Now available: the Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In.

Now Available: Cesium Design Tiler and Add-In for Autodesk Revit

Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.14.0

CesiumJS 1.124

Federal & Defense

Join Cesium at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida, from December 2-5! I/ITSEC is the world’s largest gathering of professionals in modeling, simulation, and training, and we’re excited to be a part of it once again.

Stop by BOOTH 221 for Cesium demos curated specifically for the modeling, simulation, and training community.

Here’s a preview of what you can expect:

 I/ITSEC is a great opportunity to engage directly with our leadership and engineering teams. We look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions and demonstrate the latest capabilities from Cesium. 

We will also be hosting a Cesium Happy Hour at our booth on Tuesday from 3-5PM.

Announced last year at I/ITSEC, Cesium ion Self Hosted provides an offline capability for hosting, tiling, and streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets. When Cesium customers need to move their solution to the high side or a disconnected environment, Cesium ion Self-Hosted is the way to go. 

At I/ITSEC this year, we will feature a dedicated station where you can get hands-on experience with Cesium ion Self-Hosted. Like what you see and want to try it out in your environment? You can sign up for a free 30-day evaluation of Cesium ion Self-Hosted right at the booth.

Cesium ion, the solution for hosting, tiling, and streaming 3D geospatial data, is now available for your own environment as Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted

Explore Cesium Global 3D Content and Tiled Partner Data

We’ll also have all the Cesium Global 3D Content offline locally in our booth. This is the same data we ship to our Cesium ion Self-Hosted customers for hosting in their own local environment. 

Interact with these datasets in a Cesium Story hosted locally by Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Cesium Moon Terrain: the first complete, accurate, and readily-accessible 3D dataset of the moon.

Cesium World Bathymetry:  a global bathymetry and topographic terrain tileset that enables 3D visualizations, simulations, and analytics for use cases like oil and gas exploration, navigation for unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), managing offshore wind farms, and analyzing essential climate science.

Japan 3D Buildings and Regional Terrain Data: Providing a foundation for building digital twin applications and solutions in Japan.

Vexcel 3D Cities: High-quality 3D data models for more than 60 metro areas across the globe available for offline use with Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Live demos of Cesium’s open source plugins for today’s leading creation engines like Unreal Engine and Unity

Built on open standards and APIs, these plugins combine the 3D geospatial capability of Cesium and 3D Tiles with today’s leading creation engines.

Cesium for Unreal - Integrated with Unreal Engine Editor, Actors and Components, Blueprints, and other UE features to enable a high degree of interactivity, physical realism, and photorealism to create amazing experiences.

Cesium for Unity - Cesium for Unity is tightly integrated with Unity making it possible to visualize and interact with real-world content in editor and at runtime. The plugin also has support for Unity game objects, physics, collisions, and character interaction.

Cesium for Omniverse - Cesium for Omniverse enables users to visualize and interact with a full-scale, high fidelity WGS84 globe within NVIDIA Omniverse to create, visualize, and analyze simulations in their precise 3D geospatial context.

Cesium Native - Cesium Native powers Cesium's runtime integrations and is an open source foundational layer for any 3D geospatial software, especially those that want to stream 3D Tiles.

A First Look at Cesium’s all new Design Tiler

To improve workflows and capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context, Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program.

These tools transform IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets

Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program. These tools transform IFC and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets. Join us in connecting architecture and geospatial.

Connecting Architecture and Geospatial: AECO Tech Preview Program

CesiumJS Example with One World Terrain’s Well Formed Format based on 3D Tiles: 

The past year has seen many great developments for 3D Tiles, including its use by NBC Sports for broadcast coverage of the Paris Summer Games. 

At I/ITSEC, we will be showing how we continue to evolve this OGC Community Standard developed by Cesium including specific enhancements that are part of the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain Contract. Stop by our booth to see live demos of new features in the One World Terrain Well Formed Format (WFF),  an extension of 3D Tiles.

Once again Cesium will bring partners into the booth to showcase how they are utilizing the Cesium Platform. Stay tuned for specific days and times these demos will be shown. 

Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Gaming Research Integration Learning Laboratory (GRILL)  -  Presenting Glimmer, a VR application with Cesium Moon Terrain. (Wed. 1:30-6 pm; Thurs. 9:30 am- 3 pm)

Battle Road - Presenting AtomEngine, an Earth-scale realtime multiplayer simulation using Cesium World Terrain as well as their custom Cesium for Godot integration. (Tues. noon-6:30 pm; Wed. 9:30 am-1:30 pm)

Reveal - Presenting Farsight, a mobile first platform providing surveillance video, 2D, and 3D geospatial data for use in decentralized, comms-limited environments. (Tues. 2-6:30 pm; Wed. 1-30-6 pm)

Brightline Interactive - Presenting SpatialCore, Leveraging USD to bring AI to 3D environments with Cesium geospatial context. (Mon. 2-6 pm; Tues. noon-2 pm)

LuxCarta - Presenting BrightEarth, a web service that uses AI-enhanced production techniques offering high resolution building and tree extraction from from a range of sub-meter imagery sources rendered with CesiumJS. (Mon. 2-6 pm; Wed. 9:30 am-1:30 pm)

Northrop Grumman - presenting Helix, which uses Cesium for Omniverse to visualize generated synthetic training data. (Thurs. 9:30 am-3 pm)

Stop by BOOTH 221 or reach out to schedule time with the team. We look forward to connecting with you in Orlando!

It’s wildland fire season in the United States. 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.

Overview of Lockheed Martin JAM capability, featuring a sped-up clip of the Vista fire outside of Los Angeles, California. Courtesy Lockheed Martin.

Overview of Lockheed Martin JAM capability, featuring a sped up clip of Vista fire outside of Los Angeles, CA. Courtesy Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed Martin JAM - Vista, CA, July 2024

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.

The wildland fire incident list in the application is populated every 24 hours with information from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), based in Boise, Idaho, USA, to ensure daily updates on the number and locations of active wildland fires. Imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) is pulled every 30 minutes. 

In an upcoming feature, Lockheed Martin’s AI will detect near-real-time fire hot spots from this imagery and reflect them atop 3D terrain from Cesium every 15-20 minutes. Lockheed Martin uses its “super resolution” AI capabilities to, in effect, add more pixels to the images, which refines them prior to determining the near-real-time fire area from the satellite imagery.

Tracking a Pilatus PC-12 on patrol identifying and mapping wildland fires in CesiumJS. Courtesy Lockheed Martin.

JAM brings together ground, air, and satellite data from NIFC, NOAA, and ADS-B flight trackers (as seen in the image above) and combines them in CesiumJS. State agencies might also have their own assets (e.g., thermal imaging from multi-mission aircrafts) that can be added. The application uses Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps Aerial imagery streamed as 3D Tiles via Cesium ion, to provide incident commanders and staff an accurate 3D map to enhance the common operating picture. CesiumJS was built for interactive web apps and streaming massive amounts of data—it is lightweight and performant, vital for users receiving rapid updates in the field.

Work on the JAM prototype began in December 2023, and efforts on the current demo started in March 2024. Lockheed Martin, which employs 122,000 people worldwide, assigned five developers on this project. The company selected Cesium and its real-time update capabilities as an efficient, effective tool for visualizing historical wildland fire data. Lockheed Martin continues to leverage commercial partnerships to accelerate development of JAM.

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

Demo of suppression line visualization in CesiumJS. Courtesy Lockheed Martin.

The crew behind JAM is working toward including all active wildland fires in the US. The alpha version was completed in May 2024, and beta is slated for this summer.

You can fuse your own data with high-resolution terrain and imagery with Cesium ion; get started with a community account.

Lockheed Martin Tracks Wildland Fires with Cesium

Cesium held its inaugural 3D Geospatial Technical Exchange Meeting at Cesium headquarters in Philadelphia on June 25 and 26.

The purpose of the meeting was to bring experts in defense and intelligence together with the 3D Tiles user community to explore the theme, “Streaming 3D Geospatial Data, from Analysis to Mission Execution.”

