Now available: the Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In.

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

Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.14.0

CesiumJS 1.124

Cesium for Unreal

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

In November, we dove into the benefits of Cesium ion’s automated CI/CD pipeline and prepared for this year’s I/ITSEC in Orlando.

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 1.124 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added an integration with the iTwin Platform to load iModels as 3D Tiles. Use ITwinPlatform.defaultAccessToken to set the access token. Use ITwinData.createTilesetFromIModelId(iModelId) to load the iModel as a Cesium3DTileset. #12289

PostProcessStageCollection.ambientOcclusion has been updated with a new algorithm to provide better results at all scales, with tunable performance cost. #12316

Added Entity.trackingReferenceFrame property to allow tracking entities in various reference frames. #12194, #12314

Added GoogleGeocoderService for standalone usage of Google geocoder. #12299

Fixed various performance issues related to loading many models (#12320), incorrect shared texture memory tracking (#12331), and point cloud filtering. (#12317)

An iModel of a Philadelphia Metrostation on top of an iTwin Reality Mesh shown in CesiumJS.

Cesium for Unreal v2.11.0 is now available. This is the last release of Cesium for Unreal that will support Unreal Engine v5.2. Future versions will require Unreal Engine v5.3+.

Added three new levels to the Cesium for Unreal Samples project.

Added a "From Ellipsoid" option to Cesium3DTileset to generate a tileset by tessellating the surface of the ellipsoid, producing a simple globe tileset without terrain features.

Fixed an overlay artifact bug that could occur when a Cesium3DTileset had three or more raster overlays.

Fixed a crash that could occur when using SampleHeightMostDetailed on a Cesium3DTileset with a raster overlay.

CesiumPolygonRasterOverlay now references CesiumCartographicPolygon instances using TSoftObjectPtr, which allows, for example, a raster overlay in the persistent level to use a polygon in a sub-level.

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

Snowdon Sample Model from Autodesk Revit, streamed with 3D Tiles and visualized using Cesium for Unreal. Featured in Level 14_CesiumArchitecturalDesign in Cesium for Unreal Samples.

Metadata queried from a door component in Snowdon Sample Model. Featured in Level 14_CesiumArchitecturalDesign in Cesium for Unreal Samples.

Metadata styling to highlight HVAC components in Snowdon Sample Model. Featured in Level 15_CesiumArchitecturalMetadataStyling in Cesium for Unreal Samples.

The same tileset with isolated floor views. Featured in Level 16_CesiumArchitecturalIsolateCategory in Cesium for Unreal Samples.

Cesium for Unity v1.14.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Fixed a bug in CesiumWebMapTileServiceRasterOverlay that caused automatic Tile Matrix Set Labels to be created incorrectly, leading to incorrect tile request URLs.

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

Coming soon: full release of the Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In.

Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when subdividing model data to produce leaf tiles.

Fixed incorrect unlit and double-sided materials settings for generated tilesets with a single tile.

Fixed an issue where percent-encoded URIs were incorrectly decoded.

Fixed a rare issue where some tiles would have abnormally large textures.

Added experimental support for Reality Capture and iTwin Capture sidecar files.

Added support for embedding environment variables in paths within the config file (e.g., ${ENV_VAR}/path/to/model.obj).

Improved texture generation for some tiles.

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

CalTa Inc. has developed TRANCITY, a platform for managing large-scale infrastructure projects such as railways, roads, rivers, ports, and power plants in a three-dimensional space, with Cesium’s platform playing a crucial role in its operation.

COMSPOC has released Spacebook to make space data free to access and visualize with the help of CesiumJS.

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

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

Updated default 3D Tiles and Model lighting when using PBR in order to create a more realistic appearance. #12129

Added ScreenSpaceCameraController.maximumTiltAngle to limit how much the camera can tilt. #12169 by new contributor albek446

Updated Japan Buildings sandcastle to use Japan Regional Terrain. #12259

Moved Viewer functionality to CesiumWidget to increase usability. Makes the CesiumWidget closer to a drop in replacement for the Viewer when not utilizing the extra Viewer widgets. #11967.

