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

Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.16.0

CesiumJS 1.129

Cesium ion

In April, we attended the 40th Space Symposium, hosted the Philly Postgres meetup and PhillyCHI UX panel, and released the full agenda for the Cesium Developer Conference. (Will we see you there?) Today we announced 3D Tiles for Godot, an open source plugin for Godot Engine built by Battle Road through the support of a Cesium Ecosystem Grant.

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

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 1.129 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

VoxelProvider.minimumBounds and .maximumBounds are now specified as physical values, rather than shape space values. #12592 

Added Material with Custom GLSL Sandbox Demo. #12549 

QuadtreePrimitive.updateHeights now converts position to Cartographic before invoking the callback, ensuring compatibility with change introduced by commit 53889cb and preventing unnecessary computation. #12555 

Fixed Polyline*MaterialProperty width artifacts (reverted #12434). #12506 

New Sandcastle showing off a Material with custom GLSL shaders by user Hiwen. 

Cesium for Unreal v2.16.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added the ability to query the Cesium ion geocoder from Blueprints to resolve place names and addresses to longitude and latitude. 

Added UCesiumMetadataPickingBlueprintLibrary::FindPropertyTableProperty to search for a FCesiumPropertyTableProperty by name on a given UPrimitiveComponent. 

The request cache will now use FPaths::ProjectUserDir instead of FPaths::EngineUserDir on non-Android and non-iOS platforms, fixing a permissions issue in Development builds. 

Fixed a linking issue introduced in v2.15.0 in GoogleTilesTestSetup. 

Point cloud tiles will now be upsampled for raster overlays, fixing an issue where applying a raster overlay to a point cloud tileset would cause holes to appear. 

Fixed a crash caused by invalid I3dm headers. 

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

Bing Maps Aerial imagery draped on an attenuated point cloud of Mount St. Helens in Cesium for Unreal. Point cloud generated from LAS data provided by https://liblas.org.

Cesium for Unity v1.16.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added CesiumUrlTemplateRasterOverlay component, allowing a raster overlay to be added using tiles requested based on a specified URL template. 

Fixed a bug where credits would not display in the Game tab after entering Play Mode. 

Improved stability during AppDomain reloads by catching exceptions thrown while freeing tiles. 

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 v0.25.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Cesium for Omniverse now targets Kit 106.5. 

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

Improved tileset load times by 50% and rendering performance by 15% by reducing the number of draw calls and decreasing the amount of geometry rendered for any given view. 

Improved support for parsing sidecar files with CRS data. 

Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In 1.2.0

Added support for an elements unique ID, level, and room metadata. 

Removed unused root node project level metadata. 

Fixed crash when exporting with textures enabled and metadata disabled. 

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

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. XR Operations Support System (XOSS) is a collaboration between Buendea and NAOCL, based out of Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, USA. 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. 

XOSS in VR mode. Courtesy Buendea and NAOCL.

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. 

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 

In March, we attended NVIDIA GTC 2025, presented at The Khronos Group’s “3D on the Web” during GDC 2025, and shared that the Cesium Design Tiler now preserves metadata from Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) when tiling into 3D Tiles. 

We’re also hard at work on finalizing the agenda for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference. Register to join us in Philadelphia in June.  

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.

CesiumJS 1.128 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added support for loading iTwin data using share keys as an alternative to user-based OAuth. When using a share key, set ITwinPlatform.defaultShareKey. #12530 

Added Frozen.EMPTY_OBJECT and Frozen.EMPTY_ARRAY for use as default parameter values that avoid unnecessary memory allocations. #12507 

Fixed entity tracking for delayed datasource bounding spheres. #12465 

Camera.getPickRay now correctly returns a ray with origin in world coordinates in orthographic mode. #12500 

Fixed camera zooming in 3D orthographic mode when pixelRatio is not 1. #12487 

Fixed shape bounds and transforms for cylinder-shaped voxels. #12522 

Fixed an issue where clamped entities' height updates could stall when using high-resolution terrain due to a growing queue of tiles in updateHeights in QuadtreePrimitive. #12476 

Cesium for Unreal v2.15.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Actors spawned through the Cesium editor panel, such as tilesets and cartographic polygons, will now be parented to the first selected georeference—if any—instead of always being parented to the first georeference in the scene. 