Speakers from the Cesium team were joined by guest speakers from TAK Product Center,  Army Geospatial Center, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, NVIDIA, Reveal Technology, Epic Games, Maxar, Ansys, and Vexcel Data Program.

Highlights from Cesium's first 3D Geospatial TEM. 

Cesium 3D Geospatial Technical Exchange Meeting 2024

The event kicked off with a video message from Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi, who spent the week in Alaska as part of the DoD Joint Civilian Orientation Conference (JCOC).  JCOC enables business and community leaders to gain first-hand experience through operations and interactions with troops and military leaders across the US armed forces.

Nathan Frantz, Acting Director of TAK Product Center, then delivered the keynote address. The event also featured live demos by teams from Reveal Technologies and Lockheed Martin. 


Visit our Presentations page for slides presented by Cesium on CesiumJS, Native Runtimes, Cesium ion and Cesium ion Self-Hosted, and Cesium curated 3D data. We also held a session to gather community feedback on the Cesium roadmap. 

This inaugural, invite-only TEM is only the first of many such events we hope to host at Cesium HQ and around the country to foster collaboration around open standards and gather feedback from the user community. Join our mailing list to be notified of upcoming events.

Cesium's Inaugural 3D Geospatial Technical Exchange Meeting

To derive additional value from digital twins, Brightline Interactive’s SpatialCore platform pairs AI and the Cesium for Omniverse extension for spatial computing, empowering enterprise and public sector users to combine massive datasets and perform complex calculations. Spatial computing is the use of accelerated compute to analyze and process spatial data, in order to derive insights, make predictions, and perform calculations on one-for-one digital twins.

Leveraging geospatial datasets for AI training and tuning. Courtesy Brightline Interactive.

SpatialCore’s users face challenges in infrastructure, maintenance and operations, and training and simulation. As planners and engineers consider updating roads or building new ones, for example, they can use a SpatialCore-enabled digital twin to estimate how long a road will last, based on where the road is, what it’s made of, typical weather conditions, annual traffic estimates, the weight of those vehicles, and more. As the inputs change, so do the outputs, visualized and analyzed in immersive 3D.   

Rapid simulation and calculation enable swift decisions. AI is incorporated into NVIDIA Omniverse-powered workflows to aid calculations, reduce the required technical expertise of users, and train both humans and non-human assets (e.g., drones) with a realistic understanding of Earth. 

SpatialCore leverages open data sources and standards for compatibility with a wide range of data and tools. Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), created by Pixar Animation Studios as an extensible ecosystem for 3D worlds, and 3D Tiles, the Open Geospatial Consortium community standard created by Cesium, are streamed together for precise, scalable 3D scenes for collaboration on a multitude of devices. 

Real-time collaboration connecting and empowering teams. Courtesy Brightline Interactive.

“Global enterprise requires a global substrate. In principle, we can’t do what we’re doing without Cesium ion,” said Tyler Gates, general manager of Brightline Interactive.

SpatialCore employs a variety of data sources and tools for its complete picture. Brightline adds its own datasets and those of its clients, such as point clouds from drone scans, to Cesium ion, for hosting in the cloud, tiling into 3D Tiles, and efficiently streaming growing collections of data to Omniverse-powered applications and workflows. 

SpatialCore also uses Cesium ion to access Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles for line-of-sight visualization and Cesium OSM Buildings for building metadata via the Cesium for Omniverse extension. An accurate, full-scale WGS84 globe is included in the extension and enables SpatialCore’s vital calculations and resulting simulations. 

Immersive simulation on top of geospatial data. Courtesy Brightline Interactive.

Brightline Interactive will demo SpatialCore in Cesium’s BOOTH 1831 at GEOINT Symposium 1-5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.

Learn more about enabling 3D geospatial capability with Cesium for Omniverse.

Brightline Interactive Uses Cesium for Omniverse for Spatial Computing

Once again, Cesium will sponsor and participate in the nation's largest gathering of GEOINT professionals, the USGIF GEOINT Symposium 2024.

Join us at BOOTH 1831 in Kissimmee, Florida from May 6-8, 2024 to see how Cesium can address the needs of the GEOINT community.

