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Cesium for Omniverse v0.28.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.23.2

CesiumJS 1.141

CesiumJS

For industries managing vast linear infrastructure like railways and power lines, safety and reliability are paramount—and ensuring that safety requires constant monitoring and analysis of immense volumes of data. The Cross Product, a software development company specializing in LiDAR data processing, addressed this challenge by creating TCP Studio, a 3D visualization platform built with Cesium.

TCP Studio V9

From raw data to a custom visualization platform

The Cross Product recognized a critical gap in their users’ workflows: while TCP could process massive point clouds to extract meaningful information, users often lacked the specialized tools to visualize and interact with these rich datasets. This was a barrier to turning processed data into timely, actionable insights for infrastructure management.

To bridge this gap, The Cross Product developed TCP Studio, a SaaS solution built from the ground up using CesiumJS. The Cross Product also converts LAS point clouds into 3D Tiles via Cesium ion’s tiling pipeline. “Previously, we assumed clients had their own visualization tools, which was only partially true,” explained Elise Vi Nhu Ba, R&D engineer at The Cross Product. “A dedicated interface is now a significant advantage, allowing us to showcase our solutions’ capabilities through a custom-built environment with full control over the UX.”

This control is crucial. TCP Studio provides an intuitive web-based interface where clients can explore their infrastructure in a high-fidelity 3D environment, interact with processed data, identify issues, and make informed decisions—all without needing to install or maintain their own complex software.

As part of the Bentley Activate program, a startup accelerator designed to support companies building innovative solutions on digital twin platforms, The Cross Product was able to maximize the work of a small team and accelerate their work with the Cesium platform.

The TCP Studio Project Explorer provides a high-level overview of infrastructure assets, overlaid on Sentinel-2 imagery via Cesium ion. Courtesy The Cross Product. 

Speed and automation: accelerating time to value

One of the most significant advantages The Cross Product gained from building with Cesium was development speed. Following an agile approach, the team delivered the first demonstration version of TCP Studio in just three months. This rapid prototyping validated their approach and enabled them to present a working solution to their users early in the development cycle.

This speed translates directly to client value. By using Cesium ion to tile massive LAS point clouds into 3D Tiles streamed to CesiumJS, TCP Studio delivers reliable performance, even with complex scenes. The platform also features solutions for automated measurements and issue detection. For example, users can automatically detect and flag areas where the track gauge on a railway is outside of the specified tolerance. This automation saves significant time and allows engineers to focus on critical maintenance tasks.

The Cross Product points to Cesium for a 10% growth in revenue in Q1 2026 by enabling new deals and creating a recurrent revenue stream through subscriptions.

TCP Studio features automatic detection of potential issues in large infrastructure projects. Courtesy The Cross Product.

A scalable foundation for high-performance geospatial visualization and analysis

The ability to quickly build and deliver a high-performance, scalable 3D visualization and analysis solution for massive geospatial datasets was crucial for The Cross Product.

Leveraging CesiumJS for visualization and Cesium ion for data tiling and hosting, The Cross Product was able to focus on its core expertise: developing advanced LiDAR processing algorithms and creating a tailored user experience.

“Cesium enabled us to transform massive LiDAR datasets into actionable insights and empower clients to remotely manage and explore their infrastructure within a high-performance, large-scale 3D platform.”

Elise Vi Nhu Ba, R&D Engineer, The Cross Product

Users can dive into detailed 3D views of their infrastructure, create and manage issues, and analyze measurements within TCP Studio. Courtesy The Cross Product.

For large infrastructure projects, CesiumJS provides a foundation for scalable and customizable solutions for end users. For more information about this project, contact Andrés Serna, CEO, The Cross Product. Explore how open source CesiumJS can help bring 3D visualizations in browser to your users. 

The Cross Product Transforms Raw LiDAR Data into Actionable Infrastructure Insights with Cesium

In April, we announced the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference tracks, published the full agenda, and highlighted the pre-conference workshops; excitedly tracked Artemis II; made 3D Gaussian splats available in the Cesium and 3D Tiles ecosystems; and shared what we’re showcasing at GEOINT Symposium next week. Will we see you there? Join us in booth 1303. 