WorldHeight Runtime Virtual Texture output is now set to the Z component of the world position. 

Fixed a bug where a glTF material with alphaMode=BLEND would be rendered as opaque if its baseColorFactor was not set. 

Fixed a crash that could occur when rapidly refreshing a tileset. 

Fixed a crash when tilesets with point clouds were used in combination with Hardware Ray Tracing. 

Worked around an apparent Metal problem that prevented polygon clipping from working correctly on macOS. 

Fixed normals being incorrectly written to Runtime Virtual Texture output in tangent space instead of in world space. 

When a glTF contains external resources like textures and buffers, requests for these external resources now include query parameters that were used to request the original glTF. This is important when using access tokens and similar. 

Fixed bugs that could prevent valid metadata in Instanced 3D Model (i3dm) files from being parsed correctly. 

Fixed a small memory leak while reading glTF files. 

Cesium for Unity v1.15.5 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when reloading a scene or tileset repeatedly. 

The Cesium Design Tiler now preserves metadata from Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) when tiling into 3D Tiles. Metadata support includes IFC attributes, property sets, and properties. Read more. 

As part of our ongoing effort to improve performance, we are adding a "Region" field to Cesium ion. New users will be asked to set their region when setting up their account. For existing accounts, we will automatically set the region based on the locations from which data requests have been made in the past year. 

glTF node names are now preserved as metadata. 

IFC metadata attributes type detection added, no longer limited to just strings. 

fix for a regression with terrain water masks 

Blyncsy uses CesiumJS to show potential users how the company’s roadway data can be used in a visualization engine. 

The Weather Company improves military training and planning by pairing its detailed weather data with geospatial context in apps using Cesium for Unreal and CesiumJS.   

In February, we explored enhancements to our lighting system in CesiumJS, attended Geo Week and the LA Geospatial Summit, and opened registration for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference. Join us in June for technically oriented, community-driven tracks at our inaugural event. 

CesiumJS 1.127 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Updated Cesium3DTilesVoxelProvider to load glTF tiles using the new EXT_primitive_voxels extension to more closely align with the rest of the 3D Tiles ecosystem. Tilesets using the previous custom JSON format are no longer supported. #12432 

Updated the requestData method of the VoxelProvider interface to return a Promise to a VoxelContent. Custom providers should now use the VoxelContent.fromMetadataArray method to construct the returned data object. 

TextureAtlas has been refactored and internal APIs have been updated. 

Implemented texturesByteLength, visited, and numberOfTilesWithContentReady in VoxelPrimitive.statistics. 

Procedurally generated box voxels in CesiumJS.

Cesium for Unreal v2.14.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added support for drawing 3D Tilesets to Runtime Virtual Textures. 

Added support for "enum" properties in EXT_structural_metadata. 

"External Tilesets" are now unloaded when they are no longer used. This will significantly reduce the growth of memory usage over time when using Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and similar tilesets. 

Left: building roofs overlaid onto the Cesium OSM Buildings tileset using a Bing Maps Raster Overlay. Right: building roofs overlaid onto the Cesium OSM Buildings tileset using the new Runtime Virtual Texture support in Cesium for Unreal v2.14.0.

Cesium for Unity v1.15.4 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Comparison of memory usage from loaded tiles over time in Cesium for Unity v1.15.3 as compared to the new release, Cesium for Unity v1.15.4.

Assets now support multi-selection for deleting multiple assets at once. 

Cesium Stories annotations provide an option to show the name of the annotation in the 3D view. 

Added the ability to import source data from Azure and export tiled asset data to Azure. This must be enabled under the features section of values.yaml. 

Cesium Stories now include annotation features for points, polygons, and polylines. 

Assets page now supports multi-selection for deleting multiple assets at once. 

A new installer script is available to assist with single node installations using Microk8s. 

New tabs are now available on the Administration panel when running with SAML mode. These tabs allow administrators to view the users in the system, upload an asset to a user's account, delete assets from a user's account and re-run failed jobs through the UI. 

The Administration panel now also provides access to the logs of a failed job through the Cesium ion UI. 