Ansys Integration for Ansys Systems Tool Kit (STK), Ansys Digital Mission Engineering (DME) Component Libraries, and Ansys RF Channel Modeler

Ateo's Spatial Earth simulation in Unity and Apple Vision Pro

Brightline Interactive's Spatial Core Interface digital twin in NVIDIA Omniverse (stay tuned for more) 

French Air Force's CAP160 Heli Lab training simulation in Unreal Engine

Reveal Technology's Farsight platform for 3D geospatial data postprocessing and mission planning

Royal Air Force's Project THEIA Mission Planning and Rehearsal simulation in Unreal Engine

Additional featured demos by SpatialGIS, LSAS Tec, and COMSPOC

And more, including those available for preview on the Mission Support Demo page.

For the first time, Cesium will be demonstrating two all-new and much-requested capabilities for Cesium ion Self-Hosted:

Clipping feature ("clip and ship"): We'll show you how the feature allows users to cut out specific areas of your 3D geospatial data in Cesium ion to use in any visualization that accepts 3D Tiles or glTF. Stay tuned on this. 

Cesium World Bathymetry: A global bathymetry and topographic terrain tileset that enables 3D visualizations, simulations, and analytics by fusing multiple data sources into a single tileset. The dataset includes GEBCO's 2023 global dataset, high-resolution bathymetric data around the world, and topographical terrain for inland coverage, enabling you to build applications that span underwater, over land, and in the air.

Monday, May 6
4 - 4:45 PM, USGIF Vista Hub

Streaming 3D Geospatial Data for Mission Critical Simulations

Building geospatially accurate simulations for advanced operational training is easier and faster than ever due to the adoption of open standards like 3D Tiles. This session will highlight interoperability as a cornerstone for advancing simulation technology in quality, operational readiness, and collaboration, ensuring forces are better prepared for the challenges of modern operations.  

Moderator: Brady Moore, Director of Mission Support, Cesium

Commandant Barthélémy Minier, French Air and Space Force, Head of Helicopter Crew Training Center, Head of innovation for the French Air Force Helicopters

Owen Cahill, Special Projects Portfolio Manager, Reveal Technology

Build with Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform

Add high resolution insets to Army One World Terrain visualizations with 3D Tiles 1.1

Use real-time 3D graphics collaboration for your simulations in NVIDIA Omniverse

Stop by BOOTH 1831 or reach out to schedule time with the team. We look forward to connecting with you at GEOINT!

Cesium is continuing its long-term partnership with Maxar Intelligence on Phase 4 of the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain Contract. 

One World Terrain (OWT) is part of the Army’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE), an initiative to create a geospatially accurate virtual environment to support training, simulation, and operations. 

Visualizing time dynamic sensor geometries in CesiumJS using Maxar Precision 3D Mesh of Honolulu, HI.

One World Terrain - Sensors, Honolulu, HI

Cesium technology is a key component of the program focused on refining 3D Tiles, the Open Geospatial Consortium community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial data. 

The One World Terrain Well Formed Format (WFF) is an extension of 3D Tiles, contributing to the program's goals of global accessibility and scalability, delivery of high resolution data, and interoperability. 

Cesium’s efforts towards the program include:

Further development of format capabilities 

Cesium is proud to contribute to providing foundational data like OWT and 3D Tiles, which enables warfighters to carry out operations on the same data used in analysis and planning.

Cesium has supported the OWT contract for nearly 5 years. To learn more about how Cesium can support your federal use case, contact me. 

Cesium Supporting Maxar on One World Terrain

The French Air Force is augmenting training for helicopter pilots, crew members, and medics both in the air and on the ground with VR simulations using Cesium for Unreal.

Student servicemembers train in first- and third-person with Cesium for Unreal. Courtesy French Air Force.

French Air Force VR helicopter training

To minimize physical resources required for helicopter training and to properly prepare ahead of deployment, the French Air Force uses 3D geospatial data and collaboration in virtual reality. What do the terrain and buildings in a certain location look like? Should a pilot turn into the wind or away from it? How will the winch cables behave in different weather and at various altitudes? The French Air Force Heli Lab guides its trainees in answering those questions with accurate data at human scale, so they know what to do when they’re 40 meters above the ground.

