal. Use the CesiumJS styling language to dynamically style those vectors in your applications. See our blog post for all the details. 

We’ve also improved CesiumJS clipping polygons based on similar techniques used in our vector tiles implementation. You can now create detailed clipping regions over large geographic areas. 

In the coming days, Cesium ion will introduce new capabilities for working with design models (BIM/CAD with Database), including an API to list the changes between two versions of a model. Keep an eye out for our blog post! The Cesium ion release will also include a new asset management model that separates source files from tiled assets, giving users greater control over storage usage today while laying the foundation for future capabilities, such as retiling data without reuploading source files. 

CesiumJS 1.145 is now available. Highlights of the release include: 

As part of the vector tiles technology preview, added support for draping clamped vector tile polygons and polylines onto 3D Tiles, with a new heightReference option and matching read-only property on BufferPrimitiveCollection. You can now drape your vectors onto terrain and 3D Tiles. #13653

ClippingPolygons now use an algorithm, based on the techniques used for vector tiles, that vastly improves quality across distance scales. You can now clip regions of the world across multiple miles with accurate vector cutouts. Warm-up cost is also modestly decreased. #13654 

ClippingPolygons now have support for specifying holes (aka islands) within each polygon for complex clipping tasks. This works in inverse clipping workflows as well. #13660 

Added experimental IonSnapService for server-side snap-to-geometry against Cesium ion assets backed by a BIM/CAD Database model, and the SnapService interface it implements. This enables building features such as measurement of design geometry with CAD-level precision and accuracy. #13682 

A GeoJson footprint of Sweden used as a clipping polygon on the globe, now with support for holes (excluded regions) inside the clipping polygon. 

Cesium for Unreal v2.29.1 is now available. 

This release updates cesium-native from v0.63.0 to v0.64.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Cesium for Unity v1.25.1 is now available. Highlights of this release include: 

Fixed a NullReferenceException that could be thrown if a CesiumCreditSystem was destroyed before it was ever enabled. 

Fixed a bug where CesiumCreditSystem would not unsubscribe from delegates on disable, causing duplicate subscriptions when re-enabled. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.63.0 to v0.64.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

**Cesium ion SaaS** 

- Exciting new features for working with design models are coming to Cesium ion this week! Watch for our blog post.  
- In the next few days we will release improvements to how assets are managed in Cesium ion. The source files for tiled data will be managed separately from the tiled assets, which will immediately give users more control over their Cesium ion storage quota. It will unlock more enhancements in future releases, such as the ability to retile without reuploading source files.  
    - Note: This change will result in a recalculation of account storage totals. As a result, we will also increase the storage quotas for each Cesium ion tier. Look for more details through email and in your Cesium ion account.  
- Updated the vector tiler to accept new formats. Also changed the enum for the SourceType that runs the vector pipeline from `GEOJSON` to `VECTOR_DATA`. [Read more in the vector tiles technology preview blog](https://cesium.com/blog/2026/09/02/vector-tiles-technology-preview-cesium-and-3d-tiles/). 

**Cesium ion Self-Hosted**

Cesium ion Self-Hosted 1.11.0 is now available. 

- Added the ability to run self-hosted reconstruction jobs using iTwin Capture. To learn more, contact Cesium sales.  
- Added support for labels. 
- Design tiler: added IfcSpace relations to element properties in IFC metadata. 
- Fixed a bug with `features.deleteSources` where the sources volume wasn’t being cleaned correctly. 
- Point cloud tiler: fixed an issue where PNTS attributes could have incorrect alignment if compression was turned off. 
- Design tiler: tweaked IFC swept circular geometry for more consistent rotational offsets. 
- Reality tiler: fixed a race condition that could lead to subtree files with content/availability bits incorrectly set to zero. 

**Vector tiler**

- New vector tiler available as a technology preview. 

**Design tiler**

- Fixed an issue where texture scales can be wrong when using Meshopt compression. 
- Changed `noData` value for float-type metadata to `-9999.0`, from `0`. This makes collisions with real metadata values less likely. 

CalTa’s TRANCITY ARCADE uses Cesium ion, 3D Tiles, and Cesium for Unreal to create interactive applications for education, training, safety awareness, facility guidance, and communication. 

The Acceleration Agency is building a web-based CesiumJS digital twin for the Port of Corpus Christi that will serve ArcGIS data to secure external partners during emergencies. 

Hopeworks uses Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles to place Blender models in geospatial context for Camden city planning.

3D Tiles has become the foundational OGC community standard for the 3D geospatial ecosystem. Massive, heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets such as 3D photogrammetry and reality models, 3D buildings, point clouds, and Gaussian splats can be encoded as 3D Tiles, optimized for streaming, and rendered with high precision and performance. To power these experiences, Cesium has built robust tiling pipelines to process various types of source data into highly optimized tilesets. Because 3D Tiles is built for interoperability, these tilesets can be seamlessly streamed and visualized across a wide-open ecosystem of runtime engines, including CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Three.js, BabylonJS, QGIS, and Godot. 

