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Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.15.5

CesiumJS 1.128

Cesium Release Roundup

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.

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 1.128 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. 

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

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. 

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

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 

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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