The Heli Lab was created in 2019 with minimal funding, relying on free software and simulators with limited capabilities. Although this enabled the lab to imagine the possibilities for efficient training and begin work on its virtual reality program, the simulators could not communicate with troops on the ground, scenes had to be built from scratch, and locations were not precise, as they lacked a global map. 

The lab began using Unreal Engine and Cesium for Unreal to build their own platform in 2021, and in 2022 the team formally introduced the demo. With three people working full-time on the demo, the French Air Force’s helicopter VR training went from technology readiness level (TRL) 1, an idea, to TRL 9, operations, in the span of a year. 

View a trainee has in VR while being pulled up into a helicopter by a winch. Courtesy French Air Force.

The Heli Lab taps into the French Air Force’s drone imagery and videos of an area of interest, using Reality Capture to build that part of the world in 3D. The team adds these high-res insets to Cesium World Terrain and Photorealistic 3D Tiles, accessed via Cesium ion SaaS and streamed as 3D Tiles to Unreal Engine; the lab is now shifting to Cesium ion Self-Hosted, to securely host classified areas. 3D models of rotary wing aircraft enhance the trainings’ authenticity, ensuring crews learn on the helicopters that are available to them. Cesium for Unreal pairs 3D geospatial data with Unreal Engine’s high-fidelity rendering power, making their VR training program smooth and accurate. 

With student servicemembers around the globe, learning with each other in simulation pods in France or via headsets in Gabon, having realistic training in a single accurate simulation is vital. The lab qualifies 18 pilots, 6-10 winch operators, and 6-10 medics each year. Current helicopter crew students are using the VR program as 30-50% of their training.

Initiatives like this one—starting from pockets of innovation from armed forces subject matter experts solving their challenges in a short loop by leveraging commercially available technologies—are beginning to take hold in service branches worldwide. 

The French Air Force adds high-res insets to Cesium World Terrain and Photorealistic 3D Tiles. Courtesy French Air Force.

The Heli Lab’s VR training program will enable other teams to add and share their own datasets, broadening the reach of the platform and improving training and mission planning across the French Air Force with accurate 3D data for next-gen education and preparation. 

Meet strict security requirements with Cesium ion Self-Hosted: hosting, tiling, and streaming for massive heterogeneous 3D data in your own environment. To build your own global-scale applications in VR using Cesium for Unreal, including for mission-critical situations, follow our VR Series for Geospatial Apps.

French Air Force Uses Cesium for Unreal for VR Helicopter Training

We’re delighted to announce Cesium World Bathymetry, a new global tileset that opens up visualization and analysis of underwater environments. Cesium World Bathymetry enables exciting and wide-ranging 3D visualizations and simulations for use cases like oil and gas exploration, navigation by unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), managing offshore wind farms, and analyzing essential climate science. 

Cesium World Bathymetry, a new global tileset that opens up visualization and analysis of underwater environments.

Cesium World Bathymetry

Cesium World Bathymetry includes land terrain for exploring coastal areas, complementing Cesium World Terrain’s global land terrain coverage. It fuses multiple open data sources into a single bathymetry and topographic terrain tileset, including GEBCO's global dataset and incorporating higher resolution data around the world up to 1m resolution. 

Hawaii coastline in Cesium World Bathymetry

Cesium World Bathymetry is easy to access and use. Just sign into Cesium ion SaaS, add Cesium World Bathymetry to My Assets, and begin streaming into CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, Cesium for Omniverse, and other 3D engines. To stream from your own environment, Cesium World Bathymetry can also be licensed with Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

The following clip illustrates several CesiumJS options useful for bathymetry visualization. 

Bathymetry off the coast of the Philippines, visualized with CesiumJS

CesiumJS and Cesium Global Bathymetery - Philippines

This is just the beginning! In the coming months, look for enhancements to CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium for Omniverse that make it easier to build visually stunning apps. We also plan to include additional high-resolution data for areas of particular interest around the globe. 

