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Cesium for Omniverse v0.28.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.23.1

CesiumJS 1.140

Cesium ion

3D Gaussian splats are now available in the Cesium and 3D Tiles ecosystems, including CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, and Cesium ion. This integration enables developers to stream and visualize high-fidelity, photorealistic 3D content that captures the real world with unprecedented detail. By leveraging 3D Tiles as a spatial index and glTF as the payload, massive 3D Gaussian splat datasets can now be streamed with level of detail (LOD), ensuring high performance from city-scale environments down to sub-centimeter details. 

3D Gaussian splatting is an efficient radiance field reconstruction method that converts 2D images into a sparse cloud of volumetric 3D Gaussians. Unlike traditional photogrammetry, which often struggles to represent thin or complex structures, 3D Gaussian splats excel at preserving visual fidelity for cables, power lines, vegetation, and reflective surfaces by creating a point cloud of soft, rounded shapes of the subject, with each point defined by properties including position, orientation, color, and opacity. This technique uses spherical harmonics to support view-dependent lighting, allowing for realistic specular reflections and anisotropy that traditional reality meshes cannot easily replicate. 

3D Gaussian splats are now available in the Cesium and 3D Tiles ecosystems, including CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, and Cesium ion.

3D Gaussian Splats with Hierarchical Level of Detail Using 3D Tiles

3D Gaussian splatting provides significant advantages for industries requiring high-fidelity reality capture and photorealistic digital twins, including infrastructure monitoring, telecom tower maintenance, and electrical utility and substation inspections—plus the built environment, such as in real estate, where traditional mesh and point cloud methods often have limits. Beyond industrial applications, we see 3D Gaussian splats being adopted in media and entertainment to capture challenging visual details like reflections, semitransparent materials, and fire. 3D Gaussian splats are expected to play a key role in long-term asset monitoring and situational awareness, enabling users to track changes in the natural and built environment over the entire life cycle. 

3D Gaussian splats enable high-fidelity accurate visualizations of thin-and-long assets like cranes, building materials, power stations, and cell towers. This crane is depicted with Cesium for Unreal.

3D Gaussian splats enable high-fidelity accurate visualizations of thin-and-long assets like cranes, building materials, power stations, and cell towers. This scene is depicted in CesiumJS.

Standardizing 3D Gaussian splats in glTF with SPZ compression 

To ensure 3D Gaussian splats are interoperable across platforms, we have collaborated with Khronos, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Esri, and Niantic Spatial to integrate this new graphics primitive into the glTF 3D asset standard. This effort centers on two new extensions: KHR_gaussian_splatting and KHR_gaussian_splatting_compression_spz. The base glTF extension defines how splats are stored as point primitives, which allows for a graceful fallback to sparse point clouds in renderers that do not yet support rendering 3D Gaussian splats. 

"The geospatial community has been the catalyst for bringing Gaussian splats into glTF as an open, interoperable primitive, and the close collaboration between Cesium, Esri, and Niantic Spatial at OGC and Khronos is a model for how new rendering techniques should enter the industry: quickly, openly, and with broad cross-community backing from day one. Ratification at Khronos elevates Niantic's SPZ compression from an open-source project into a royalty-free open standard, providing the IP certainty that enterprises and platforms need to adopt it at scale." 

—Neil Trevett, President, Khronos Group 

A major challenge for 3D Gaussian splats has been their massive file size, which can hinder efficient streaming. To solve this, we adopted the SPZ compression format, an open source solution provided by Niantic Spatial. SPZ uses advanced quantization techniques and gzip to compress splat data by up to 90% compared to standard PLY files while maintaining visual fidelity. This format is particularly effective at handling spherical harmonic data for specular lighting. Furthermore, the recent SPZ 2.0.0 release introduced improved rotational accuracy for linear geospatial features—such as antennas and power lines—by encoding rotations as normalized quaternions. 

3D Gaussian splats will be added to 3D Tiles as part of the proposed 3D Tiles 2.0 OGC community standard. 