Tiler updates will be available this month. Highlights will include: 

- Major announcements 
    - The design tiler will be included in the official 3D Tiling Pipeline release. 
    - The `tilers` executable will be split into separate executables: `reality-tiler` and `design-tiler`. 

- Design Tiler 
    - Add support for line and point primitives. 
    - Add support for IFC metadata. 
    - Meshopt compression applied to instance attributes. 
    - Input models that don't contain metadata pickable. 
    - Fix reading .obj models. 
    - Fix bug where Draco compression would sometimes generate extra vertices. 
    - Fix bounding volume alignment when geometry is far away from the origin. 
    - Fix texture coordinate scaling when input model uses `KHR_texture_transform`. 
    - Improve coordinate conversion for instanced geometry. 
    - Variety of metadata related improvements. 

- Clip Tileset 
    - Fix a bug that could cause `clip-tileset` to excessively upsample while clipping tilesets with raster overlays. This could cause the process to take an excessive amount of time, or to run out of memory and crash. 

- Reality Tiler 
    - Remove support for the `--sanitize-error-logs` CLI flag; paths in error logs are now always sanitized by default.
    - Add support for tiling models with vertex colors. 

In January, we shared our code review guide, which we recently created and made available in our new public community repo, celebrated Danny’s Patriot Award from Pennsylvania Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, and began calling for presentations for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference. We look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia in June!

CesiumJS 1.126 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Add ITwinData.loadGeospatialFeatures(iTwinId, collectionId) function to load data from the Geospatial Features API. #12449

Fixed error when resetting Cesium3DTileset.modelMatrix to its initial value. #12409

Fixed the parameter types of the ClippingPolygon.equals function and fixed cases where parameters to equals functions had erroneously not been marked as 'optional'. #12394

Fixed Draco decoding for vertex colors that are normalized UNSIGNED_BYTE or UNSIGNED_SHORT. #12417

Cesium for Unreal v2.13.1 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added CesiumUrlTemplateRasterOverlay, allowing a raster overlay to be added using tiles requested based on a specified URL template.

Added EstimateTimeZoneForLongitude method to ACesiumSunSky to set a reasonable TimeZone value at the given longitude.

The "Place Georeference Origin Here" button on ACesiumGeoreference will now adjust the time zone of the ACesiumSunSky instances that reference it, based on the new origin's longitude. This improves user experience when moving the origin to locations where it would be nighttime in the current time zone. A new EstimateTimeZoneForLongitude method on ACesiumSunSky can also be invoked manually from C++ or Blueprint.

Added RequestHeaders property to Cesium3DTileset, and the various Raster Overlay classes, allowing custom headers to be specified.

Worked around a limitation in Unreal's FMatrix -> FTransform conversion that prevented models with a small scale factor (e.g., where vertex positions are expressed in millimeters) from rendering because their scale was treated as 0.0.

Cesium for Unity v1.15.1 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Exceptions in either C# or C++ code are now handled much more reliably.

Snowdon Sample Model from Autodesk Revit, streamed with 3D Tiles and visualized using Cesium for Unity. Featured in Level 08_CesiumArchitecturalDesign in Cesium for Unity Samples.

Cesium OSM Buildings and Cesium OSM Buildings for Cesium World Bathymetry datasets have been updated based on the OSM Timestamp of Jan 13 00:00 GMT 2025.

In addition to the Bing geocoder, Cesium ion now provides the Google geocoder for use in your applications. See this sandcastle for implementation.

In addition to the Bing geocoder, the Google geocoder is now available to applications using Cesium ion Self-Hosted when your Self-Hosted installation is connected to your Cesium ion SaaS account. See this sandcastle for implementation.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted v1.6.0, including the ability to upload data from Azure for tiling, will be released no later than early March 2025.

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. 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.

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

DroneDeploy Map Engine

In December, we announced the release of the Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In and dug into Reality Tiler v2. Did you keep an eye on Saint Nick with NORAD Tracks Santa on Christmas Eve?