If you have feedback or requests, or are interested in hosting Cesium World Bathymetry in your own environment, Contact us. 

The Mariana Trench in Cesium World Bathymetry

Cesium ion, the solution for hosting, tiling, and streaming 3D geospatial data, is now available for your own environment as Cesium ion Self-Hosted. Use Cesium ion Self-Hosted to meet corporate policy requirements or create air-gapped solutions that meet strict security requirements that can be deployed to remote, disconnected environments.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted offers all the features of Cesium ion SaaS including:

Best available tilers for optimizing your data as 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium

Integrations with CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium for Omniverse make it easy to build apps for the Web and game engines

Fuse your own data with optional curated global 3D terrain, buildings, and imagery 

Cesium Stories: Our no-code solution for easily creating and sharing interactive 3D geospatial presentations

User-friendly UI for managing 3D geospatial content and enabling collaboration

Cesium ion Self-Hosted is easy to integrate into your environment via a REST API and connection with your identity provider using SAML. It is deployed on Kubernetes, which provides scalability, unified infrastructure management, and the flexibility to deploy to commercial Cloud services like AWS, your own data center, or edge devices near where you capture data.

We recently demonstrated Cesium ion Self-Hosted at I/ITSEC 2023, the world's largest modeling, simulation, and training event. Cesium ion was installed on a NUC, a small, portable server that can be accessed by computers on a local network. This setup illustrated the potential for Cesium ion Self-Hosted to support remote and disconnected requirements, such as for drone data capture, visualization, and analytics in areas without network service.

“We’re encouraged by the demand and enthusiasm we saw at I/ITSEC for this offering and we’re eager to see what the 3D geospatial community builds now that the full range of Cesium ion capabilities is available in self-hosted deployments,” said Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi.

Combining Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Cesium ion SaaS with an asset from Cesium ion Self-Hosted. 

Self-Hosted Add Assets

We’ve improved the Quick Add panels for Cesium for Unreal and other Cesium plugins to allow developers to access content in Cesium ion Self-Hosted as well as Cesium ion SaaS. You can even connect to multiple Cesium ion accounts at the same time to build apps that combine SaaS-only content like Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles with content you manage in Cesium ion Self-Hosted. 

Download the Cesium ion Self-Hosted one-pager.

Many thanks to the members of the Cesium community who participated in the testing and evaluation of Cesium ion Self-Hosted during the initial trial period.

Cesium ion Self-hosted can be licensed together with Cesium global 3D content, including Cesium World Terrain. Contact sales to learn more, or try Cesium ion SaaS now.

The UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has been preparing troops for some missions with immersive XR simulations in Cesium for Unreal.

RAF collaborated with VRAI to build its Virtual All-Domain Environment (VADE) mission planning and rehearsal system for both aircrews and operators on the ground. Defense planners can view operating areas, such as patrol routes, in typical light and with predictive weather conditions, providing critical situational awareness prior to deployment. 

Kabul, Afghanistan, in RAF’s VADE, built on Cesium for Unreal. Courtesy UK Royal Air Force.

VADE began as a demo in 2021 and is still considered a proof of concept, but it was quickly applied to operational training—accurate, shareable 3D geospatial context enables better decisions. Users have been able to rehearse parachute assaults, visualize adversary equipment, and inspect potential evacuation routes at a 1:1 scale in XR, gaining a deeper understanding of locations and capabilities. VADE has been used in planning recent evacuations.

Through a suite of tools, users can rehearse parachute drops in VR in VADE, simulating the view they can expect to see through night vision goggles at their desired altitude. Courtesy UK Royal Air Force.

“How can I surmise this: through the darkness I was not met with the usual confusion of a compound I had imagined from above, but instead could instantly recognise the situation and orientate myself within milliseconds. One could argue this, on occasion, is the difference between success and failure,” said one VADE user.

Maxar Technologies Precision3D 3D Surface Model is visualized within VADE. The ability to ingest this kind of data enables users to immerse themselves fully in any location around the world. Courtesy UK Royal Air Force.