"The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) endorsed 3D Tiles as a Community Standard because it offered a compelling ability to distribute 3D content to users in a performant manner that also adhered to best practices in handling geospatial information and accuracy. This same approach to provide Gaussian splats via glTF and 3D Tiles ensures that the information portrayed by those Gaussian splats is in the right place and provides meaningful context for geospatial analysis."  

— Scott Simmons, Chief Standards Officer, OGC

Creating 3D Gaussian splats using Cesium ion 

With the integration of iTwin Capture technology into Cesium ion, the platform provides an end-to-end pipeline for reality modeling, including the creation of 3D Gaussian splats with LOD. Users can upload source photos directly to Cesium ion, which will automatically reconstruct a 3D Tileset as a mesh, point cloud, or 3D Gaussian splats. 

To accommodate different development needs, these workflows are accessible through both the Cesium ion web interface and via REST APIs, enabling everything from manual one-off uploads to fully automated, high-scale production pipelines. Once tiled, these splats are georeferenced, allowing them to be instantly combined with global datasets like Cesium World Terrain or Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles for full geospatial context. 

3D Gaussian splat tileset of Microsoft Redmond Campus, as viewed in CesiumJS. Captured in partnership with Bentley Systems. This tileset uses 20,169 photos (427.7 gigapixels, DJI FC6310 camera) and covers an area of about 3.7 sq km, with mean ground sampling distance 3 cm. The reconstruction is 110 million splats.

Streaming to CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, and more 

CesiumJS now supports 3D Gaussian splat tilesets. The implementation uses specialized shaders for volumetric rendering and high-performance sorting using WebAssembly for increased performance. Developers using CesiumJS can build high-fidelity digital twin applications leveraging 3D Gaussian splat tilesets in conjunction with previously supported data types. 

"The barriers to working with Gaussian splatting continue to fall. With a glTF extension and LOD support now part of 3D Tiles, developers can increasingly work with splats within familiar tools and workflows. Gaussian splats are quickly becoming a professional, scalable medium for delivering lifelike 3D on the web."  

— Michael Rubloff, Founder and Managing Editor, RadianceFields.com 

For developers building immersive experiences with game engines, Cesium for Unreal now supports 3D Gaussian splat tilesets, as well. This enables the integration of massive 3D Gaussian splat dataset rendering into the Unreal Engine ecosystem with the ability to stream 3D Gaussian splats with LOD directly from Cesium ion. In addition to Cesium for Unreal, we plan to add support to Cesium for Unity and other runtime engines based on community feedback. By standardizing splat delivery through 3D Tiles and glTF extensions, we’re ensuring that these assets remain interoperable across platforms as the field of neural rendering evolves. 

Getting started with 3D Gaussian splats 

Upload your own photos to Cesium ion by signing up for a free community account. You can try out live examples in the Cesium Sandcastle or start building your own reality models today. 

Introducing 3D Gaussian Splats with Hierarchical Level of Detail Using 3D Tiles

In complex, high-pressure environments, how information is presented can be as important as the information itself. XReality Factory (XRF) uses CesiumJS and Cesium for Unity for a single shared operational view for better, faster decisions across real operations and training scenarios, throughout defense, security, and emergency management.

XRF's tools consolidate data sources and connect agencies via a single shared operational view with 3D geospatial context for better decisions. Courtesy XRF.

XReality Factory

The volcanic eruptions on the Spanish island of La Palma in 2021 were the tipping point for XRF’s founding team, with expertise in extended reality and interactive technologies, to build tools to consolidate data sources and connect agencies via a single shared operational view with 3D geospatial context for better decisions.

“What we were developing in gaming is useful in emergencies, useful to our heroes,” said Raul Espada, XRF’s CRO.

XRF supports users in critical infrastructure, defense, emergency management, and security, working with the Spanish Armed Forces, Royal Netherlands Armed Forces, public authorities, and industry. In NATO exercises with armed forces from multiple nations on different systems, XRF tools served as the common operating picture (COP), enabling coordination across distributed teams, improving situational awareness, and accelerating decision-making with meaningful information, instead of a barrage of siloed data. The company is part of NATO’s EU Defence Innovation Scheme (EUDIS) and Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) programs.

