Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.13.1

CesiumJS 1.123

CesiumJS

COMSPOC, a commercial provider of space situational awareness (SSA) software, has released Spacebook to make space data free to access and visualize with the help of CesiumJS. Because space is crowded and sometimes contentious, awareness is critical; with Spacebook, the space community can compare data. 

Spacebook was released in September 2024 to make space data freely available to the space community.

Spacebook was released in September 2024 to make space data freely available to the space community. Courtesy COMSPOC.

COMSPOC Spacebook

Spacebook was released in September 2024. A central repository for space data and advancing the industry, “Wikipedia for space,” Spacebook is a concept the COMSPOC team had been discussing for a decade. COMSPOC itself has been operating every minute since 2014, and visualization tools in its SSASuite are built on Cesium.  

For free, Spacebook users are able to download current and historical position, weather, and error data; visualize the data in the Cesium-powered Explorer; and expand their knowledge with technical papers and videos available on comspoc.com. Those in government, industry, and education are encouraged to create saved views with the resources, investigating individual space objects or even performing flight safety analysis. Visualizations can be saved with a free account. 

With Cesium, Spacebook’s Explorer viewer enables users to display orbit tracks and covariance ellipsoids for objects, color-code groups of objects or modify dot sizes for easy visual identification, and adjust animation speed. COMSPOC shared an anecdote of an educator in Hawaii, USA, who got a permit to launch a cubesat. Using Spacebook, her university and high-school students are able to track this satellite in 3D in near real time and do their own SSA analysis. 

Spacebook users can download space weather data, compare orbits with the CesiumJS-powered Explorer, and dig into technical papers and videos. Courtesy COMSPOC. 

Position property average, for example, is calculated 10 times a second for 26,000 objects in Spacebook, so locations are constantly updated. Spacebook data uses two-line element (TLE) sets for object position data, SGP4-xp for improved orbital predictions, and synthetic covariance for comparing TLEs. COMSPOC acquires this information from Space-Track, CelesTrak, and the US government and intends to accept data from users in the future, too. These massive datasets of thousands of points are visualized in conjunction with a high-precision WGS84 globe in CesiumJS, accurately displaying object location at a given time in interactive 3D to enhance situational awareness and learning.  

“Having great data is one thing. A functional, friendly viewer that gives users the sizzle and shows the data is another. We were able to bring in other features because we didn’t have to worry about rebuilding the globe. Our expertise is in space analytics, not 3D modeling and engine design. Using Cesium lets us get to our expertise as soon as possible,” said Steve Shogren, development lead for Spacebook.

Interactively investigate individual space objects or perform analyses in a web browser with Spacebook. Courtesy COMSPOC.

Although COMSPOC recently released Spacebook, the team is already working on more data sources and new features.  

Check out how other aerospace companies are using Cesium, and try it today to make your space apps precise, detailed, and shareable. 

Spacebook Makes Space Data Accessible for All with CesiumJS 

CalTa株式会社では、鉄道を中心に、道路、河川、港湾、発電所などの大規模なインフラ施設の現場管理業務を三次元空間上で行う「TRANCITY」を開発しており、その処理にCesiumのプラットフォームが活用されています。

TRANCITYは、ドローンやロボットで撮影した動画だけでなく、スマートフォンやタブレット端末等で撮影した動画もアップロードするだけで、三次元地理空間内の現実空間と一致する３Ｄモデルがスピーディーに自動生成されます。動画のほか、BIMモデルや点群データのアップロードも可能であり、3Dモデルと重ねて表示することができます。また、TRANCITYはブラウザベースのためPC、タブレット、スマホ等どんな端末でも活用することができます。３Ｄモデルは時系列ごとに管理され、位置情報と紐づくことで「いつ、どこが、どうなっているか」を正確に把握することが可能です。TRANCITYを活用することで、オフィスと現場等の離れた職場での詳細な情報共有が可能となり、東日本旅客鉄道株式会社様や東海旅客鉄道株式会社様などの鉄道業界をはじめ、インフラ業界における生産性向上や、持続可能なインフラ管理をサポートしています。