Fixed flickering issue caused by bounding sphere retrieval being blocked by the bounding sphere of another entity. #12230

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

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

Added a shared assets system that ensures external images referenced by different glTFs will only be loaded once per image. Previously, these images would be loaded again for each glTF that referenced them. This significantly reduces memory usage for tilesets that reuse the same textures.

Added CircumscribedGroundHeight property to CesiumSunSky. It defaults to 0, which is consistent with the previous behavior. It can be set to a larger value (like 40) to avoid dark splotchy artifacts when zoomed out far from the globe in certain tilesets where geometry extends very far beyond the ellipsoid in the low-detail representation, such as Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

Fixed a bug that caused incorrect lighting for tilesets using KHR_materials_unlit.

Reduced the memory used by tiles with KHR_materials_unlit.

CesiumGlobeAnchor properties are no longer shown on the main CesiumSunSky Details panel, because it is almost never necessary to set these. They can still be set on the component's own Details panel if needed.

Fixed error messages in the Unreal log about uninitialized fields in FCesiumSampleHeightResult.

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

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

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

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

Fixed bug where smooth normals setting would crash.

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

Download the Cesium for Omniverse extension

Download the Cesium for Omniverse samples

Japan Regional Terrain is now available in the Cesium ion Asset Depot. Details are in this blog post.

Japan 3D Buildings includes updated building heights and additional bridge features.

Available soon: adding annotations to Cesium Stories. Look for an announcement on the community forum and let us know what you think!

An improved Asset Server is now available. 

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

File watchers that update the content and cache as source files change

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

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

In September, we introduced the AECO Tech Preview Program, highlighted our summer Refactor, shared that we’ve joined Bentley Systems, featured enhancements to the Three.js 3D Tiles renderer, and announced grant support for the Cesium plugin for Godot.

Visualization of structural metadata and mesh features from 3D Tiles 1.1 is now possible in Three.js with the San Francisco Ferry Building.

CesiumJS 1.122 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added CallbackPositionProperty to allow lazy entity position evaluation. #12170 by new contributor jfayot

Added enableVerticalExaggeration option to models. Set this value to false to prevent model exaggeration when Scene.verticalExaggeration is set to a value other than 1.0. #12141 by new contributor timeichfeld-msa

Fix Texture errors when using a HTMLVideoElement. #12219

Fixed noise in ambient occlusion post process. #12201

The new CallbackPositionProperty allows Entities to lazily evaluate a position. Here, it’s used to track a drone flying through the Grand Canyon, as visualized using Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

Cesium for Unreal v2.9.0 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added SampleHeightMostDetailed function to Cesium3DTileset, which asynchronously queries the height of a tileset at a list of positions. It is callable from both C++ and Blueprints.

Drastically reduced tile mesh memory usage in UE 5.3 and 5.4 by working around a bug that causes those engine versions to add more texture coordinate sets than necessary.

Fixed a bug where the scale, noData, and default values of a property in EXT_strutural_metadata were not correctly passed to the tileset's material.

Trees and rocks floating above Cesium World Terrain, with lines drawn to where they would fall on the hills below them.

The same trees and rocks placed on the terrain using SampleTerrainMostDetailed. Assets provided by Quixel Megascans.

Cesium for Unity v1.13.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added a new CesiumCameraManager component. It allows configuration of the cameras to use for Cesium3DTileset culling and level-of-detail.

Added SampleHeightMostDetailed method to Cesium3DTileset. It asynchronously queries the height of a tileset at a list of positions.

Fixed a bug that could cause a NullReferenceException when a Cesium3DTileset was not nested into a game object with a CesiumGeoreference.

Use the new Cesium Camera Manager component to control which cameras are used for 3D Tiles culling and level-of-detail.

Cesium for Omniverse v0.23.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Fixed bug where tilesets and raster overlays were not being passed the correct custom ellipsoid.

Fixed rendering base color textures that contain an alpha channel.

The Cesium ion Reality Tiler was updated with performance improvements.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted 1.4 will be released this week. Highlights will include:

CRS option availability for reality tiler and the point cloud tiler command line interface.

Linking to individual Cesium Stories slides.

Duplicating Cesium Stories and Cesium Stories slides.

Pennoni is moving engineering from graph paper to streaming 3D models with Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles. Pennoni’s engineers, with collaborating architects, create 3D models for proposed structures using CAD data, point clouds, or photogrammetry. Pennoni loads these directly into Unreal Engine, ensuring accurate placement and lighting with Cesium for Unreal, and streams Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via Cesium ion for real-world urban context, so the future view is clear.