In NATO exercises, XRF tools served as the COP, enabling coordination across distributed teams. Courtesy XRF.

At the core of XRF’s dual-use command and control (C2) system is Compass, a platform for fusing data from several sources into a trusted 3D COP. With Cesium World Terrain or Cesium World Bathymetry via Cesium ion as Compass’s base, users add their own 3D models, drone imagery, and other information layers specific to their missions and organizational requirements for rapid, efficient delivery, streaming as 3D Tiles into CesiumJS for the web and Cesium for Unity for XR.

Around Compass, XRF developed complementary tools:

Apolo, a mobile app for units deployed on the ground, built with CesiumJS;

Colossus, a large multitouch command table for fixed control rooms, using CesiumJS;

Sandbox, an XR multiuser command center for planning, training, and operations, built on Cesium for Unity and device agnostic across Microsoft HoloLens, Meta Quest, and Apple Vision Pro; and

Hermes, XRF’s AI system that interprets scenarios to support decisions with natural language.

With real-world data available on a variety of devices, users can more quickly understand terrain, elevation, line of sight, and spatial relationships in context.

“Our goal has always been to integrate the solution the final user needs in their unifying system, so most of our effort goes into interoperability,” said Antonio Sanchez, XRF’s primary developer.

3D Tiles, an OGC community standard built on glTF and other 3D data types, enables XRF’s users to efficiently stream massive datasets, at any scale, together. The view their users need is the one that will load with the most detail, supporting immersive visualization and analysis on both high-end workstations and bandwidth-constrained devices.

XRF uses Cesium ion SaaS for testing, demos, and situations with reliable internet. The team and its users employ Cesium ion Self-Hosted for strict internal security requirements and off-grid environments.

“The level of performance—rendering continental-scale terrain down to tactical detail, with multiple users connected—is essential for user trust. In defense and emergency contexts, if the visualization stutters or lags, the system is not usable. The feedback we’ve received confirms that the 3D view is responsive and dependable,” Sanchez said.

XRF’s users report clearer briefings, faster alignment across teams, more confident decisions, and smoother transitions because of the connected, integrated approach, with the 3D geospatial foundation as a key enabler.

The volcanic eruptions on the Spanish island of La Palma in 2021 were the tipping point for XRF’s founding team. Pictured here is La Palma in XRF's Apolo, a mobile app for units deployed on the ground, built with CesiumJS. Courtesy XRF.

The volcanic eruptions on the Spanish island of La Palma in 2021 were the tipping point for XRF’s founding team. Pictured here is La Palma in XRF's Colossus, a large multitouch command table for fixed control rooms, using CesiumJS. Courtesy XRF.

XRF estimates that using Cesium reduced its time to first operational deployments by 30-40%. Because the team does not need to build or maintain the core 3D terrain or streaming architecture, they are able to focus on additional features—and lower their ongoing costs by replacing disconnected tools with one shared system, just as they’re doing for their users in defense, security, and emergency management.

Learn more about optimizing, hosting, and streaming your data in an immersive, shared source of truth for time-sensitive action.

Hear from XRF at the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference. Register to join us in Philadelphia in June.

XRF Connects and Integrates Missions with Cesium

In March, we hosted the 134th OGC Member Meeting, attended the inaugural USGIF GEOINTeraction Colorado event, added support for panoramic imagery in CesiumJS, highlighted the Dev Rel team, introduced Cesium for Unity on the web, shared details about the ionosphere at this year’s Cesium Developer Conference, and launched AI-driven semantic search in Sandcastle. 