TRANCITYで扱う発電所工事施設内、施設建設予定地内の多種大量の３Dデータを最適な形に３Ｄタイル化、かつ高速にストリーミングし、デバイスを問わずスムーズな可視化を実現するのが CesiumJS と Cesium ionです。 3D タイルは、Cesiumによって作られた、点群や建物、フォトグラメトリなどの大規模で異質な3D地理空間データセットのためのオープン標準です。TRANCITYでは、鉄道などの大規模インフラの管理情報と位置情報を結びつけることで効率化されますが、それらの3DデータはCesium ionを用いて3Dタイルとして最適化され、あらゆるデバイスのCesiumJSに高速にストリーミングされます。 TRANCITYでは、まず動画データからSfM技術を用いて3Dデータを生成し、生成したデータを3D Tiles形式にタイル化してビューワに表示しています。この一連の工程を通じて、約1時間以内でデータの可視化が可能です。このプロセス全体には、Cesium ionエンジンの高品質な処理能力が大きく貢献しています。

ストリーミングされたデータは、CesiumJSを使用してWGS84座標系に基づいて正確に三次元地理空間上に表現され、ウェブ上で可視化されます。このようにCesiumJSは、多様なユーザーエクスペリエンスを実現するためのライブラリとして活用されています。

TRANCITY上で再現された構造物の距離計測

TRANCITY上で再現された鉄道現場での面積算出

Trancity (Japanese)

Cesiumは海外諸都市ですでに多くの利用実績があり、CityGMLやLASといった様々な3Dデータ形式を3Dタイルに変換しストリーミング用に最適化しています。そのオープンな開発環境により豊富な開発事例を保持していることや、Web上で可視化され誰でも利用できる点、などが評価され採用されました。

ここで東日本旅客鉄道株式会社様と東海旅客鉄道株式会社様の実際の活用事例をご紹介します。

東日本旅客鉄道株式会社様では、発電所の更新工事において、以下のような課題を抱えていました。

広大な敷地内に展開されるインフラ工事の監理を少人数で行わなければならない

設計モデルとの整合性を確認するために各所寸法を計測する際、担当者が都度オフィスから離れた現場へ移動しなければならず、往復4時間かかる

また、東海旅客鉄道株式会社様では、鉄道の線路上空を交差する橋梁の点検において、以下のような課題を抱えていました。　　

終電から始発までの限られた時間の中で線路内に足場設置、点検、足場撤去をしなければならず点検の時間が十分に取れない

危険な作業が多く墜落などのリスクがある

これらの課題解決に向け、東日本旅客鉄道株式会社様においては、発電所工事の動画をTRANCITYへアップロード。現場が3Dタイルで正確かつ効率的にモデル化され、Webブラウザを通じて、三次元地理空間上で現場の詳細な状況を把握でき、少人数での効率的な管理が可能になりました。併せて現場とオフィスを移動する足ロスも解消することができました。

また、東海旅客鉄道株式会社様では橋梁の点検現場を３Ｄモデル化し、三次元地理空間上で点検を行うことで、生産性向上と安全性の向上を図ることができました。

＜東日本旅客鉄道株式会社様 　現場で計測していた業務をPC上で実施するイメージ＞

＜東海旅客鉄道株式会社様　夜間に足場を設置していたものを動画撮影に置き換えるイメージ＞

東日本旅客鉄道株式会社様、東海旅客鉄道株式会社様は、施設・設備工事の調査・設計・施工・点検管理からステークホルダーとの合意形成等に至るまで、労働者不足という日本社会に共通する大きな課題の解決を目指し、Cesium利用によるTRANCITYを活用した大幅な効率化や、分かりやすい説明によるステークホルダーの満足度向上に取り組んでいます。     

