Cesium for Omniverse v0.25.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.20.0

CesiumJS 1.136

Cesium Stories

ガーナとトリニダード・トバゴにおけるAI都市再構成とCesiumによる3D可視化

2025年、国連宇宙部（UNOOSA）と英連邦事務局が共同で推進する「Commonwealth Digital Twin Project」において、Cesiumが重要な役割を果たしました。本プロジェクトは、気候変動の影響を受けやすい英連邦諸国を対象に、AIと衛星データによる3D都市モデルと洪水・高潮シミュレーションを構築し、住民の防災力を高める国際的な試みです。

洪水リスクが高い2カ国を対象に

初期対象として選ばれたのは、西アフリカのガーナとカリブ海のトリニダード・トバゴ。いずれも近年洪水被害のリスクが高まっており、かつ現地政府や関連機関が協力的であったことから選定されました。今後は、同様の課題を抱える他の英連邦諸国にも水平展開が想定されています。

AIで生成された都市モデル × 国連防災シミュレーション

このプロジェクトでは、日本のスタートアップ企業SpaceData社が、Vantor社（旧Maxar社）の高解像度衛星画像（30cm級）を用い、AIによる自動処理によってLOD1〜LOD3レベルの都市モデルを生成しました。これにより、空港や港など主要なインフラのデジタルツインが構築され、洪水や高潮による災害シミュレーションも実装されました。一方、洪水・高潮の影響評価には、国連宇宙部の国連防災緊急対応衛星情報プラットフォーム（UN-SPIDER : the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response）の技術監督のもと、災害シミュレーションとガーナ及びトリニダード・トバゴのステークホルダーへの展開が実施されました。今後はこれらのデジタルツインを活用し、浸水シナリオに応じた避難ルートの最適化や避難建物の指定など両国の避難計画の立案や更新に寄与することが期待されます。

「使える3D」への橋渡し：東京大学・渡邊英徳研究室 Watanave Labの役割

この都市モデルや防災シナリオを、誰でもブラウザ上で閲覧・操作できる形で可視化したのがCesiumです。実際の可視化と3D Tiles変換を担ったのは、東京大学大学院 情報学環 渡邊英徳教授の研究室　Watanave Labです。

LOD付きの都市モデルを受け取った研究室では、BlenderやUnityなどの中間ツールも活用しつつ、Cesium ionによる3D Tilesへの変換を実施。その後、Cesium Stories上に成果物をまとめることで、住民・行政・研究者が“視て理解できる”デジタルツインが完成しました。

ガーナ・ジェームスタウン漁港の海面上昇による影響シミュレーション(Cesium Stories)

トリニダード・トバゴ空港における海面上昇による影響シミュレーション（Cesium Stories）

ガーナ・ジェームスタウン漁港およびトリニダード・トバゴ空港における海面上昇の様子（Cesium Stories）

SpaceData社との役割分担：処理の高度さと可視化の手軽さ

このプロジェクトの先進性は、SpaceData社の高度なAI処理能力と東京大学 Watanave LabによるCesiumを活用した手軽かつ強力な可視化機能の連携にあります。

SpaceData社の処理：光学衛星画像からAIで自動抽出、構造化されたLOD付き建物データを生成。これは属性情報付きのメタデータ構造を持ち、将来的な災害分析にも活用可能。



東京大学 Watanave Labでの処理：SpaceData社によって生成された3DデータをCesium ionで軽量な3D Tiles形式に変換・高速配信し、ブラウザだけで閲覧可能な状態に展開。さらに時間軸・シナリオ・地形・属性情報との連動も可能。



とくにCesium Storiesの機能は、技術知識がなくても地元行政や教育関係者が操作・説明できるUIを備えており、今回のような国際防災協力のビジュアル表現に最適です。

ArcGISとの役割分担と今後の展望

なお、この成果はArcGIS Onlineとのハイブリッド運用も想定されています。ArcGISは属性分析・専門的な防災解析に活用され、Cesiumはその可視化・共有・住民説明・多国間連携に最適なプラットフォームとして位置付けられています。