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 1.140 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Fixes a regression with the NGA-GPM local extension and custom shaders. #13247 

Billboards and labels now require device support for WebGL 2, or WebGL 1 with ANGLE_instanced_arrays and MAX_VERTEX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS > 0. #13053 #13253 

Added experimental, performance-focused vector primitive APIs:  BufferPointCollection, BufferPolylineCollection, and BufferPolygonCollection. #13212 

Added support for Reality Data of type  ITwinPlatform.RealityDataType.GaussianSplat3DTiles to ITwinData.createTilesetForRealityDataId. #13208 

Added GetFeatureInfo support to WebMapTileServiceImageryProvider, enabling WebMapTileServiceImageryProvider.pickFeatures for both KVP and RESTful WMTS services. New class parameters include enablePickFeatures, getFeatureInfoFormats, getFeatureInfoUrl, and getFeatureInfoParameters. #13196 

Added limited support (via downcasting) for double-precision metadata types in custom shaders. #13323 

Added a new experimental property PathGraphics.relativeTo, which allows entity PathGraphics to be displayed in a reference frame relative to another entity, or a different reference frame than the entity's Position.ReferenceFrame. #13223 

Fixed intermittent label text/background misalignment when using heightReference (CLAMP_TO_GROUND, CLAMP_TO_TERRAIN, or CLAMP_TO_TILE). #13335 

Improved Gaussian splat loading and update performance by reducing transform work, reusing aggregate buffers, and lowering repeated sort churn during camera movement. #13322 

Improved Gaussian splat SPZ decode performance by updating @spz-loader/core to 0.3.1. #13329 

Fixed a crash when decoding large Gaussian splat SPZ files with high spherical harmonics degree. #13287 

Fixed Gaussian splat modelMatrix not being correctly applied to splat positions, rotations, and scales when the tileset transform changes. Fix spherical harmonic view direction being evaluated in the wrong coordinate frame in Gaussian splat rendering, causing subtle color errors for datasets without an embedded axis-compensation matrix. #13305 

Fixed a WebGL crash when rendering Gaussian splat tilesets with more than ~16 million splats. #13235 

No longer disables custom shaders for primitives with missing metadata, as long as the metadata exists on the overall class definition. #13258 

Fix performance issue with multiple ClippingPolygon on Cesium3DTileset. #13255 

ClippingPolygonCollection performance and quality improvements. #13308 

Two orbiting satellites viewed in CesiumJS, with satellite 2's path displayed relative to satellite 1.

Cesium for Unreal v2.25.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added support for tilesets containing 3DTILES_content_voxels. Voxel metadata can be styled with materials generated by UCesiumVoxelMetadataComponent. 

Added UCesiumGlobeAnchorComponent::HeightReference. Setting this to ECesiumHeightReference::Tileset will cause the actor to maintain its height above the specified tileset during LOD transitions or object movement. 

Added UCesiumGlobeAnchorComponent::ReferencedTileset. Set this field to a ACesium3DTileset actor reference to maintain a fixed height above the tileset. 

Added UCesiumGlobeAnchorComponent::HeightUpdateInterval to specify how often the actor's height is updated when HeightReference is Tileset. 

Added ReceiveDecals property to ACesium3DTileset to allow toggling decal reception per tileset. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.58.0 to v0.59.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

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

Voxel visualization of geothermal temperature data surrounding Lake Thunersee, Switzerland. Visualized in Cesium for Unreal through glTF and 3D Tiles.

Cesium for Unity v1.23.1 is now available. 

This release updates cesium-native from v0.58.0 to v0.59.0. 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 v0.28.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Cesium for Omniverse now requires Kit 109.0 or above (Isaac Sim 6.0.0 or above). 

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**
- Coming this week: an update for the reconstruction of Gaussian splats with LODs from photo collections. 

**Cesium ion Self-Hosted**
Cesium ion Self-Hosted v1.9.0 is available.
- Added support for copying assets and stories between individual and teams accounts. 
- Design tiler: Reduced memory usage when processing IFC files. 
- Design tiler: Added support for nested IFC properties. 
- Design tiler: Improved rendering of IFC elements by giving sub-assembly elements the bounding box of the full assembly. 
- Design tiler: Added more graceful handling of IFC lines that don’t meet the IFC specification. 
- Design tiler: Fixed an issue where invalid attributes could be generated when converting from OBJ to glTF. 
- Reality tiler: Fixed an issue that could cause models with multiple sets of texture coordinates to be subdivided more than necessary. 
- Reality tiler: Fixed an issue where a CRS origin could be applied incorrectly if the origin was set from the command line and also found in a sidecar file. 
- Reality tiler: Fixed an issue where duplicate vertices in input models could lead to inefficient textures and larger tilesets than necessary. 
- Reality tiler: Fixed a regression where duplicate vertices in the input would be written to tiles, rather than being filtered out. 
- Minor bug fixes.  