上記の改善点以外にも、従来、３Dデータを取り扱うために必要だった高性能な端末を不要にし、スマートフォンやタブレット端末などのツールでデジタルツイン上での速やかな点検や計測業務、シミュレーション提示を可能にするなど、デジタルツインのデータによる全く新しいサスティナブルな働き方への変革を実現しています。

TRANCITYは、日本のものづくりに求められる厳しい品質基準を満たすために、Cesiumでの正確な地球上の位置座標の表示性能を活用しつつ、質の高いデジタルツイン空間を実現しています。例えば現場の一部である鉄筋組み立て配置状況が、当該現場全体を空から俯瞰した状態からアクセスできるようになります。このため、鉄道のような線状に長い現場や、工場のように面状に広大な現場であっても、個々の細かな現場変化を効率的かつスピーディーに管理することが可能となりますが、これをCesiumとの連携により実現しています。すなわち、ミクロとマクロがシームレスかつ正確につながり、マクロの現場状況を地球レベルでの現場状況から拡大して確認できるデジタルツイン空間を実現したものです。それは、これまでに存在しない仕組みであり、人間にとってより身近なデジタルツイン空間を実現したプロダクトと言えます。そして2024年10月、TRANCITYはCEATEC AWARDデジタル大臣賞を受賞しました。

ご自身のインタラクティブなウェブアプリをCesiumJSを使用して構築するには、当社のラーニングセンターガイドをご参照ください。Cesium ionを使用すれば、全世界の地形、画像、建物を含むフルスケールの地球モデルに独自のデータをインポートすることができます。Cesiumの3Dタイルパイプラインは、データセットのサイズに関係なく、データをストリーミングに最適化します。無料のCesium ionアカウントにサインアップし、

Cesium Storiesを使って簡単に3D地理空間の体験を作成できる方法をお試しください。

また、Cesium ionの SaaSや セルフホステッドのソリューションがどのように貴社の3Dアセットの価値を引き出すのに役立つか、については、sales@cesium.comまでお問い合わせください。

TRANCITY Uses Cesium to Manage Japanese Railway Projects

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.

TRANCITY swiftly and automatically generates 3D models that accurately reflect real-world conditions in a 3D geographic space from various types of video footage. This includes videos captured by drones or robots, as well as those taken with smartphones or tablets. Additionally, users can upload BIM models and point cloud data, which can be overlaid on the 3D models. As a browser-based solution, CesiumJS-powered TRANCITY is accessible from any device, including PCs, tablets, and smartphones. The 3D models are managed chronologically and linked with location data, allowing precise tracking of "what happened, where, and when." By using TRANCITY, detailed information sharing between remote offices and field locations is facilitated, thereby supporting productivity and sustainable infrastructure management in the railway industry and beyond, including companies such as East Japan Railway Company and Central Japan Railway Company.

Because TRANCITY is built on CesiumJS and Cesium ion, it can efficiently handle and stream large volumes of diverse 3D data from power plant construction sites and planned facility construction areas, by converting them into optimized 3D Tiles for smooth visualization across all devices. Created by Cesium, 3D Tiles is the open standard for massive, heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets such as point clouds, buildings, and photogrammetry. TRANCITY enhances the management of large-scale infrastructure by linking 3D data with location information, and Cesium ion optimizes this data into 3D Tiles that are streamed rapidly to CesiumJS on any device. TRANCITY generates 3D data from video footage using their SfM technology at first, then transforms the data into 3D Tiles format for display in a viewer. This entire process enables data visualization in under an hour. The high-quality processing capabilities of the Cesium ion engine play a crucial role in this workflow.

The streamed data is accurately represented in 3D geographic space based on the WGS84 coordinate system and visualized on the web using CesiumJS. CesiumJS is utilized as a library to enable a variety of user experiences.