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

As AEC projects increasingly require public input and organizations prefer plans with realism for their own understanding, Pennoni is moving engineering from graph paper to streaming 3D models with Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

Multidisciplinary engineering firm Pennoni—also our neighbor, headquartered in Philadelphia—serves clients across the US and has recently created immersive visualizations for clients in Florida; Virginia; Washington, DC; Maryland; Delaware; Pennsylvania; New Jersey; and Massachusetts. Whether it’s for a revamped playground, a shared-use path, a new neighborhood, bridge replacement, or a streetscape, Pennoni is bringing 3D interactions to architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) planning and approvals. For example, Pennoni recently completed a digital twin of the new “dolphin” cylinder protection system for the Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA)’s Delaware Memorial Bridge, a critical twin suspension bridge crossing the Delaware River.

The firm has been heavily involved with design visualization and the creation of digital twins for engineering projects since 2015. That’s when Pennoni in-house viz duo Joe Spadea, PE, associate vice president, Pennoni FX Studios (PFX) visualization practice leader, and Steven Lewis, senior engineering technician, led the formation and creation of the PFX team. Since that time, there have been new faces and technologies to grow the firm’s capabilities. The firm began using Cesium in 2023, when Mike Sulesky, design visualization specialist at Pennoni, met the Cesium team at a Drexel University event. The PFX Studios team found that integrating Cesium with tools they were already using was easier and saved time, freeing up days of work to improve other facets of a project. With Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles, they no longer needed to hand-model a project’s surroundings and could instead create suitable scenes and infrastructure massing in house.

“It’s a constant balance of quality, budget, and time. Cesium allows us some flexibility of budget and time,” said Tim Timmons, senior design visualization specialist at Pennoni.

Digital twin of Jake's Place, an inclusive playground in Vineland, New Jersey. Courtesy Pennoni.

Pennoni creates interior and exterior 3D renderings and animations for its clients’ individual projects. For interiors, the firm’s Unreal Engine artists combine manual modeling with marketplace assets. For exteriors, Pennoni’s engineers, with collaborating architects, create 3D models for proposed structures using CAD data, point clouds, or photogrammetry. Pennoni loads these directly into Unreal Engine, ensuring accurate placement and lighting with Cesium for Unreal, and streams Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via Cesium ion for real-world urban context, so the future view is clear. 

Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles were designed to scale from city blocks to citywide, immersing users in the surroundings they expect to see. Photorealistic 3D Tiles use the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) community standard 3D Tiles format. This format, created by Cesium, efficiently streams massive amounts of data required to display details for both collaborative planning and public awareness.

Pennoni reports that including Cesium in its digital innovation has helped the firm impress clients, win work, and market Pennoni itself, as the engineers work hand in hand with the company’s corporate communications team.

“Rather than waiting years for a project to be completed, and then capture and post photos, we can show visualizations immediately, in present day,” explained Spadea.

Proposed condominiums set against the Florida Gulf Coast. Courtesy Pennoni.

Proposed condominiums set against the Florida Gulf Coast, rendered with Cesium for Unreal. Courtesy Pennoni.

Pennoni Seaforest Condos

Earlier this month, Cesium announced we joined Bentley Systems, a leading infrastructure engineering software company, via acquisition. Together with Bentley, Cesium provides a complete platform for building digital twin experiences for the natural and built environment, with a strong commitment to open source, open standards, and open APIs.

"The recent acquisition is a great fit and a win for everyone. Pennoni has utilized Bentley tools and has a long-standing partnership with Bentley, so this is a welcome next step for us. It's remarkable as well that all three firms are headquartered in the Delaware Valley. Move over, Silicon Valley,” said Spadea.

To immerse your AEC clients in accurate, realistic 3D and better allocate your resources, sign up for a Cesium ion account.

Pennoni Transforms Engineering Models with Cesium

In August, we explained more about the Cesium Certified Developer process, highlighted Cesium ion Self-Hosted updates, shed light on Cesium ion architecture (parts 1 and 2), launched Cesium Moon Terrain, did a deep dive into our GitHub Actions workflow, explored 3D models of early civilizations with UNICiv, and shared our SIGGRAPH trip report.