国連宇宙部担当者は、「今後、英連邦諸国の他地域への展開においても、このCesium + SpaceData + 東大モデルをひとつの標準構成として検討したい」と述べており、本事例はグローバル展開の第一歩となる可能性を秘めています。

この取り組みは、単なる技術実証にとどまらず、洪水など災害のリスクが高い地域に、AI・衛星・3D技術を届けるという社会的意義を持っています。

Cesiumは、今後も国際社会における現実に根ざした3D活用を支援し続けていきます。

あなたのプロジェクトにも、Cesiumを。3D都市表示、リスクの可視化、共有がすぐに始められます。是非　Cesium ionアカウントに登録してみてください。

Harnessing 3D with Cesium for Disaster Resilience: International Collaboration among the United Nations, the University of Tokyo, and SpaceData


 AI-driven urban reconstruction and 3D visualization in Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago

In 2025, Cesium played a vital role in the Commonwealth Digital Twin Project, a joint initiative led by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Commonwealth Secretariat. The project aims to build 3D urban models and simulate flood and sea level rise using AI and satellite data in Commonwealth countries (former British dependencies) that are especially vulnerable to climate change, helping to strengthen community-level disaster resilience.

The first countries selected for the pilot phase were Ghana in West Africa and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean—both facing increasing flood risks and demonstrating strong cooperation from local governments and stakeholders. The project is expected to scale to other Commonwealth countries facing similar challenges.

AI-generated urban models + UN-based flood simulation

In this project, the Japanese startup SpaceData used Vantor (formerly Maxar Intelligence)’s high-resolution satellite imagery (approximately 30 cm) and AI-based automated processing to generate city models with levels of detail (LOD). This enabled the construction of digital twins of key infrastructure such as airports and ports, as well as the implementation of disaster simulations for flooding and storm surges.

For flood and sea level rise risk assessment, simulation was conducted by integrating the urban models with Digital Elevation Models (DEM), following methods recommended by the the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER). This made it possible to identify vulnerable zones and visualize their potential impact.

From data to usable 3D: The University of Tokyo’s Watanave Lab

Cesium was used to visualize the 3D urban models and disaster scenarios in a browser-accessible, interactive format. This transformation was led by Professor Hidenori Watanave’s research lab at the University of Tokyo’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies.

The lab received the LOD-structured city models, used intermediate tools such as Blender and Unity, and converted the data into 3D Tiles with Cesium ion. This conversion step was conducted entirely within Cesium ion, ensuring that the resulting tiles were optimized for web-based streaming and visualization.The results were then presented using Cesium Stories, providing a digital twin accessible to residents, government officials, and researchers.

Jamestown Fishing Harbour, Ghana, in Cesium Stories.

Airport in Trinidad and Tobago in Cesium Stories.

Visual simulations of sea level rise impact at James Town Fishing Harbour in Ghana and the airport in Trinidad and Tobago (source: UNOOSA—Cesium Stories).

SpaceData × Cesium: combining advanced processing and seamless visualization

A hallmark of this project was the seamless integration of SpaceData’s AI-powered processing and Cesium’s powerful and accessible visualization capabilities.

SpaceData: Used AI to automatically extract and generate structured building data with LOD and rich metadata from optical imagery—enabling future disaster analysis and simulation use.

Cesium: Transformed the resulting 3D data into lightweight, streamable 3D Tiles for fast web-based visualization. This includes integration with time-based scenarios, terrain models, and attribute data.

Cesium Stories were especially effective for non-technical users, enabling local governments and educators to easily interact with and explain the 3D content—ideal for use in international disaster resilience communication.

Coordination with ArcGIS and future outlook

The outcomes of this project were also designed for hybrid operation with ArcGIS Online. While ArcGIS was leveraged for attribute and technical analysis, Cesium served as the platform for public-facing visualization, sharing, civic engagement, and international collaboration.

“As we expand this initiative to other Commonwealth nations, we are considering this model—Cesium + SpaceData + University of Tokyo—as a reference configuration.”

This project may serve as a blueprint for wider global deployment.