Distance measurement of structures recreated on TRANCITY. Courtesy CalTa Inc.

Area calculation at the railway site recreated on TRANCITY. Courtesy CalTa Inc.

Overview of TRANCITY. Courtesy CalTa Inc.

Trancity (English)

Cesium has extensive usage worldwide, having demonstrated its capabilities in numerous cities. It converts various 3D data formats, such as CityGML and LAS, into 3D Tiles optimized for streaming. The elements like the platform's open development environment, extensive development case studies, and capability for web-based visualization accessible to anyone were highly regarded and led customers to select Cesium.

Here are the actual cases of how East Japan Railway Company and Central Japan Railway Company have utilized TRANCITY and Cesium:

East Japan Railway Company faced the following challenges during the upgrade of a railway-owned power plant:

Managing infrastructure work across a vast site with a small team.

Checking measurements for consistency with design models required staff to travel to the site from the office, taking four hours for a round trip.

Central Japan Railway Company encountered the following difficulties with bridge inspections over railway tracks:

Installing scaffolding, inspecting the bridge, and removing scaffolding within the limited time between the last and first trains, which constrained inspection time.

The work involved significant risks, including potential falls.

East Japan Railway Company uploaded videos of the power plant construction to TRANCITY. This allowed the site to be streamed as accurate, efficient 3D Tiles, providing detailed situational awareness in a 3D geographic space via a web browser and enabling efficient management by a small team. It also eliminated the need for frequent site visits, reducing travel time.

Central Japan Railway Company used TRANCITY to model the bridge inspection site and stream it as 3D Tiles to the web, enhancing productivity and safety by conducting inspections within a 3D geographic space instead of short nighttime visits.

Before: On-site visits. Courtesy East Japan Railway Company. 

After: East Japan Railway Company uses TRANCITY and Cesium to measure and perform other tasks on a PC that previously required on-site visits. Courtesy CalTa Inc.

Video recordings can be added to TRANCITY instead of risky nighttime inspections in a short time. Courtesy Central Japan Railway Company.

East Japan Railway Company and Central Japan Railway Company are leveraging Cesium-powered TRANCITY to significantly enhance efficiency in addressing Japan's widespread labor shortage, a challenge that spans across various sectors of society. Their efforts encompass everything from surveying, designing, construction, and inspection management of facilities and infrastructure, to fostering consensus among stakeholders through clear and comprehensible explanations aimed at improving stakeholder satisfaction.

Beyond these improvements, CalTa Inc. is also pioneering a transformative approach to sustainable work practices, enabled by digital twin technology. This new method eliminates the need for high-performance devices traditionally required to handle 3D data, allowing for swift inspections, measurements, and simulation presentations on digital twins using smartphones, tablets, and other portable tools.

TRANCITY meets the stringent quality standards demanded by Japanese manufacturing by utilizing Cesium's precise geospatial capabilities to create a high-quality digital twin environment. For instance, TRANCITY allows access to detailed views of rebar assembly configurations within a site from an aerial perspective. This capability facilitates efficient and rapid management of both linear sites, such as railways, and extensive areas like factories, by seamlessly integrating detailed micro-level changes with macro-level site conditions on a global scale. This represents an unprecedented system that delivers a more accessible digital twin experience for users, and in October 2024 TRANCITY received the CEATEC Digital Minister’s Award for this work.

To build your own interactive web applications using CesiumJS, please refer to our Learning Center guides. With Cesium ion, you can import your data into a full-scale global model that includes worldwide terrain, imagery, and buildings. Cesium's 3D Tiles pipeline optimizes your data for streaming, regardless of dataset size. Sign up for a Cesium ion account and explore how to create immersive 3D geospatial experiences. For more information on how Cesium ion's SaaS or Self-Hosted solutions can enhance the value of your 3D assets, please contact us.

TRANCITYはCesiumを使用し、日本の鉄道インフラの管理を実現

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.