**Gaussian Splats Tilers** 
- Added logic to filter out NaN and infinite values when parsing PLY files.

**Design Tiler**
- Emits double-precision floats (instead of single) for IFC attributes and properties.

Camptocamp’s Geo Challenge game, built in CesiumJS, uses high‑resolution swisstopo data and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles for a smooth, browser-based 3D guessing experience. 

Matom.AI uses AI with CesiumJS and 3D Tiles to analyze city‑scale point clouds in the browser and maintain continuously up‑to‑date digital twins. 

In February, we attended Geo Week in Denver and discussed interoperability and open standards for Gaussian splats in the RTC AECO Spotlight. This week we’re proud to host the 134th OGC Member Meeting—let us know if you’re in Philadelphia! Plus: two more weeks of early bird devcon registration. 

CesiumJS 1.139 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added panorama support via new EquirectangularPanorama and CubeMapPanorama classes, along with GoogleStreetViewCubeMapPanoramaProvider for loading cube map faces from the Google Street View Static API and rendering them in a cube map panorama. #13153 

Added more depth testing options for billboards and labels. #12994 

Added support for more metadata types via property textures in custom shaders. #13135 

Modified Sandcastle application to use a hybrid text and semantic, embedding based search. #13090 

Fixed Gaussian splat race conditions in snapshot/sort updates. #13016 #12965 

Fixed flashing when rendering multiple Gaussian splat primitives. #12967 

Part of a 360-degree panorama image of the interior of Laon Cathedral, France, visualized in CesiumJS. Photo by David Iliff, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Cesium for Unreal v2.23.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added support for loading tilesets with the KHR_gaussian_splatting extension. 

Added support for styling with tileset statistics on UCesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent. 

Deprecated AddCamera, RemoveCamera, UpdateCamera, and GetCameras on ACesiumCameraManager. Instead, use the new AdditionalCameras array to directly add or remove cameras. 

Added UsePlayerCameras, UseEditorCameras, and UseSceneCapturesInLevel to ACesiumCameraManager to toggle the automatic detection of cameras in the level for tile selection. 

Added ACesiumCameraManager::SceneCaptures for more explicit control over which ASceneCapture2Ds are used for tile selection. 

Added DetectTransformChanges to UCesiumGlobeAnchorComponent to toggle whether the globe anchor should update itself after changes in its Actor's transform. 

Build now uses the tinyxml2 library from Unreal's SDK on Linux and Windows if it is available. This eliminates a source of conflicts with other plugins that also use tinyxml2. 

Removed Cesium3DTileset::getFeaturesMetadataDescription. This can be directly retrieved from its attached UCesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent instead. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.57.0 to v0.58.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Hines Rowing Center in Conshohocken, PA, visualized in Cesium for Unreal using Gaussian splats produced by iTwin Reality Capture.

Cesium for Unity v1.23.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added CesiumGeoJsonDocumentRasterOverlay, allowing stylized GeoJSON to be rasterized and draped over terrain and other 3D Tiles. 

Added CesiumGeoJsonDocument to parse and manipulate GeoJSON documents in code. 

Added CesiumGeoJsonObject to access individual features, geometries, and collections within a GeoJSON document. 

Added CesiumVectorStyle, CesiumVectorLineStyle, CesiumVectorPolygonStyle, and CesiumVectorPolygonFillStyle structs for styling vector data. 

A footprint of a proposed design model projected onto Cesium World Terrain using CesiumGeoJsonDocumentRasterOverlay.

Cesium for Omniverse v0.27.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Cesium for Omniverse now requires Kit 107.3 or above (Isaac Sim 5.1.0 or above). 

**Cesium ion SaaS**
- Coming this week: additional options for running photo reconstruction jobs. These will make it possible to tune your automated reality modeling pipelines to better meet your requirements. 