This initiative goes beyond a mere technical demonstration—it is a socially meaningful effort to deliver satellite imagery, AI, and 3D technologies to regions facing high disaster risk.

Cesium continues to support the practical use of 3D geospatial technology to address real-world global challenges.

Just like in this project, Cesium users tackle global issues—for AI-enhanced city modeling, disaster risk visualization, or public communication.

Get started with Cesium ion to immediately build and share 3D urban visualizations, simulate disaster impacts, and collaborate across teams—all in a web browser.

Cesiumが拓く、3D可視化による防災の未来：国連・東京大学・SpaceDataの国際連携

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

Cesium Stories, our free app that enables users to create 3D geospatial presentations and stories without writing a single line of code, now allows you to include Google Maps Platform Photorealistic 3D Tiles. 

Since the announcement of our partnership with Google Maps Platform last month, we’ve seen an incredible response from the developer community. Now, anyone can use this data to create interactive 3D geospatial presentations set in the more than 2,500 cities and 49 countries represented in Photorealistic 3D Tiles. 

Click through the Cesium Story to see examples of what the community is building with Cesium and Google Maps Platform Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

Cesium Stories provides an easy-to-use interface to navigate to a place in the world, capture the view in 3D, and add text and images to tell your story. You can fuse Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles or our 3D Cesium World Terrain basemap with your own 3D and 2D data to build richer and more complex stories. Cesium Stories can be shared with a simple link or website embed.  

Follow the tutorial to learn more about how to use Cesium Stories and Google Maps Platform Photorealistic 3D Tiles. 

Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles Now Available in Cesium Stories

In late April, Dr. Hidenori Watanave, Cesium Certified Developer and long-time community member, spoke at the Stratcom Disaster Communication Forum in Ankara, Turkey, where he shared the Cesium Story he has been updating since the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria in February.

A number of organizations made data available to aid disaster response, including Maxar, BlackSky, and Planet Labs. In one day, Watanave built his app to make satellite imagery and other open data accessible to the public and provide insights into that data. Watanave’s Cesium Story began with 12 slides in early February and has more than 280 as of this writing.

It took Watanave one day to build his app that shares satellite imagery over areas affected by the Turkey-Syria earthquake in February 2023. Courtesy Hidenori Watanave.

With current data, humanitarian organizations can assess the status of roads to reach affected communities, and citizens around the world can see the effects of the earthquake. Grassy, tree-lined spaces are dotted with debris, buildings are destroyed, and tents have been set up.

Cesium Stories include Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps Aerial imagery from Cesium ion to provide accurate geospatial context, with no need to write code. Story creators upload their data to Cesium ion, and even large datasets are tiled and streamed to anyone with the link.

One key visualization was tracing the fault line along which the earthquake occurred, showing the rupture from Kahramanmaras to Islahiye, Turkey. (You can see this starting on slide 21 in Watanave’s Cesium Story.) Watanave collaborated with Dr. Masashi Omata, an expert from Pasco, a Japanese geoinformation company. Browsing the data together, they discovered the fault line.

Watanave and Omata discovered the fault line as they explored the open data. Courtesy Hidenori Watanave.

One key visualization in Watanave's Cesium Story was tracing the fault line along which the earthquake occurred, showing the rupture from Kahramanmaras to Islahiye, Turkey.

Turkey earthquake fault line

In this Cesium Story’s first week, it had more than 30,000 views, 90% of which were from Turkey—indicating the data reached the people who needed it most. 

Watanave has also continually updated a Cesium Story that shows the damage from the war in Ukraine, which has been featured in a major Japanese newspaper to provide interactive context to readers. In continuing his work to digitally archive and communicate memories of wars and disasters, Watanave and his lab were among the first recipients of the Cesium Ecosystem Grants.

You can create and share your own Cesium Story with a free Cesium ion account and our tutorial.

Cesium Story Highlights Turkey-Syria Earthquake Open Data

Oceanites has been visiting Antarctica and counting penguins for 30 years, sharing the reality of climate change through the lens of penguin population dynamics. Oceanites uses Cesium Stories to get research into the hands of policymakers and the public more easily and in an interactive way. 