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 1.123 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.

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

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.

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 v0.24.0 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

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

“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.

Author’s note: Many thanks to my colleague Jeshurun Hembd for his significant contributions to these results.

To elevate the look of Cesium apps on the web, we’ve shipped key updates to glTF rendering over the past few CesiumJS releases, including improvements to the glTF physically based rendering (PBR) material model and tone mapping. 

We've focused our efforts on enhancing the initial impressions of glTF and 3D Tiles, particularly for visualizations where a diverse array of material types can significantly impact the digital representation. We're aiming for more than just pretty pictures—fundamentally our goal is to improve the user's understanding of complex 3D geospatial scenes. Lastly, we are committed to ensuring consistent model appearances with other apps in the glTF and 3D Tiles ecosystem, essential for data portability across different platforms and products.

glTF modern office by Kerkstra Precast via Sketchfab, in CesiumJS with updated PBR material model, tone mapping, and lighting.

Achieving a balance among visual quality, performance, and accuracy in a web-based environment like CesiumJS presents a unique set of challenges.

Browser-based limitations: Unlike native applications such as Unreal Engine or Unity, CesiumJS operates within the constraints of a browser. This impacts how much control we have over optimizing graphics processing and memory usage.

Runtime data streaming: In geospatial apps like CesiumJS, data is streamed at runtime rather than a designer constructing a pre-authored level with detailed lighting information. Since dynamic adjustments and computations at runtime are required, performance is top of mind.

Scalability and precision: CesiumJS is designed to handle millimeter-precision data up to global extents and from underground perspectives to views of outer space. Determining default parameters without losing detail or performance proves tricky.

During this push for better visual quality, our ubiquitous use of glTF was a huge asset. CesiumJS renders models with .gltf or .glb files and 3D Tiles which directly link to .gltf or .glb files. Working within the glTF ecosystem provided us with foundational tools, particularly an extensive library of sample models and open source reference implementations, such as the PBR shaders available in the glTF-Sample-Viewer repo from Khronos.

Let’s discuss the impact the improvements to the PBR material model and tone mapping have on glTF rendering in CesiumJS.

glTF 2.0 introduced physically based rendering (PBR) as a core feature, allowing for a simple, standard set of parameters to simulate real-world lighting interactions, materials, and surface properties. With PBR, a developer or artist without knowledge of rendering pipelines or shaders can build a material that accurately responds to lighting conditions, reflections, and shadows.

Key fixes and updates were to reflective properties of a physically based material in CesiumJS. 

Updated the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF), a function that defines how incoming light interacts with opaque surfaces, from a Schlick-Smith approximation model to a microfacet-based model yielding more physically plausible results.

Added approximate multiple scattering for diffuse light and reflectivity fixes, ensuring better energy conservation when light is scattered or reflected off of a surface.

These updates result in brighter looking models—good news, as we were seeing complaints of glTF models rendering too dark—and more consistency with the rest of the glTF ecosystem. Moreover, these updates greatly improved the appearance models with supported glTF PBR Next extensions recently implemented in CesiumJS: KHR_materials_specular extension, KHR_materials_anisotropy extension, and  KHR_materials_clearcoat extension.

After: Pot of Coals glTF sample model. Note the more realistic specular highlight on the burnt copper surface, improved reflectivity at grazing angles, and overall increased brightness of the model.

Tone mappers come into play as a last step of the PBR rendering process. They are functions that scale PBR output—linear values approximating real-world light energy, which may range orders of magnitude beyond what a monitor can display—down to a smaller device output range. 

CesiumJS previously tone mapped models, atmosphere, and the globe using ACES, a film industry standard but one that could often result in desaturated, dimmed appearances. We’ve replaced our default with the Khronos standard PBR Neutral Tone Mapper. That means more consistency of color appearance across the glTF ecosystem, which includes e-commerce vendors for whom accurate color representation is essential.