Add Cesium Moon Terrain to your Asset Library from the Cesium ion Asset Depot.

CesiumJS 1.121 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Enable MSAA by default with 4 samples. This smooths jagged edges for increased visual realism. #12158

Switched the default (non-HDR) tonemapping for models, atmosphere, and globe from ACES to PBR Neutral Tonemap from Khronos. This widens the gamut of possible colors and provides more consistent color appearances across renderers. #12160

Expose the tonemapper and exposure properties of PostProcessStageCollection to allow changing the tonemap used when HDR is turned on. This defaults to the PBR Neutral Tonemap from Khronos. #12160

Added WaterMask globe material, which visualizes areas of water or land based on the terrain's water mask. #12149

Fixed several bugs with PBR lighting for more realistic rendering. #12100, #12116, and #12118

Googleplex, Mountain View, California, USA, as Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles without HDR or MSAA.

Googleplex, Mountain View, California, USA, as Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles with HDR and MSAA on.

Cesium for Unreal v2.8.0 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added universal (Intel and Apple Silicon) binaries for Unreal Engine 5.2. Unreal Engine 5.3 and 5.4 already had universal binaries.

Raster overlays now have bAllowAnyoneToDestroyMe set to true by default. This allows them to be dynamically removed and destroyed at runtime via the Blueprint Destroy Component function called from anywhere, including Level Blueprints. Previously, attempting to delete a raster overlay from outside the Actor would result in an error.

Fixed a bug introduced in the previous release that caused instanced tilesets to render incorrectly.

Debug sections are no longer compressed on Linux and Android, improving compatibility.

Fixed a bug where calling Refresh on a CesiumRasterOverlay would cause the overlay to appear on the Cesium3DTileset, even if inactive.

Cesium for Unity v1.12.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Editor and Player builds both now require macOS 10.15+. Previously, 10.13 was supported for Players, and 12.7+ was required for the Editor.

Added originPlacement property to CesiumGeoreference to toggle between "Cartographic Origin" and "True Origin" reference modes. Whereas "Cartographic Origin" is the default for georeferenced tilesets, "True Origin" may be used for non-georeferenced tilesets centered at the origin.

Fixed a bug that prevented using the Token panel with a new Cesium ion Server that had never had its token set before.

Fixed a bug that could cause a crash in CesiumIonSession when the object was garbage collected or the AppDomain was unloaded while network requests were in progress.

Fixed a bug that could cause CesiumFlyToController to unexpectedly interrupt a flight.

Fixed a bug that prevented clipping with CesiumCartographicPolygon from working with HDRP.

Cesium for Omniverse v0.22.0 is available. 

The extension now supports using non-WGS84 ellipsoids. A CesiumEllipsoidPrim should be specified on the ellipsoidBinding field of a CesiumReferencePrim.

Yesterday we announced a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program. These tools transform IFC and Revit files into 3D Tiles. Read more here.

Cesium Moon Terrain, the first readily accessible single, comprehensive 3D Tileset of the Moon, is now available. More details are on our blog.

You can link directly to a specific slide in Cesium Stories. The viewer and editor URLs include hash references to each slide’s ID, so they remember exactly which slide you’re on. See the forum post for more info.

Create copies of your existing Cesium Stories or individual slides, to use your current content instead of starting from scratch. This forum post has details.

Autodesk Snowdon Towers sample data exported directly from Revit as 3D Tiles including structural and MEP content, full interior detail, and per-feature metadata streamed into Unreal with Cesium. Data courtesy of Autodesk.  

The Lockheed Martin AI Center’s (LAIC) Joint Activity Manager (JAM) provides operational context for active wildland fires, using AI, real-time data, and CesiumJS to stream this 3D visualization to incident commanders. While still in development, this capability is intended for state agencies to visualize and analyze active wildland fires; track flights of aerial assets that have been tasked with detection, monitoring, and suppression; and incorporate weather information, such as temperature, humidity, and wind.

Wind and weather information for an active fire area in CesiumJS. Courtesy Lockheed Martin.

Globe view of UNICiv, showing sites from 1800 BCE - 1500 CE. The Legananny Dolmen in Ireland is selected.