Drone photo of Oceanites researchers at Neko Harbour, Antarctica, monitoring a Gentoo penguin colony. Courtesy Oceanites.

Oceanites’ mission is to conduct and evaluate research on Antarctic penguin populations in support of climate science and inspire key stakeholders to act. During the Austral summer of 2022-23, Oceanites carried out drone surveys around the Antarctic Peninsula, including the Tetrad Islands and D’Hainaut Island, off Trinity Island, which is on the northwest side of the Antarctic Peninsula. 

This was Oceanites’ first season flying DJI Mavic drones to count penguins using photogrammetry. Penguins and their chicks are visible in 3D models created from the drone imagery. The organization aims to create a long-term 3D dataset of penguin colonies, to show population change over time due to shifts in snow cover at the colonies. The dataset will also serve as a record easily shared with colleagues, citizens, and policymakers.

Cesium Stories complement thorough research with interactive, geospatially accurate scenes without the need to write any code. Oceanites puts its data into context and augments slides with informative text and high-res images. By default, Cesium Stories include Cesium World Terrain, Bing Maps Aerial imagery, and Cesium OSM Buildings—while Oceanites didn’t need models of buildings on the Antarctic Peninsula, the other global layers provide context for the locations of penguin colonies. Oceanites’ 3D models uploaded to Cesium ion were tiled to 3D Tiles for streaming in these presentations.

In observing and sharing penguins’ ability to adapt—or not—to climate change in the Antarctic, Oceanites urges action to benefit not only the flightless birds but also humankind.   

To bring interactivity and global 3D data to your research presentations with no need to code, follow our tutorial to create and share your own Cesium Stories.

Dr. Hidenori Watanave, Cesium Certified Developer, and the Yomiuri Shimbun, a major newspaper in Japan, have partnered to publish a series of articles about the war in Ukraine. The innovative journalism in these seven articles combines text, images, and interactive 3D models in Cesium Stories to give readers a clear picture of the war on the ground. 

The series of articles combines traditional text and images with interactive Cesium Stories to depict the impact of the war in Ukraine. To learn more about the work Dr. Watanave has done with Cesium, see his larger collections of Cesium Stories on Ukraine, updated almost daily. Or watch his recent interview with NHK World Japan. 

Cesium Story in the Yomiuri Shimbun

The articles cover personal stories of those impacted by the war, from individuals living in partially destroyed buildings in Borodyanka to refugees rebuilding in Moschun to youth playing soccer on a damaged field in Irpin. 

Ukrainians have created 3D models of scenes throughout the country, like this destroyed house in Moshchun. Mykhailo Dzhos captured the imagery, and the photogrammetry model was produced by Anatolii Umanets. Hidenori Watanave georeferenced the model and placed it in Cesium Stories. 

The articles are made much more meaningful by the embedded Cesium Stories. Each story, written in Japanese and Ukrainian, includes a map to orient readers to the location of the article, and photographs, 3D buildings, and 3D models of the scene of ground with photogrammetry models created by Ukrainian citizens. 

The text of the articles, together with interactive Cesium Stories, provide readers a more complete experience. 

Cesium Stories makes the capabilities of interactive 3D geospatial accessible even to those without coding experience. The tool is designed for creating interactive presentations to guide users through 3D scenes while also allowing them to explore on their own. 

This story accompanies an article about a key bridge destroyed in Irpin. Photographs of the bridge are interspersed with interactive 3D models, shown together with 3D buildings, terrain, and satellite imagery to provide geospatial context. 

Shown in Cesium Stories with the Yomiuri Shimbun

Irpin Bridge

Creators can start with base layers available through Cesium ion, including global Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps satellite imagery. By adding their own data, like the photogrammetry models Dr. Watanave has added to these stories, they create custom scenes. The data creators upload is tiled and hosted by Cesium ion, making even large datasets accessible to any viewer on the web. 

This article covers an area of Irpin where about 100 cars, abandoned and destroyed during the war, have been collected and subsequently painted with sunflowers, the national flower of Ukraine. 