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 1.141 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

Added support for properties (EXT_structural_metadata) in vector tilesets. #13426 

Bumped minimum required Node version to 22.0.0 .

BufferPrimitiveCollection properties modelMatrix, boundingVolume, and boundingVolumeWC are now readonly. They may be modified, but not reassigned. #13448 

Fixed lighting affecting EquirectangularPanorama. #13369 

Fixed incorrect matrix multiplication for non worldspace instance transforms in pickModel. #13433 

A 3D Gaussian splat tileset of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, USA, in CesiumJS. (Explore the Sandcastle.)

Cesium for Unreal v2.26.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

Added ACesium3DTileset::UnloadEditorTilesInPlayMode, which toggles whether in-editor tileset instances should unload their tiles before Play-in-Editor begins. This can prevent the Editor from duplicating resources for the same tileset and potentially consuming too much memory. 

Added a "Clear Request Cache" Blueprint-callable function to UCesiumRuntimeSettings and a button to Project Settings -> Plugins -> Cesium that clears all entries from the SQLite request cache database. 

Fixed a bug where Gaussian splats would continually accumulate in the scene, eventually causing the application to crash. 

In addition to the above, this release updates cesium-native from v0.59.0 to v0.60.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Check the Cesium for Unreal release and the Cesium for Unreal Samples release for the full list of updates.

Download the Cesium for Unreal plugin from Epic Marketplace

The Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, USA, visualized with 3D Gaussian splat tilesets in Cesium for Unreal. 

Cesium for Unity v1.23.2 is now available. 

This release updates cesium-native from v0.59.0 to v0.60.0 and brings bug fixes such as:

Fixed a bug in CesiumRasterOverlays::GeoJsonDocumentRasterOverlay where styles set on geometry objects within a FeatureCollection were not applied.   

See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

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

**Cesium ion SaaS**
- Cesium ion now enables organizations with paid accounts to require the use of SSO when their users log into ion. To learn more, contact support. 
- Cesium ion now generates levels of detail (LODs) for Gaussian splat assets generated through the reconstruction pipeline. 

**Cesium ion Self-Hosted** 
Cesium ion Self-Hosted 1.10.0 is now available. 

- Added support for ingestion and streaming of 3TZ assets. 
- Added UI enhancements to the Cesium ion dashboard. 
- Design tiler: Improved rendering of IFC elements by giving sub-assembly elements the bounding box of the full assembly. 
- Design tiler: Added more graceful handling of IFC lines that don’t meet the IFC specification. 
- Design tiler: Added support for parsing eastings, northings, and orthogonal height from IFC files. 
- Gaussian splats tiler: Added logic to filter out NaN and infinite values when parsing PLY files. 
- Design tiler: Emits double-precision floats (instead of single-precision floats) for IFC attributes and properties. 
- Design tiler: Fixed generation of IFC swept circular geometry for better shading and performance. 
- Design tiler: Fixed issues processing B-splines in IFC files. 
- Design tiler: Fixed issues processing some geometries with swept circles. 
- Reality tiler: Fixed an issue where duplicate vertices in input models could lead to inefficient textures and larger tilesets than necessary. 
- Reality tiler: Fixed a regression where duplicate vertices in the input would be written to tiles, rather than being filtered out. 
- Reality tiler: Significantly reduced memory usage for models with spatially incoherent textures. 

**Asset Server**
- Updated the asset server to the latest version. 

**Design Tiler**
- Added `IfcSpace` relations to element properties in IFC metadata. 

**Reality Tiler** 
- Fixed a race condition that could lead to subtree files with content/availability bits incorrectly set to zero. 

Bedrock.engineer leverages voxel support in draft 3D Tiles 2.0 and CesiumJS to stream large-scale subsurface geoscience data directly in the browser for city planning, infrastructure, and environmental decision-making.