Interactive digital maps display detailed contemporary geographic information, increasingly in 3D, for navigation, exploration, and virtual travel. What the world looked like near the beginnings of human civilization, however, is more difficult to discover, search, and visualize. Cesium Research’s most recent publication, UNICiv: A Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization, explores Cesium’s ability to support 3D models of ancient and historic sites within their geographical and temporal context.

Developed over the summer by Cesium's Yuhan Liu and led by Dr. Norman Badler, Head of Research, UNICiv is an extensible, universal, spatio-temporal interface that leverages Cesium for Unreal and 3D Tiles to visualize structures of the distant past. As a demonstration and education tool, UNICiv’s applications range from cultural heritage to urban planning. The UNICiv publication has been accepted as a full research paper to the Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (GCH 2024). 

GCH is the premier technical meeting for novel digital technologies in the cultural heritage domain, fostering discussions in AI, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Human-Computer Interaction.

UNICiv offers over 30 explorable 3D models of historic and archaeological sites around the world, displayed collectively on a single interactive globe. These models are produced by archaeologists, independent artists, or research projects from institutions and nonprofits. Sites range in time from 8000 BCE to 1500 CE. Examples include Neolithic monuments like Stonehenge, ruins of Bronze Age villages, and Greco-Roman temples. These models have been curated and imported into Cesium for Unreal through Cesium’s integration with Sketchfab. The models are imported into Unreal using Cesium’s plugin and placed on top of Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial imagery.

Users can explore the past in 3D using UNICiv’s interface. Start by navigating a Cesium globe where ancient structures are highlighted as pins. The timeline interface indexes sites that appear on the globe. When users select a site, they are taken on a flight path to its geolocated model, where they can use traditional game controls to explore. Users can build their personalized list of sites to save, compare, and present their findings. Additionally, some locations offer reconstructed visualizations that can be overlaid on current-day ruins, providing a unique perspective on how these ancient sites once appeared.

Perspective view of the reconstructed Old Temple at Pachacamac in Peru. Site list controls set to Common Era (0-1500 CE). Cesium World Terrain shows the present-day view of the Lima Province. Model courtesy of Aline Normoyle, Clark Erickson, and Norman Badler, used with permission.

La Motilla del Azuer, 3D Model from Global Digital Heritage on SketchFab. Tour site list shows manually added fortification sites.

Amphitheatre of Butrint, 3D Model by Ørjan Sandland, imported from Sketchfab (CC Attribution). Simultaneous Site List shows all sites with reconstructions (not pictured) available to view. The Albanian mountains are part of Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial Imagery.

Temple of Apollo - Naxos Greece, 3D Model by Vasilis Haroupas on SketchFab. Simultaneous Site List shows all available BCE models. Terrain from Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial Imagery.

From incorporating more models to iterating on user experience, UNICiv is an ongoing research project with exciting directions for future work. A significant task for the future would be to incorporate and reverse-engineer significant geographical changes to experience the natural environment experienced by the earth’s earliest inhabitants. In the meantime, UNICiv provides a uniform, 3D geospatial, contextualized interface to the re-discovered past.

The UNICiv publication was one of eight full research papers accepted to the 22nd Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage 2024. The Cesium research team is excited to present at the conference, which takes place September 16–18, 2024, in Darmstadt, Germany.

UNICiv is a powerful tool for visualizing temporal change on a global scale, especially in cultural and historical preservation. Initial user evaluations have highlighted UNICiv’s significant potential for advancing archaeological demonstration, education, and exploration. Furthermore, the UNICiv interface becomes increasingly adept at capturing the development of human civilization as more 3D models are integrated into it. Thus, the Cesium research team plans to soon provide open access to the UNICiv resource and welcomes collaborations and user contributions. Contact Dr. Norm Badler to express your interest in UNICiv.  

For help getting started on your own project with Cesium for Unreal, visit the Learning Center. 

Cesium Research's Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization (UNICiv) Accepted for Publication and Presentation at Eurographics Conference

Today, we are thrilled to share that Cesium Moon Terrain, the first readily accessible single, comprehensive 3D Tileset of the Moon, is now available.

Cesium Moon Terrain is composed of precise terrain and imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) program and other sources, and is provided as 3D Tiles, the Open Geospatial Consortium Community Standard created by Cesium.