Cesium ion enables VADE to be data agnostic, as the system can ingest various large datasets and render them in high fidelity quickly and accurately. Data from several sources comes together in VADE via Cesium for Unreal: Cesium World Terrain; Maxar Precision3D 3D Surface Model; imagery from Sentinel-2, Bing Maps Aerial, and the UK Ministry of Defence; Reveal Farsight models; photogrammetry from VRAI; and data from OpenStreetMap are hosted on Cesium ion On-Premises and tiled into 3D Tiles for streaming into Unreal Engine. With Cesium ion On-Prem, data is hosted offline and locally, ensuring security for RAF.

Defense planners can view operating areas in typical light and with predictive weather conditions. Pictured is London. Courtesy UK Royal Air Force.

To bolster situational awareness and modernize military planning and education, RAF uses Cesium to bring together better data, which can enable better decisions. Bring 3D geospatial to your mission-critical apps.

Royal Air Force Plans Operations in XR with Cesium for Unreal

Cesium will be exhibiting from November 27 to December 1 at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), the world's largest modeling, simulation, and training event, in Orlando, Florida. 

Meet the team in BOOTH 559 and experience Cesium demos curated for the modeling and simulation community. 

Here’s some of what we’ll be showing:


For the first time, Cesium will be demonstrating Cesium ion Self-Hosted, our new software solution for hosting, tiling, streaming, and analyzing 3D geospatial data in your own private environment. 

Coming December 2023, Cesium ion Self-Hosted features:

Delivery via Kubernetes to accelerate deployment and scalability

SAML-based user management to simplify integration

Same User Experience (UX) as Cesium ion's Software as a Service platform, including drag-and-drop ease of use

3D Tiles 1.1 generation for integration with Army One World Terrain data

Cesium Stories for dynamic, no-code presentations in 3D

As always, our included 3D Tiling Pipeline is engineered to produce the most optimized 3D tilesets for streaming, runtime visualization, and analytics.

Our new Reality Tiler for 3D photogrammetry and reality captures provides improved scalability, implicit tiling for optimized queries, KTX 2.0 compression for faster loading and decreased GPU memory usage, and enhanced coordinate reference system support for easier positioning on the globe.

Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform in Cesium ion

Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform are now included with Cesium ion, our SaaS platform for tiling, combining, and streaming global-scale 3D data for your immersive 3D geospatial applications and simulations. 

Combine the power of NVIDIA Omniverse’s ray tracing, advanced rendering, and AI/ML capabilities with Cesium’s 3D geospatial technology with our free, open source extension for NVIDIA Omniverse. Cesium for Omniverse enables users to visualize and interact with a full-scale, high fidelity WGS84 globe within NVIDIA Omniverse to create, visualize, and analyze simulations in their precise 3D geospatial context. 

Cesium for Unreal is a free, open source plugin that brings precise, real-world data into Unreal Engine at global scale, providing high visual realism and accurate physics while enabling models to interact with geo-specific environments. 

We recently released Cesium for Unreal 2.0!  Download from UE Marketplace.

Combine the 3D geospatial streaming capability of Cesium and 3D Tiles with the Unity ecosystem.

CesiumJS provides 4D visualization for operations use cases such as analysis, planning, common operating picture (COP), and rehearsal. Together with Maxar and OpenSensorHub, we’re leveraging 3D Tiles 1.1 and the Army One World Terrain Well-Formed Format to enable 4D visualization and tooling for measurements, line of sight, viewshed analysis, and more.

Explore your 3D data at runtime with improved performance, including metadata classification, implicit tiling, and enhancements using glTF.

Featuring point cloud data of Philadelphia from Exyn combined with Precision 3D Mesh from Maxar. 

Also, learn more about fast-moving technologies using Cesium and 3D Tiles from across the community including:

Exyn Technologies: Tuesday, 11/28, noon - 6:30 pm

Air Force Research Lab GRILL: Wednesday, 11/29, 9:30 am - 1 pm

Reveal Farsight: Thursday, 11/30, 9:30 am - 1 pm

Stop by booth 559 or reach out to schedule time with the team. We look forward to connecting with you in Orlando!