This new tone mapper widens the gamut of possible displayed colors and, in particular, helps brighten and slightly staurate the appearance of many models.

Left: Cesium Air glTF model with ACES tone mapping. Right: Cesium Air glTF model with Khronos PBR Neutral tone mapping. Note the brighter whites and more saturated greens and blues.

Left: San Miguel 3D Tileset with ACES tone mapping. Right: San Miguel 3D Tileset with Khronos PBR Neutral tone mapping. Note the brighter whites and more saturated greens and blues.

As we continue to build upon CesiumJS's visual capabilities, our enhancements to the PBR material model and the introduction of the Khronos PBR Neutral Tone Mapper have already gone a long way to improving our browser-based rendering quality. These updates enhance scene realism and consistency, address user feedback about dark models, and more closely align with standards of the glTF ecosystem.

Stay tuned for our next blog post on CesiumJS visual quality, which will focus on steps we’ve taken to enhance lighting and better match the current environment.

We encourage you to explore these updates and share your feedback in this community thread. Your insights are crucial as we continue to refine the visual quality of CesiumJS.

Leveling Up glTF Rendering in CesiumJS: PBR Improvements and Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping

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

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

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

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

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

Fix Texture errors when using a HTMLVideoElement. #12219

Fixed noise in ambient occlusion post process. #12201

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fixed rendering base color textures that contain an alpha channel.

The Cesium ion Reality Tiler was updated with performance improvements.

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

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

Linking to individual Cesium Stories slides.

Duplicating Cesium Stories and Cesium Stories slides.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cesium for Omniverse v0.22.0 is available. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pull requests and code reviews are an intrinsic part of software development at Cesium, but they can also be one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects. Our continuous integration (CI) processes aim to automate developer overhead, improve code quality, and increase confidence in our monthly releases before any code goes into the main branch. Every code commit is automatically built and tested, catching conflicts or errors early in development so developers can resolve them quickly. 

As maintainers of a large open-source project like CesiumJS, we face somewhat unique challenges in comparison to most codebases. To start, the JavaScript library for 3D geospatial visualization is extensive–just under 250,000 lines of source code and over 275,000 lines of test code. We must ensure code quality and consistency across contributions from a diverse group of external developers, and across a heterogeneous codebase consisting of JavaScript, HTML, GLSL, TypeScript definitions, API reference docs, developer docs, and more.

Since we initially set up the first CesiumJS CI pipeline using Travis CI, the demands on that pipeline have grown. We’ve replaced outdated build tooling, expanded quality checks, and added additional workflows. While Travis CI served us well in the early stages, Cesium grew as an organization and we started to run into scalability challenges: cost, speed, and fragmentation in CI tools used across different teams. 

Since Cesium was already deeply integrated with GitHub for issue tracking and code reviews, switching to GitHub Actions streamlined our processes. This move across the organization allowed the CesiumJS repo in particular to speed up our CI runs and to implement reusable actions across our repositories.

In our CI workflow, we focus on efficiency by running multiple jobs in parallel. This approach helps us speed up the integration process and ensures comprehensive coverage across key areas of development. 

Diagram of the CesiumJS CI process using GitHub Actions to run multiple jobs in parallel.

The status of each job is shown in the PR using commit statuses, signaling to the reviewer that the PR should not be merged until all jobs pass. Build artifacts such as logs, coverage results, and deployments are linked for easy access by the developer and reviewer.

Status results display in each PR, so status is immediately understood.

Automated builds confirm the project's stability. 

Spacebook Makes Space Data Accessible for All with CesiumJS

TRANCITYはCesiumを使用し、日本の鉄道インフラの管理を実現

Cesium Releases in November 2024

Leveling Up glTF Rendering in CesiumJS: PBR Improvements and Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping

Cesium Releases in October 2024

Cesium Releases in September 2024

CI for CesiumJS: A Deep Dive into Our GitHub Actions Workflow