Cesium Moon Terrain is the first complete, precise, and readily-accessible 3D Tileset of the Moon. Sign up or Sign in to Cesium ion to explore. 

Learn more at Cesium.com

Cesium Moon Terrain

“We launched Cesium Moon Terrain as an accurate and interoperable 3D Tiles canvas to support the international interest in lunar exploration and building structures on the moon's surface,” said Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi. “Cesium Moon Terrain will enable engineers, system integrators, and digital content creators to build simulations, mission plans, and real-time operations experiences.”

Cesium Moon Terrain visualized in Cesium for Unreal

Cesium Moon Terrain was recently demonstrated at the Digital Twin for Lunar Development Workshop held at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The workshop brought the space enterprise community together to focus on advancing digital twins for NASA and the creation of an open, interoperable platform for a lunar digital ecosystem.

As early adopters, Ansys has utilized 3D Tiles in both their Systems Tool Kit (STK) and their RF Channel Modeler software to help users easily incorporate geospatially accurate datasets into their digital mission modeling and systems modeling engineering capabilities. Users are able to directly understand impacts of terrain in challenging locations such as lunar polar regions to accurately analyze communications system designs.

The Copernicus Crater, visualized in Cesium for Unreal

Another early adopter, Buendea, is collaborating with the NASA Advanced Operations Concept Lab on developing the XR Operations Support System (XOSS) to support real-time simulations on the Moon and Mars. Buendea is interested in Cesium Moon Terrain for its potential to enhance their ongoing projects.


“We’re excited about the potential of Cesium Moon Terrain to accelerate our work, including our efforts with NASA, to accurately plan and simulate explorations of the lunar surface,” said Julian Reyes, Founder of Buendea.

Cesium's Dave Braig presenting at the Digital Twins for Lunar Development Workshop at NASA's JPL

To access Cesium Moon Terrain, sign up for an account, or sign in to Cesium ion and add the tileset to your Asset Library from the Cesium ion Asset Depot. Once added, create a Cesium Story, incorporate the data into a web application with CesiumJS, or build advanced visualizations with Cesium for Unreal and Cesium for Unity.

Each of these visualization engines have been updated to enable non-WGS84 based ellipsoids to support an accurate representation of the lunar surface for analysis and measurements. Cesium Moon Terrain is also available for Cesium ion Self-Hosted. 

With Cesium Moon Terrain, users can leverage the same workflows and functionality already available in our open source runtime engines. Use Cesium Moon Terrain as a base layer to place models of habitats, vehicles, or rovers on the lunar surface.  If you have your own high resolution terrain data, clip and inset it within Cesium Moon Terrain so that your projects can live within a single continuous 3D surface rather than multiple separate project areas. 

NASA's ambitious Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon and eventually land them on Mars. With this, along with initiatives from SpaceX, Boeing, BlueOrigin and others, the demand for an open, interoperable, standards-based platform has never been greater. Cesium Moon Terrain meets this demand, providing a versatile foundation for countless applications.

We look forward to seeing your projects built with Cesium Moon Terrain! Sign up or sign in to get started.

In July, we opened applications for this quarter’s Cesium Ecosystem Grants, welcomed new teammates, and attended SIGGRAPH 2024.

CesiumJS 1.120 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added Transforms.computeIcrfToMoonFixedMatrix and Transforms.computeMoonFixedToIcrfMatrix to compute the transformations between the Moon's fixed frame and ICRF at a given time.

Added Transforms.computeIcrfToCentralBodyFixedMatrix to specify the default ICRF to fixed frame transformation to use internally, including for lighting calculations.

Added SplitDirection property for display PointPrimitive and Billboard relative to the Scene.splitPosition. #11982

Fixed environment map LOD selection in image-based lighting. #12070

Corrected calculation of diffuse component in image-based lighting. #12082

Updated specular BRDF for image-based lighting. #12083

Cesium Orients and Informs FOX Sports Football Fans

Cesium Releases in December 2024

Cesium Releases in November 2024

Cesium Releases in October 2024

Pennoni Transforms Engineering Models with Cesium

Cesium Releases in September 2024

Cesium Research's Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization (UNICiv) Accepted for Publication and Presentation at Eurographics Conference