**Cesium ion Self-Hosted**
- Coming this week: new version of Cesium ion Self-Hosted that includes recent updates to the Cesium design and reality tilers. 

**3D Tiling Pipeline** 
- The Design and Reality Tilers are now packaged with the tilers and tools in the 3D Tiling Pipeline. Versions have been unified, and all tilers are now on v5.0.1. 
- Added `terrain-and-imagery-tiler`, which produces 3D Tiles 1.1 output. 
- Removed `quantizedmeshto3dtilesconverter`; it has been replaced by `terrain-and-imagery-tiler`. 
- Fixed an issue where invalid attributes could be generated when converting from OBJ to glTF.

    - **Design Tiler** 
      - Improved rendering of IFC elements by giving sub-assembly elements the bounding box of the full assembly. 
      - Added more graceful handling of IFC lines that don’t meet the IFC specification. 
      - Added support for parsing eastings, northings, and orthogonal height from IFC files. 
      - Fixed generation of IFC swept circular geometry for better shading and performance. 
      - Fixed issues processing B-splines in IFC files. 
      - Fixed issues processing some geometries with swept circles. 

    - **Reality Tiler** 

      - Fixed an issue where duplicate vertices in input models could lead to inefficient textures and larger tilesets than necessary. 
      - Fixed a regression where duplicate vertices in the input would be written to tiles, rather than being filtered out. 
      - Significantly reduced memory usage for models with spatially incoherent textures. 

    - **Buildings Tiler**
      - Fixed an issue where some images in a glTF file had an invalid format and/or incorrect mime type. 

Trailamo uses CesiumJS to bring open geospatial data to mountaineers so they can plan safer, more informed routes anywhere in the world with advanced 3D terrain analysis and layered datasets. 

BADASS Studios uses Cesium for Unreal to create a premium digital fan experience for the E1 Series. 

Creating an XR Connection to the E1 Series with Cesium for Unreal

In January, we attended GeoBuiz in Denver and opened the call for presentations and early bird registration for the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference. Looking ahead, we’re thrilled to be a host of the 134th OGC Member meeting in Philadelphia in March. 

CesiumJS 1.138 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Fixed jitter artifacts on Intel Arc GPUs. #12879 

Improved voxel memory usage by reworking Megatexture to use Texture3D. #12570 

Fixed multiple issues causing undefined pick results in 2D/CV scene modes. #13083 

Fixed label sizing for some fonts and characters. #9767 

Volumetric rendering with voxels in CesiumJS was optimized with WebGL2’s 3D Textures for reduced memory usage at runtime.

When adding a CesiumCartographicPolygon to the level via the Cesium panel, the polygon is now created in the current Editor view, rather than at the origin. 

Added ACesiumCartographicPolygon::SetPolygonPoints to shape a polygon spline from a list of positions in cartographic or Earth-Centered, Earth-Fixed coordinates. 

Re-enabled support for tileset water masks on macOS devices. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.56.0 to v0.57.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Cesium for Unity v1.22.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Fixed a bug that prevented CesiumGoogleMapTilesRasterOverlay from being added to a GameObject in more recent versions of Unity.  

Coming this week: The Design and Reality Tilers will now be packaged with the tilers and tools in the 3D Tiling Pipeline. Versions will be unified, and all tilers will be on v5.0.0. 

WorldLens uses Cesium for Unity to deliver high-performance, immersive VR experiences that stream global geospatial data to Meta Quest.

Blenheim Palace leveraged 3D Tiles created through the Cesium Design Tiler and Add-In for Autodesk Revit to create a digital twin in CesiumJS that has IoT integration to enable smart heritage conservation, predictive maintenance, and sustainability.

Blenheim Palace Performing Smart Conservation with Cesium

To modernize and synchronize operational-level planning, Sandtable uses CesiumJS, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium ion to combine traditional military planning documents and immersive geospatial context.