These vehicles, abandoned and destroyed in Irpin and later painted with sunflowers, are presented as 3D models in Cesium Stories.

Abandoned cars in Ukraine

Share your own stories with Cesium Stories by signing up for a free community ion account. 

Major Japanese Newspaper Using Cesium Stories to Report on the War in Ukraine

Mosaic builds 360º HD cameras specifically for mobile mapping. The models they capture with handheld or vehicle mounted cameras are very high resolution, and very large. But by tiling into 3D Tiles, Mosaic is able to share the models with a simple link. 

Take Mosaic's textured meshed model of St. Barbara Cathedral. This model has been tiled with our 3D tiling pipelines on Cesium ion and is visualized in geospatial context with Cesium Stories. 

St. Barbara Cathedral in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic, captured by Mosaic and visualized in context in Cesium Stories. 

Mosaic

The Mosaic team created this model from 4,536 high-quality images, which they collected with the Mosaic Viking, a high resolution 360º camera, during a 6 minute drive around the cathedral. They combined that dataset with another they created from 50 drone images taken 70 meters above the ground.

The high resolution model was created by combining two data captures: one at ground level and one from a drone.

Once the 3D reconstructions were matched, they uploaded the model to Cesium ion, where it was tiled into 3D Tiles. Cesium’s tiling pipelines are the optimal way to generate 3D Tiles from Mosaic models. 

Global terrain and imagery from Cesium ion allowed the Mosaic team to clamp this model to its accurate real world location. 

With 3D Tiles, Mosaic can share the entire model online without losing any detail. And, by visualizing in Cesium, they can add local context with accurate terrain and imagery from Cesium ion.

Explore the model or optionally open the story in a new window.

Mosaic's high resolution captures are a glimpse of the future of digital twins in the metaverse, where the virtual world can be scanned frequently enough to reflect the physical world. High quality cameras to easily capture data and open standards like 3D Tiles to share that data in any workflow will open numerous possibilities for meaningfully reproducing the real world. 

Monitoring infrastructure, tracking construction, assessing potential routes, evaluating real estate assets, surveying sites remotely, planning events, and countless other applications benefit from increased insights of more accurate models. 

Bring your own data into Cesium by signing up for a free Cesium ion account.  

Mosaic Visualizes High Resolution Photogrammetry Captures with Cesium 

Professor Hidenori Watanabe, one of the earliest adopters of CesiumJS, will be sharing a number of his Cesium projects on a multi-screen display in a "Convergence of Peace Activities" exhibition at the University of Tokyo New York office, Aug 6–7.

At the exhibition he’ll be sharing the Hiroshima Archive and the Nagasaki Archive. These CesiumJS apps hold collections of prominent landmarks, historical images of the cities, and video interviews with survivors of the atomic bombing of each city, all geolocated on an interactive 3D map of the cities.

The Hiroshima Archive and Nagasaki Archive include extensive collections of survivor interviews. 

Hiroshima Archive

Dr. Watanabe will also be showing his collection of Cesium Stories about the war in Ukraine, which he built in collaboration with Professor Taichi Furuhashi, of Aoyama Gakuin University. 

Using Cesium Stories, an app for sharing geospatial presentations, they’ve gathered a wide range of data related to the war, including satellite imagery, 3D photogrammetry models, panoramic photos, and SAR data. They continue to update the Cesium Stories with new data as it becomes available. The collection currently has hundreds of datasets. 

Cesium Stories Ukraine project created by Professors Hidenori Watanabe and Taichi Furuhashi. 

To get started making your own Cesium projects, visit our learning center. 

Cesium Spatial Humanities Projects on Exhibition in New York

A new Cesium Story created by Professor Hidenori Watanave, of the University of Tokyo, and Professor Taichi Furuhashi, of Aoyama Gakuin University, shows the damage in Ukraine. 

The Cesium Story ranges all across Ukraine and the surrounding region. It brings together 3D photogrammetry data and satellite imagery from a number of sources and places them all on a Cesium globe. The base layer of global labeled satellite imagery provides geospatial context for what users are seeing, and they can zoom out to see where the images belong in relation to the country as a whole.