XReality Factory (XRF) uses CesiumJS and Cesium for Unity for a single shared operational view for better, faster decisions across real operations and training scenarios, throughout defense, security, and emergency management. 

The Purdue University Envision Center has integrated Cesium for Unity into CollabXR, bringing geospatial support to their XR development platform that allows students and researchers to explore complex datasets together. 

Geotour brings together information about Crete’s history, landscapes, and biodiversity as well as photos, panoramas, and video tours of the island in a single interactive map built using CesiumJS. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Standardizing 3D Gaussian splats in glTF with SPZ compression 

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

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

—Neil Trevett, President, Khronos Group 

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

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

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

— Scott Simmons, Chief Standards Officer, OGC

Creating 3D Gaussian splats using Cesium ion 

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

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

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

Streaming to CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, and more 

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

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

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

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

Getting started with 3D Gaussian splats 

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

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

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

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

XReality Factory

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

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

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

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

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

Around Compass, XRF developed complementary tools:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XRF Connects and Integrates Missions with Cesium

As the Orion spacecraft journeyed around the moon during the historic Artemis II mission, space enthusiasts around the world have tracked its progress with Orbit Codex’s online flight tracker. Built on CesiumJS, the flight tracker offers an interactive 3D view of the spacecraft’s location and trajectory.

The Artemis II tracker in Orbit Codex shows the flight of the Orion spacecraft in CesiumJS using trajectory data from the JPL Horizons API.

Artemis II Tracker from Orbit Codex

Orbit Codex has tracked the real-time location of the Orion spacecraft from the moment of its launch using trajectory data from the JPL Horizons API. The interactive 3D capabilities in CesiumJS allow users to move forward and backward in time along the ship’s planned path, making it easy to understand orbital motion and mission phases.

Viewing the Artemis II mission in interactive 3D makes it possible to visualize the relative motion of Earth and the Moon together with Orion’s flight path.

With roots in the aerospace industry, Cesium was designed from its inception for the high precision, time dynamic demands of space visualizations. A highly accurate WGS84 ellipsoid model of Earth and skybox with correct star and Sun positions, combined with its ability to efficiently render solar system–scale data directly in the browser makes CesiumJS the engine of choice for numerous space applications.

“Orbit Codex is a massive database of over 14,000 entities across the entire solar system, including rocket launches, over 8,000 satellites, and extensive space debris. I needed a WebGL engine capable of rendering a massive swarm of live objects smoothly. Cesium is the absolute gold standard for handling that level of scale.” 

The Artemis II tracker is only one small piece of Orbit Codex. As space exploration has expanded across governments and commercial sectors, information about launches, spacecraft, and missions has become wider spread. Frustrated by the fragmented nature of space data, founder Bret van Putten harnessed his professional expertise as an AI consultant and startup founder to build a comprehensive real-time space operations platform. 

Orbit Codex brings together data from dozens of sources into one unified, interactive platform that tracks launches, spacecraft, astronauts, and missions across the solar system. Data drawn from The Space Devs API is enhanced with hand curated data and a custom Google Vertex AI pipeline that uses search grounding to autonomously collect and structure historical data from verified sources.

In addition to tracking the Artemis II mission, Orbit Codex uses CesiumJS to visualize numerous other activities in space. Here moon rovers are shown on Cesium Moon data. Courtesy Orbit Codex.

Across Orbit Codex, CesiumJS acts as both a visualization engine to illustrate concepts and as a spatial index for accessing the site’s datasets. Users can dive into a detailed dossier on any entity and then instantly launch into a real-time 3D environment showing a base’s launch pads, a satellite’s current orbit, or a planet’s surface.