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

Cesium Design Tiler

CesiumJS 1.125 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Expanded the integration with the iTwin Platform to load GeoJSON and KML data from the Reality Management API. Use ITwinData.createDataSourceForRealityDataId(iTwinId, realityDataId) to load data as the corresponding Data Source. #12344

Added environmentMapOptions to ModelGraphics. For performance reasons, the environment map will not update if the entity position changes by default. If environment map updates based on entity position are desired, ensure to provide an appropriate environmentMapOptions.maximumPositionEpsilon value. #12358

Reduced memory usage and performance bottlenecks when using environment maps with models. #12356

Fixed JulianDate to always generate valid ISO strings for fractional milliseconds. #12345

Fixed intermittent z-fighting issue. #12337

iTwin Reality Feature Service results displayed as GeoJSON with iTwin Reality Point Cloud data in CesiumJS.

Cesium for Unreal v2.12.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Removed support for Unreal Engine 5.2. Unreal Engine 5.3 or later is now required.

Renamed FCesiumFeatureIdAttribute::GetFeatureIDForVertex to FCesiumFeatureIdAttribute::GetFeatureID.

Renamed FCesiumFeatureIdAttribute::GetVertexCount to FCesiumFeatureIdAttribute::GetCount.

Added support for metadata querying and styling on instanced models.

Fixed a bug in CesiumSubLevelSwitcherComponent that could prevent all sub-levels from loading if a single sub-level failed to load.

This release updates cesium-native from v0.42.0 to v0.43.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native.

Cesium for Unity v1.14.1 is now available. This is the last release of Cesium for Unity that will support Unity 2021 LTS (2021.3). Future versions will require Unity 2022 LTS (2022.3) or Unity 6.

Fixed a bug that could cause a crash on AppDomain reloads.

Fixed a bug that could cause a crash or incorrect textures when multiple Cesium3DTileset tiles referenced the same image by URL.

Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect colors in a model that did have vertex colors but did not have normals.

Fixed a bug that could cause a hang when attempting to load a model with UINT16 indices where generating flat normals required more than 2^16 vertices.

Fixed a bug in the Abseil vcpkg overlay port that could cause linker errors on some systems.

The new Cesium Design Tiler tiles IFC and glTF models into 3D Tiles. Read more.

The Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In is available on the Downloads page. This Add-In uploads your current 3D View directly to Cesium ion and tiles it with the Design Tiler to produce 3D Tiles.

Cesium Stories now include annotation features for points, polygons, and polylines. Check out an example here.

The new Design Tiler is now available in the Self-Hosted UI as well as the Self-Hosted CLI.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted has been updated to include more secure container-based images. This is part of a continuing effort to increase the security of the Self-Hosted version of Cesium ion.

Exposed the double-sided option for 3D Models and 3D Capture on the CLI.

Exposed a new option useCrsOrdering on the CityGML Tiler.

Fixed a regression where input models with missing textures were handled incorrectly when KTX output was enabled.

Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when generating tiles with multiple texture types.

Tool added: QuantizedMeshTo3DTilesConverter.

Support for lunar data for imagery tiler, terrain tiler, and QuantizedMeshTo3DTilesConverter.

Buildings tiler now supports using traditional GIS ordering or the ordering from the CRS.

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

FOX Sports uses Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles to orient and immerse fans during FOX NFL SUNDAY.

Cesium has partnered with NORAD since 2012 to provide updates on Santa Claus’s real-time location in 3D on Christmas Eve.

In November 2023, we announced the Reality Tiler that replaced our then-current photogrammetry tiler as part of the 3D Tiling Pipelines included in Cesium ion and Self-Hosted products. We built the Reality Tiler with emphasis on scalability, tiling performance, and runtime efficiency. Today, we’re digging into Reality Tiler v2, released in July 2024. We’ll cover the complete refactor of the Reality Tiler, where we rebuilt the tiling pipeline from the ground up, bringing significant improvements to tiling time, tileset quality, and runtime performance. We’ll take a close look at memory and runtime performance metrics and end with next steps for further improvements and optimizations.

Before we dive in, note that the Reality Tiler primarily operates on photogrammetry models or models reconstructed from LiDAR scans, potentially massive in scale. These models typically consist of explicit geometry, e.g., a triangle mesh, and color texture information.

Cesium Releases in May 2025

Deep Dive Workshop at the Cesium Developer Conference

Buendea Supports NASA Advanced Operations Concepts Lab with Cesium Moon Terrain

Cesium Releases in April 2025

Cesium Releases in March 2025

Cesium Releases in February 2025

Cesium Releases in January 2025