Over the last 20 years, technology and the nature of conflict have changed more rapidly than US defense policies and military procedures. To modernize and synchronize operational-level planning, Sandtable uses CesiumJS, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium ion to combine traditional military planning documents and immersive geospatial context.

For operational wargaming in the COA analysis step of the MDMP, as well as mission rehearsal, Sandtable Navigator provides a 4D environment built with Cesium for Unity. Pictured here are friendly and enemy units at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, USA. Courtesy Sandtable.

For operational wargaming in the COA analysis step of the MDMP, as well as mission rehearsal, Sandtable Navigator provides a 4D environment built with Cesium for Unity. Pictured here are friendly and enemy units at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California. Courtesy Sandtable.

Sandtable: COA Analysis

Founded in 2024 by US Army veterans and researchers, Sandtable pairs AI with human judgment in its Mentat and Navigator prototypes to facilitate mission analysis, course-of-action (COA) development, and operational wargaming with more data, detail, and speed.

Planning, collaboration, and rehearsal tools tend to involve 2D imagery, spreadsheets, printed documents, a physical sand table, and the risks that come with putting a group of key people in the same place simultaneously. The company’s push to bring time-dynamic 3D to military planning results in interactive environments that fuse data types and sources to support planning and assessment for both human teams and autonomous systems, no matter where they are. 

During COA DEV, planners using Sandtable Mentat create, visualize, and share unit symbology, operational graphics, viewshed, and ranges of weapon systems in 4D. Courtesy Sandtable. 

“What we’re simulating and planning—like drones, counterdrone technology, and electromagnetic warfare—exists in 3D space in reality, and we need to be able to represent reality. That requires Cesium,” said Sandtable COO Brady Moore. 

And reality is complex: data comes from myriad sources, and conditions shift over time. With AI, the platform helps surface patterns, compare options, and stress-test assumptions, so commanders can focus their judgment where it matters most.

Planners drag and drop MIL STD 2525D symbols from predefined combat power data to build enemy SITEMPs and friendly COAs in Mentat. Courtesy Sandtable.

Planners drag and drop MIL STD 2525D symbols from predefined combat power data to build enemy SITEMPs and friendly courses of action in Mentat. Courtesy Sandtable.

Sandtable: Enemy SITEMPs and Friends COAs

Cesium is deployed across Sandtable’s solution to accelerate key phases of the military decision-making process (MDMP), particularly mission analysis, COA development, and rehearsal, with authoritative geospatial context and efficient data delivery:

Mentat, built with CesiumJS, incorporates written orders, concept sketches, and open datasets, e.g., for soil density and composition, on top of real-world terrain in a browser for rapidly adjusting COAs with AI.

Navigator uses Cesium for Unity for COA analysis and mission rehearsal in a shared virtual environment, wherever participants are, on a variety of devices. Instead of merely rehearsing plans produced in Mentat, Navigator feeds insights back into the planning environment—enabling continuous refinement rather than one-time execution.

Sandtable Mentat allows planners to determine which factors about the terrain are relevant to operations and visualize them together or separately. Courtesy Sandtable. 

With detailed geospatial data from Cesium ion and a range of public and government sources (for example, NOAA and USDA datasets), warfighters and autonomous vehicles know not only where hills and trees are but also microterrain features relevant to mobility and line of sight. This is important because factors like height of vegetation determine what a drone can—or can’t—see (depending on available data resolution and source quality). This data is primarily 3D Tiles, quantized mesh, and KML/KMZ, optimized, hosted, and streamed via Cesium ion for efficiency and interoperability. Cesium ion also enables Sandtable to be data agnostic, because 3D Tiles is an OGC community standard, and can use the Army's own Well Formed Format data when available. Sandtable uses Cesium ion SaaS while connected to the internet and anticipates leveraging Cesium ion Self-Hosted in future disconnected or denied environments, as well as secure enclaves.

Sandtable Mentat develops its own Modified Combined Obstacle Overlay (MCOO) using CesiumJS to visualize layers. Sandtable’s detailed datasets help determine terrain trafficability. Other terrain data includes canopy height, land use, soil attributes, slope, and elevation. Courtesy Sandtable.