Visitors to Orbit Codex transition seamlessly between detailed information about numerous space topics and 3D visualizations in CesiumJS, like this view of the launch pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Orbit Codex’s extensive encyclopedia covers 18 categories, from moonbases to rovers. Visitors can explore detailed views of more than 350 launch and landing sites in CesiumJS, read about propulsion systems, view a catalog of the more than 350 organizations working in space, and read the profiles of more than 800 astronauts. They can also track over 20,000 Earth-orbiting satellites and debris in a CesiumJS visualization that pulls TLE data from the CelesTrak and Space-Track catalogs. Space debris entries are enhanced by ESA DISCOS data describing physical properties such as mass and dimensions. Visitors will also find models of all eight planets in the solar system; Orbit Codex uses Cesium Mars and Cesium Moon for off-Earth terrain and imagery. 

Orbit Codex is a comprehensive repository of information about space, bringing together historical and current data from public and private enterprises, as with this entry on the Athena lunar lander.

As this Artemis mission draws to a close, Orbit Codex’s journey is just beginning. The site is growing to become a “space time machine” that allows users to scrub back to 1969 to watch a replay of Apollo 11, to follow active missions from launch to touchdown, or to look ahead to future space infrastructure, such as moon bases, habitats, and space elevators.

Orbit Codex points both forward and backward in time, creating an archive of past missions to space and looking ahead to humanity’s future forays into the universe.

CesiumJS provides the aerospace-grade precision and planetary scale for these ambitious plans. Sign up for your own Cesium ion account to begin developing with Cesium.

Orbit Codex Tracks Flight of Artemis II in CesiumJS

The Netherlands, perhaps more than any other country, appreciates how critical what lies below the surface is to what's built above. Much of the country sits below sea level, meaning groundwater is high, and centuries of silt and sand deposits from continental rivers mean the soil is soft. Consequently, understanding the makeup of the ground is of paramount importance for city planning.

Bedrock.engineer visualizes large geospatial subsurface datasets using 3D Tiles voxels. Here they use 3D Tiles voxels to visualize GeoTOP, a public geological model of the Netherlands by the Dutch Geological Survey. Courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

Visualizing national scale subsurface data with 3D Tiles voxels

GeoTOP demo by Bedrock.engineer

Unfortunately, subsurface data is challenging to share: the science is highly technical, and visualizations are often limited to PDFs, hand‑drawn cross sections, or specialized desktop software. That’s why Bedrock.engineer was founded. Bedrock.engineer works to make geotechnical data—boreholes, CPT tests, ground models, and analysis results—more accessible and easier to integrate into the tools engineers and stakeholders use. One of their interests is 3D visualization of subsurface models in the browser. Using the 3D Tiles 2.0 draft voxels extension in CesiumJS, they are streaming large subsurface datasets, demonstrating how open-format 3D Tiles enables geological voxel models to be explored in spatial context directly in the browser. Open source software and open data formats are central to how Bedrock.engineer works.

Bedrock.engineer visualizes subsurface data, like these boreholes in Hong Kong, together with above ground data in CesiumJS. Courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

Subsurface visualization with 3D Tiles voxels

Voxel representations, which can model continuous volumes and store material properties such as soil type, are ideal for subsurface datasets that hold continuous data like sediment layers. But visualizing very large voxel datasets in a geospatial context was not possible with open standards before 3D Tiles support.

Bedrock.engineer visualizes GeoTOP’s 50m deep subsurface data covering the entire Netherlands in CesiumJS using voxels. Courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

With the addition of voxel support in the draft 3D Tiles 2.0 specification, Bedrock.engineer can now combine voxel‑based subsurface models with 3D Tiles’ hierarchical streaming. Voxel renderings are currently a 3D Tiles extension and are part of the 3D Tiles 2.0 proposal, which was described at the 134th OGC Member Meeting in March. Bedrock.engineer has built their own Python tooling to convert gridded scientific formats, such as NetCDF, into 3D Tiles. 3D Tiles makes it possible to visualize dense, volumetric datasets covering an entire nation directly in the browser.

Bedrock.engineer brings GeoTOP data into CesiumJS using the 3D Tiles open standard, as in this dataset from Amsterdam. Courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

3D Tiles voxels make visualizing geoscience models possible, and bringing those 3D Tiles into CesiumJS makes it usable. What Bedrock.engineer appreciates most about CesiumJS is that visualizations are widely accessible to anyone with the link, allowing technical and nontechnical stakeholders to interact with the data directly.