To visualize complex multidomain scenarios—from urban environments to deep space—Ansys integrates Cesium with Ansys Systems Tool Kit (STK), Ansys Digital Mission Engineering (DME) Component Libraries, and Ansys RF Channel Modeler.

Both Ansys and Cesium have served the United States’ and allies’ aerospace and defense industries for decades, modeling multidomain systems of systems in time-dynamic environments. These simulations enable engineers to build and test virtually rather than experimenting on multiple physical prototypes, decreasing manufacturing costs and risk.

CesiumJS began at aerospace software company Analytical Graphics, Inc. and spun out as an independent company in 2019. Analytical Graphics, Inc. was then acquired by Ansys, which continues to leverage Cesium technology as Ansys Government Initiatives. 

“Cesium has truly revolutionized the geospatial ecosystem, and driving for modern open standards is phenomenal,” said Shashank Narayan, CTO of Ansys Government Initiatives.

Simulations enable engineers to build and test virtually rather than experimenting on multiple physical prototypes, decreasing manufacturing costs and risk. Courtesy Ansys.

Released in 1989, STK is a physics-based mission modeling environment that incorporates visualization of land, sea, air, and space scenarios and the airplanes, spacecraft, and other vehicles and facilities that go with them. Users can model the relationships among the moving objects and apply constraints, such as clouds, terrain, and buildings, to assess their impact. For example, how might clouds affect imagery collection or navigation? How might flying in a canyon affect radio or internet access? For context and constraints, engineers can use STK's Geospatial Content Server (GCS) capability and integrate the CesiumJS globe and Cesium ion’s tiling pipelines. If STK users have Cesium ion accounts, they can seamlessly access Cesium World Terrain and Bing Maps Aerial imagery and include their own datasets, which can be tiled into 3D Tiles for optimal streaming and visualization.

Ansys and Cesium have served the United States’ and allies’ aerospace and defense industries for decades, modeling multidomain systems of systems in time-dynamic environments. Courtesy Ansys.

DME Component Libraries are a collection of class libraries in .net and Java, which enable satellite propagation including maneuver modeling, aircraft flight modes, ground system routing, RF communication, and radar systems analysis. These libraries are ready to be deployed in a SaaS or individual workstation deployment. Engineers can use DME Component Libraries to build custom applications that incorporate analytical capabilities found in STK. DME Component Libraries increase precision and interoperability with Cesium ion SDK, which extends the open-source CesiumJS JavaScript library with additional 3D analysis tools and UI widgets.

DME Component Libraries increase precision and interoperability with Cesium ion SDK. Courtesy Ansys.

RF Channel Modeler addresses the needs of RF systems designers, telecommunications planners, and network engineers. It enables users to predict signal coverage, evaluate waveform performance in bespoke locations, mitigate interference, and achieve the right balance between coverage and capacity. High-fidelity modeling and simulation enables these users to better understand the growing complexities and sophistication of today’s communications systems while optimizing their proposed designs. RF Channel Modeler builds on top of STK and connects its dynamic mission modeling capabilities with high-fidelity datasets and ray tracing technologies to analyze system performance at individual channel levels. This solution relies on 3D Tiles to introduce the necessary high-resolution urban environment models, which can be streamed directly via Cesium ion for accurate city features and metadata. RF Channel Modeler’s workflow lets users add base stations, cars, airplanes, or other objects that may be needed to accurately analyze and assess the performance of modeled RF systems in its simulated environment.

Ansys RF Channel Modeler users can predict signal coverage, evaluate waveform performance in bespoke locations, mitigate interference, and achieve the right balance between coverage and capacity. High-resolution urban environment models can be streamed via Cesium ion for accurate city features and metadata. Courtesy Ansys.

Ansys STK RF Channel Modeler users can predict signal coverage, evaluate waveform performance in bespoke locations, mitigate interference, and achieve the right balance between coverage and capacity. High-resolution urban environment models can be streamed via Cesium ion for accurate city features and metadata.

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