Sandtable Mentat develops its own Modified Combined Obstacle Overlay (MCOO) using CesiumJS to visualize layers. Sandtable’s detailed datasets help determine terrain trafficability. Other terrain data include canopy height, land use, soil attributes, slope, and elevation. Courtesy Sandtable.

Sandtable: Modified Combined Obstacle Overlay (MCOO)

Critical to Sandtable’s work is embedding with the very people who will use the platform. During the Army’s xTechOverwatch competition in October 2025, the team tested Mentat on a tablet in the field with soldiers during the day and adjusted the capabilities and interface each night, returning the next day with an improved product. Sandtable developers were able to take feedback from concept to functional visualization and analysis in hours rather than days. This speed of development is enabled by adaptable, streaming-ready 3D Tiles and open-source runtimes. (The company’s CEO, Brian Hamilton, is a Cesium Certified Developer, and Sandtable was among the competition’s winners.)  

Watch Sandtable CTO Brent Lance’s 2025 Cesium Developer Conference talk to learn about the role Cesium plays across Sandtable’s solution for the MDMP. 

Military Planning Using Agentic AI and Simulations

Mentat and Navigator have been deemed Awardable on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, making them eligible for government procurement and tightening collaboration between government and industry.

Use Cesium ion to securely fuse high-resolution imagery and terrain with unit-specific data for actionable information and collaboration. Get started with a community account.  

Author’s note: Sandtable’s COO, Brady Moore, is a former Cesium employee. 

Sandtable Modernizes and Synchronizes Military Planning with Cesium

In December, the team was in Orlando for I/ITSEC and Exton for our quarterly refactor. Then came all the jolly action with the Cesium-powered NORAD Tracks Santa app. 

Today, we opened the call for presentations for the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference. Submit your talk ideas, and we look forward to seeing you in June! 

CesiumJS 1.137 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Fixes for positioning in workflows that delete and recreate labels. 

Fixes for texture coordinates in large billboard collections.

CesiumJS rendering a large collection of billboards with high precision, using data from the iTwin Feature Service.

Cesium for Unreal v2.22.0 is now available. Note that this release removes support for Unreal Engine 5.4; Unreal Engine 5.5 or later is required.

Other highlights of this release include:

Replaced the "Auto Fill" button on UCesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent with "Add Properties". This allows metadata properties and feature ID sets to be selectively added to the component, rather than adding them all in bulk. 

Added EnableDoubleSidedCollisions to ACesium3DTileset to allow intersections and collisions with geometry to also work when hitting "back" faces. 

Added an optional glTF model post-processing stage after the tile loading step to modify their models before they are displayed. 

Added support for refreshing Cesium ion login tokens after they expire and the refresh token is still valid. 

Fixed a material generation bug on UCesiumFeaturesMetadataComponent where user-made connections to If nodes were not preserved. 

Fixed deprecation warnings when compiling with Unreal Engine 5.5+ by replacing deprecated GetInputsView() calls with FExpressionInputIterator. 

This release also updates cesium-native from v0.55.0 to v0.56.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

A list of metadata properties available in the New York region of Cesium OSM Buildings.

Cesium for Unity v1.21.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Setting CesiumGeoreference.ellipsoid at runtime will now correctly update the Georeference and associated transforms. 

Fixed a bug that could cause Cesium3DTileset::Update to be called more than once per frame in the Editor. 

Further improved stability when Unity reloads the AppDomain, such as when editing scripts or entering Play mode. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.55.0 to v0.56.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Cesium for Omniverse v0.26.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Fixed loading KTX2 textures with mipmaps.

Reduced memory usage when processing IFC files. 

Added support for nested IFC properties. 

(experimental) Added support for geospatially locating IFC exports from Archicad. 

Introducing 3D Gaussian Splats with Hierarchical Level of Detail Using 3D Tiles

XRF Connects and Integrates Missions with Cesium

Cesium Releases in April 2026

Cesium Releases in March 2026

Cesium Releases in February 2026

Sandtable Modernizes and Synchronizes Military Planning with Cesium

Cesium Releases in January 2026