"What 3D Tiles voxels change is accessibility. Subsurface models that used to require specialist desktop software can now be explored directly in the browser, in true 3D, in spatial context with the world above ground. And because it’s an open format, there’s no lock-in: anyone can build on it and combine it with their own data. That considerably lowers the barrier." 

– Jules Blom, Cofounder Bedrock.engineer

By bringing subsurface data into CesiumJS, Bedrock.engineer is also able to combine that data with other datasets, including terrain and buildings, for a more complete picture. For city planning, seeing what is below ground is only valuable if it’s shown in context with the natural and built environment above. Building on CesiumJS, Bedrock.engineer has implemented multivariable filtering, allowing users to see just the relevant data for any given application.

Fence diagrams make it easier to see layers of subsurface sediment. Courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

A prime example of Bedrock.engineer’s work is their CesiumJS visualization of GeoTOP, a public geological model of the Netherlands by the Dutch Geological Survey. By bringing GeoTOP into CesiumJS as 3D Tiles, Bedrock.engineer can embed the model in any browser-based application, combine it with other datasets in spatial context, and build custom tools on top of it, all using an open standard.

Every square meter of land in the Netherlands is designated for a particular use, such as agricultural, urban development, or green space. Municipalities are legally obliged to consider subsurface data whenever it is relevant to a public task. Courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

The GeoTOP model is well suited for governments seeking to better understand the geological features of their area at a regional scale. In the Netherlands, government bodies are legally required to consult BRO subsurface data, including models like GeoTOP, whenever it is relevant to a public task. Bedrock.engineer’s visualization makes it easier to understand and communicate what that data actually shows. When a local government can clearly see what’s below ground, they can make better decisions around spatial planning, groundwater management, land subsidence, and dike safety assessments.

Such visualization can also be useful to building developers in the early stages of a project. Knowing whether they’ll be dealing with peat or sand makes a significant difference when considering foundation type. Though GeoTOP is not a substitute for a full geotechnical investigation, but it gives a useful first indication before that work begins.

Semi-transparent voxel rendering of geophysical models reveals subsurface structures, creating an X-ray–like view of the underground. Data courtesy Emerald Geomodelling, image courtesy Bedrock.engineer.

Bedrock.engineer is working to add GeoTOP data to the LEIA viewer, a CesiumJS-based digital twin for the provincial government of Zeeland, Netherlands. Bringing GeoTOP into LEIA will allow policy makers to see subsurface data in spatial context with other government datasets. Bedrock.engineer has also brought a shallow subsurface model of the Antwerp urban region and harbor into CesiumJS, visualized as 3D Tiles voxels.

Voxel support is part of the draft 3D Tiles 2.0 specification, a key aspect of our commitment to open standards. If you’re working with volumetric data, explore the 3D Tiles OGC Community Standard, try it in CesiumJS, and share your feedback on GitHub. We’d love to see your implementation.

Bedrock.engineer Streams Subsurface Data at Nation Scale with 3D Tiles Voxels

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

CesiumJS 1.140 is now available. Highlights of the release include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fix performance issue with multiple ClippingPolygon on Cesium3DTileset. #13255 

ClippingPolygonCollection performance and quality improvements. #13308 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cesium for Unity v1.23.1 is now available. 

This release updates cesium-native from v0.58.0 to v0.59.0. See the changelog for a complete list of changes in cesium-native. 

Cesium for Omniverse v0.28.0 is now available. Highlights of this release include:

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

Peruse the changelog for the full list of updates, and get started with our Cesium for Omniverse tutorials. 

Download the Cesium for Omniverse extension

Download the Cesium for Omniverse samples

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matom.AI is applying AI to city‑scale point clouds, extracting meaningful insights from complex geospatial data for city management, power line inspections, and forest analysis. A Cesium Certified Developer, Matom.AI uses CesiumJS to build digital twins from massive datasets, including custom terrain, CityJSON, photogrammetry, orthophotos, and point clouds. The real innovation of Matom.AI’s platform is their AI‑driven approach to analyzing this data.