This satellite image, from Maxar, shows a Russian convoy. Throughout the Cesium Story, Hidenori has included dates and further information, including the option to download the KMZ file or other source data. You can also find all of the KMZ files in this GitHub repo. 

This Planet Labs image shows a collapsed bridge in Ukraine. In the Story, Hidenori alternates images of destruction and of refugees with images of military movements both within and around Ukraine. 

Professor Hidenori Watanave is a long-time member of the Cesium community. His projects archive the human impact of major world events, including the bombing of Hiroshima, the devastating earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The destruction in the up-to-date satellite imagery, as in this BlackSky image, provides a striking contrast to the base layer, which shows the countryside as it has been.

Cesium Stories provides a simple interface to create and share 3D geospatial presentations without writing any code. In this story, most of the imagery is placed using the ground overlay feature of KMZ. 

This photogrammetry model of the destruction is tiled with 3D Tiles. 

ukrainestory

To create your own Cesium Story, follow our tutorial.

Even the most geospatially-oriented presentations can benefit from non-geospatial-specific information, such as title slides, large format images, and good old-fashioned three point bulleted lists. That’s why today we are thrilled to launch a new Cesium Stories feature, fullscreen slides, which allow you to create slides without a map and instead use background images, colors and rich text.

An example title slide created with the new fullscreen feature. We didn’t actually create an entire Cesium story about porpoises, but maybe one of you will!

Fullscreen slides greatly expand the scope and type of stories you can create, making it possible to perform entire conference-style presentations directly from Cesium Stories.

The “New Slide” button in the Cesium Stories editor has a new drop down that allows users to choose a slide type.

As with the rest of Cesium Stories, fullscreen slides automatically adjust to look good on everything from large conference room projectors down to a mobile phone.

Users can also create more traditional slides by selecting a background color and making use of rich text and images.

Try out fullscreen slides and everything else Cesium Stories has to offer by creating a free Cesium ion account. We’d love to see what you build! Share your stories by posting them to the Cesium community forum or tag @CesiumJS on Twitter.

Tell Better Stories with Fullscreen Slides

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Association of Geographers (AAG) is holding its annual meeting remotely - and impressively is offering 180+ sessions fully online, kicking off today and running all week. When we heard this, we wanted to make a tour of Denver, where the meeting was to be held, so that participants could still experience the city, virtually.

We used Cesium Stories, which is a great tool for quickly making beautiful, 3D tours that combine content about a destination with real world images - visualized by flying around the globe to see the site itself, at its precise location. We were fortunate that Denver is a gorgeous city surrounded by impressive terrain, which makes this tour quite breathtaking.

We made this story using Cesium World Terrain, which is available to everyone in Cesium Stories, and a few datasets from the Denver Open Data Catalog, most visibly showing buildings and breweries.

On the left, 3D buildings from the Denver open data catalog, with breweries marked in green that can be clicked on to view more info. On the right, Red Rocks Amphitheatre from the globally curated Cesium World Terrain.

In Cesium Stories you can bring your own data, whether it’s 3D buildings or GeoJSON/KML that contain the locations of all breweries in the city, and then quickly visualize that on top of our curated 3D terrain.

Using time dynamic data to simulate a tour

We used time dynamic data several times in this tour to guide the audience along a path. In this case, you can see a car traveling along the Lariat Loop Road, which winds through the Rocky Mountains.

This is a fairly simple feature, but it’s my favorite stop on our virtual tour. The 16th Street Mall is a shopping district in Denver with an unusual pattern in the pavement of its pedestrian walkway. From streetlevel, it just looks like different colored stones, but from above you can spot a distinctive pattern. Being able to embed a photo next to the patterns makes this pop out even more.

You can make your own virtual tour using Cesium Stories. Just sign up for a free account in Cesium ion and check out our tutorial to get started.