To accelerate and streamline how we optimize 3D geospatial data, we are introducing a new concept: composable tiling pipelines. Built on a unified, modular architecture of reusable and configurable components, this new approach offers significantly better flexibility for tiling your data. As always, the evolution of our platform is guided directly by your input. To kick off this community discussion, we’re sharing our vision for composable tiling based on feedback we've gathered so far. We’d love to learn about your current workflows, the challenges you face delivering complex 3D content, and which capabilities you want us to prioritize. 

Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

The current generation of tilers are specialized, separate pipelines for each type of data. Terrain, imagery, 3D photogrammetry, point clouds—each of these has a dedicated tiler. As the number of tilers continues to grow, we’ve shifted our thinking from “How can we create a tiler for a new type of data?” to “How can we bring together the best of our algorithms to create the most efficient 3D Tilesets?” Making that leap requires a new architecture. 

It’s more than just a technical upgrade, though: this new architecture sets the stage for faster, more flexible tiling pipelines that better serve the community. We’ve been watching a few key trends unfold, and it’s clearly time to recalibrate and evolve our approach. 

First, datasets are getting larger, with higher resolution and greater detail, and are captured more frequently. We’re moving beyond terabytes in some cases. As such, it's critical that our tiling pipelines scale with such massive datasets. 

Second, datasets are increasingly heterogeneous, often with mixed resolutions. We frequently see design models overlaid on photogrammetry or terrain, all in a single model file. In these cases, the usual approach is to separate the data, tile it into two tilesets and then combine those into a single 3D tileset. This has been an acceptable approach so far, but there is ample room for optimization. 

Finally, many users have asked for more fine-grained configurability and to perform additional customization relevant to their use cases—for example, it’s becoming increasingly important to combine tiling pipelines with data analysis and enrichment workflows, like point cloud classification in Cesium ion. 

We believe a well-executed composable architecture addresses all the above: it paves the way for robust multi-node processing to handle massive datasets; it can naturally handle heterogeneous data; and it is, by design, both flexible and extensible. 

Composability is a well-established concept in software engineering. The idea is to construct a system, usually a program or series of programs, out of small building blocks, or components, where each component is responsible for a relatively small task. The components can then be chained together, or composed, to accomplish more complex tasks. 

In the context of tiling, composability boils down to how we structure data transformations. A point cloud tiling pipeline, for example, might consist of the following steps: load the input data, remove duplicate points and outliers, divide the points into an octree, iteratively merge and simplify octree nodes to fill out a 3D Tiles tree, and, finally, optimize each tile in the tree by applying geometry and attribute compression. Each of these steps could be implemented by a single component in the pipeline, and we can visualize this with a simple node graph: 

A node graph for a possible point cloud tiling pipeline.

The example of a point cloud tiling pipeline is a relatively simple one. To illustrate the power of composable architecture, let’s consider a more complex scenario. Imagine a dataset that consists of CAD data, in the form of implicit surfaces and triangle meshes for organic surfaces. With our current tilers, the data needs to be split into two different datasets as input, tiled individually, and either combined into one tileset with a common root tile or streamed as two different tilesets to the application. With composable tiling pipelines, the process could be configured like the diagram below, producing a single spatially coherent and optimized tileset.

Composable tiling pipeline for dataset with CAD data (implicit surfaces) and triangle mesh data.

This example highlights two distinct advantages of composable architecture. First, the pipeline can seamlessly handle two very different types of data. By setting up a pipeline configured for the input data, there is no need to pre- or post-process the data. 

Second, notice how the process diverges into two paths but then converges back into one. After the implicit surfaces are tessellated, they can be treated just like triangle meshes—in fact, they are triangle meshes at this point. With two separate tilers, we would be doing redundant work to process triangle mesh data. With composable tiling pipelines, we are able to reuse nearly half of the components in the pipeline and streamline the entire process. As we consider larger and more complex pipelines, the ability to reuse as many components as possible becomes increasingly attractive. 

The benefits of a comprehensive approach also extend to runtime performance. Merging two separately optimized tilesets may not produce an optimal result, because the tiling algorithm isn't "aware" of all geometry in each spatial region. This can cause the merged tileset to have excessive geometry in some areas, even if the original tilesets were well balanced. A comprehensive tiling algorithm avoids this issue as it’s "aware" of all the data from the start. 

Configuring composable tiling pipelines 

We’ve described an architecture and explored early examples, but how will users configure tiling pipelines? Our baseline plan is to have a library of off-the-shelf components from which users can choose. We envision a new, web-based GUI, backed by a published JSON schema, with a node graph editor for constructing composable pipelines with these components. Users will be able to drag and drop, arrange, and connect components in a simple graphical interface. Users familiar with Unreal Engine’s node editor or with the Rete.js project should feel right at home. 

A mockup showing the potential look of a graph editor for composable tiling.

The composable tiling pipelines will include preconfigured pipelines for the most common types of tiling workflows. This way, the most common use cases won’t require additional configuration. 

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