Matom.AI uses AI tools to segment point clouds and identify common elements such as trees and lamp posts. Here, they’ve automatically classified and modeled urban assets in a digital twin of Kaunas, Lithuania. Courtesy Matom.AI. 

Because CesiumJS and 3D Tiles make massive geospatial datasets easy to stream and visualize, Matom.AI can apply AI directly to raw city data, eliminating the need for labor-intensive modeling and enabling scalable, continuous analysis.

While a traditional digital twin requires developers to manually clean data, hand-build models, simplify, and then visualize, Matom.AI has flipped this order. They bring point clouds directly into CesiumJS and visualize first, then analyze at scale and structure with AI. These digital twins make it possible for teams in different locations to work with complex geospatial data directly in the browser, where they visualize large‑scale 3D datasets in a unified, high‑performance environment.

By fusing datasets captured at different times and from different perspectives, Matom.AI’s digital twins provide a more complete view. Cesium enables these diverse data sources to be visualized seamlessly within a single platform. Streamed in the browser as 3D Tiles, the data supports shared workflows, custom analysis, and reporting. The platform also supports real-time data collection through a mobile app, allowing field teams to capture information and add updates directly to the digital twin.

“CesiumJS allows us to deliver a truly collaborative digital twin that all stakeholders can access simultaneously. Everything streams directly in the browser, so teams across a city can make decisions together in real time.”

– Julius Gelšvartas, Chief R&D Officer and Co-Founder at Matom.AI

Matom.AI’s platform integrates AI-driven point cloud classification and instance segmentation, automatically detecting benches, poles, traffic signs, trash cans, and other urban assets. Each object can be analyzed individually and converted into structured models, making visualization and inspection more efficient. Built-in tools also calculate core characteristics of each element, such as location, height, and width, simplifying inventory management and infrastructure assessments.

AI-powered image segmentation, combined with measurement analysis tools, provide quick insight into large datasets, as in this detail view of a bus stop in Kaunas, Lithuania. Courtesy Matom.AI.

One of the most valuable capabilities Matom.AI provides is AI-powered change detection. By comparing scans captured at different points in time, the system highlights changes in buildings, vegetation, and city assets, helping users identify issues earlier and prioritize maintenance before small problems grow into larger challenges.

Here, Matom.AI highlights discrepancies between two datasets: one captured in winter and the other in summer in Kaunas, Lithuania. Courtesy Matom.AI. 

By making point clouds easier to analyze and act on, Matom.AI enables cities to collect data more frequently and maintain a continuously up‑to‑date digital twin. To visualize and analyze your point clouds in a geospatial environment and easily share with colleagues, bring them into CesiumJS using 3D Tiles.

If you are building creative solutions with Cesium, consider applying for the Cesium Certified Developer program, an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and connect with other developers in the community.

Matom.AI Extracting AI Insights from Point Clouds in CesiumJS

In December 2025, we shared our progress on AI-driven semantic search for Cesium Sandcastle. This feature is now generally available. 

Sandcastle has long been a cornerstone of the CesiumJS developer community: showcasing new features, sharing ideas, learning, prototyping, experimenting, and validating code. Its accessibility means developers can quickly find, build, and share code examples relevant to their projects, with demonstrations on how to implement features in the CesiumJS library. 

With the semantic search, users are now able to make a wider range of searches to more efficiently find sandcastles relevant to their queries. You no longer need to exactly match the name, description, or code to find applicable examples. 

The Cross Product Transforms Raw LiDAR Data into Actionable Infrastructure Insights with Cesium

Cesium Releases in May 2026

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

XRF Connects and Integrates Missions with Cesium

Orbit Codex Tracks Flight of Artemis II in CesiumJS

Bedrock.engineer Streams Subsurface Data at Nation Scale with 3D Tiles Voxels

Cesium Releases in April 2026