With us all stuck at home, this is a fun and safe way to explore the world - and then quickly share it with friends, families, your kids, and your fellow conference goers with just a link. If you do make a virtual tour, we’d love to see it! You can share it with us at hello@cesium.com.

Virtual Tour of Denver for AAG's Remote Conference

A few days into us all working—and schooling—at home, my young son asked me what a globe was. Little did he know his mom works for a virtual globe company.

So we spun around the Cesium globe, and then I put together this Cesium Story to show him some of the places he’d find most exciting around the world.

If your family’s itching to get out into the world, try exploring from your home with your own Cesium Story. The editor is simple and designed for everyone—no programming skills required. Just follow the tutorial.

Exploring the world safely at home. Yes, this is their normal attire.

We created 3D Tiles to stream, visualize, and analyze massive 3D content like entire cities or complex architectural models. With today’s update to Cesium Stories, you can now click to inspect feature data in your 3D Tiles.

You can now click on any 3D Tiles feature in Cesium Stories, like buildings in the New York City tileset, to inspect its data.

Let’s say you wanted to understand the distribution of medical facilities across New York City. You could highlight all these buildings in your 3D Tileset using styling, and then click to see each facility’s capacity, whether it has urgent care, and their website/phone number(s).

You can also share your Cesium Story to allow other users to inspect it in the same way, whether they’re doing a thorough analysis in the office or while they’re out in the field. On mobile devices the infobox can be collapsed or expanded to easily switch between a full view of the 3D scene and the feature data.

Cesium Stories works on any modern web browser. On mobile devices the infobox can be collapsed or expanded to easily switch between a full view of the 3D scene and the feature data.

Feature picking in Cesium Stories works on any 3D Tileset that has feature data with no limit on the physical size of a feature, so this is well-suited for industries like BIM/CAD where you need to inspect very large pipes down to the smallest valves or screws.

Feature picking in Cesium Stories works on any 3D Tileset that contains feature data, like pipes and valves in this power plant BIM model.

Feature picking works on vector data as well, like GeoJSON, KML, and CZML. A vector layer gives you an easy way to add or update feature data even if the 3D Tileset itself doesn’t contain any defined features.

In the example below, we took the Vricon photogrammetry tileset of Washington DC from the Cesium ion Asset Depot, which doesn’t have feature data, and combined it with a CZML of building energy use from DC’s open data portal.

Combining a CZML of energy use with photogrammetry of Washington DC allows us to click on any building to see its energy score. This CZML was customized to add a picture of the building when available.

This allows you to click on any building to see its name, annual energy consumption, and Energy Star score. KML and CZML support HTML descriptions, so you can add images, links, or generally customize how it looks.

We’re excited to see what you build. Learn how to use picking and styling in the Cesium Stories styling tutoral.

Inspect Features in Your 3D Tilesets with Cesium Stories

With travel restrictions from Europe to the US going into effect today and a larger push to stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus, we were curious as to how this is impacting global travel. Naturally, we turned to Cesium.

We started by collecting flight data for every other day over the last few months. Here are all flights going in and out of Beijing’s most popular international airport:

Number of scheduled flights in or out of Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) visualized over time. Departures are shown in red, and arrivals are shown in green.

There’s a very sharp decline in number of flights in the end of January, going very quickly from around 900 flights to less than 300. This aligns with when the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency and the United States and other countries restricted travel from China.

After Beijing, Italy was hit hardest by the coronavirus. The first reported case there was on February 22, with cases quickly spiking and the Italian government imposing a quarantine on March 8. We can see a decline in flight traffic there, although not as quickly or dramatically:

Flights in and out of Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport (FCO) in Rome, Italy.

There haven’t been any official restrictions on flights in London at the time of writing, but there’s still a big decline in scheduled flights for the remainder of March. Here we’ve colored all U.S. flights in red.

Flights in and out of London Heathrow airport.

Finally, here’s JFK airport in New York City, one of the US’s biggest air traffic hubs. There doesn’t appear to be any noticeable change so far:

Flights in and out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

Flight data was obtained from AeroDataBox. Their API takes an airport code and returns all flights into or out of that airport for a given time period.