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Cesium for Omniverse v0.28.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.23.2

CesiumJS 1.141

Latest news

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

The GEOINT Symposium is one of my favorite events of the year, and I'm thrilled that Cesium is sponsoring and participating again this year! We're excited to reconnect with the community and dive into the latest geospatial innovations that are advancing national security. 
 
We’ll be at booth 1303 at the Gaylord Rockies in Aurora, Colorado, May 3-6, showcasing the latest from Cesium. Stop by to talk with the team and see how our platform leverages open standards to deliver secure, mission-ready deployments, advanced reality modeling and analysis, and cutting-edge AI integrations. We’ll demonstrate how LLMs and agentic AI can transform the way you interact with your data, enabling natural conversational access to your 3D environments.  

Visit Cesium in booth 1303 at GEOINT Symposium 2026.

Interoperability: The days of siloed systems have faded. Mission success increasingly depends on technologies integrating across environments, domains, and partners.  

Mission-ready 3D geospatial data: We see growing demand for high-fidelity 3D geospatial that serves operations, not just visualization, to “train on the data you operate on.” This ensures simulations, AI models, and mission planning all leverage foundational data to reflect reality. High-res insets captured at the tactical edge are integrated for actionable intelligence. 

LLMs + Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers: As LLMs and agentic AI integrate into mission workflows, 3D Tiles provides a structured, streamable way for these systems to access real-world context. Paired with MCP-style architectures, this enables agents to take action. They can interact with live 3D environments and surface insights in real time.  

Gaussian splats and reality modeling: Beyond traditional meshes, Gaussian splatting allows representation of complex "un-meshable" scenes with incredible photorealism and efficiency. 3D Tiles 2.0 and the upcoming extensions provide the foundation for these massive, high-fidelity reality models to be scalable, interoperable, and analysis ready. 

3D Tiles as the foundation: We will demonstrate government use cases for 3D Tiles 1.1 and highlight new capabilities coming in 3D Tiles 2.0, positioning the open 3D geospatial ecosystem for the next decade. 

Bentley Systems integration: Since joining Bentley, we have doubled down on openness and interoperability, accelerating Cesium’s mission. See how our integration with iTwin bridges the gap between AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) and GEOINT, providing a subsurface-to-space view of the world. 

iTwin Capture-powered reality modeling and analysis: We're turning raw 2D imagery into high-fidelity 3D reality meshes, point clouds, and Gaussian splats for advanced feature extraction and analysis. 

Cesium AI integrations: By connecting the Cesium ecosystem with the MCP, we enable LLMs and agentic AI to reason about the real world. This includes MCP servers for camera control, entity management, and geolocation, allowing AI assistants to not only query 3D data but also interact with and navigate live CesiumJS scenes. 

Our Moon Lander Game: Back by popular demand and after the successful Artemis II mission to the Moon, we’ll have our Moon Lander Game built with Cesium Moon and Cesium for Unreal. You can also see how CesiumJS was used to track the flight of Artemis II.  (Go, Artemis!) 

Cesium ecosystem in action: We’ll have daily demos from our partners, including Ansys, Blacknight Space, and XRF. 

I’m also excited to present a lightning talk on 3D Tiles 2.0 at 1:10 p.m. on Tuesday in Innovation Corner, outside Exhibit Hall 3, and look forward to your input on the standard. 3D Tiles 2.0 is currently going through the community standard process at OGC.

And, of course, join a great crew from across the geospatial community at the Cesium Reception on Tuesday night at Mountain Pass Sports Bar, upper level, from 9 p.m. to midnight. 

The future of geospatial is being built on open standards, interoperability, and AI-driven insights. We can't wait to explore these trends with you and shape the next decade of geospatial innovation together. 

Connect with us at BOOTH 1303 and feel free to schedule a meeting with our team to discuss your specific needs. We look forward to seeing you at GEOINT! 

Editor's note: updated demo partners on April 28, 2026.

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. 

Examples of semantic search in Sandcastle.

More efficiently find sandcastles relevant to your queries with semantic search.

Semantic Search in Cesium Sandcastle

This is powered by an open-source embedding model, which embeds the user's query and compares it to the semantic embeddings that are now precomputed for the full code contents for all sandcastles. This open-source embedding model is run locally on the end user's hardware, so your search data never leaves your device, just as before. By leveraging cutting-edge models optimized for small size, search performance remains fast. 

The semantic search functions as a hybrid with the previous search, so any existing search results will still appear as before. To opt out of the semantic search, you can disable the "Semantic Search" toggle in settings. 

Try the new semantic search here, and share feedback on GitHub. 

AI-Driven Semantic Search in Cesium Sandcastle Now Available

We’re excited to add support for panoramic imagery in CesiumJS, enabling developers to add high-resolution 360° panoramic imagery from sources like Google Maps into their 3D geospatial applications. Viewed in a 3D scene and combined with other 3D assets, panoramic imagery provides immediate geospatial context, making the ground‑level scene easier to understand, navigate, and relate to surrounding terrain and assets.  

This CesiumJS sandcastle shows how to include a panoramic image in a CesiumJS app.

Google Street View contains a vast global resource of panoramic imagery. We created a helper class to load panoramic Google Street View images from anywhere in the world directly into a CesiumJS scene. This helper class is used in the sandcastle example below. Google Maps also makes available a Street View availability layer, which is included in the example to indicate where Street View imagery is available for loading. 

This CesiumJS sandcastle shows how to include a panoramic image from Google Street View in a CesiumJS app.

CesiumJS supports the display of panoramic imagery in equirectangular or cube map formats. Both can be geolocated and oriented within a scene to align with other geospatially accurate features and integrate cleanly with all 3D rendering capabilities in CesiumJS. 

A panoramic image in equirectangluar format and cube map format. Photo by David Iliff. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.

CesiumJS supports bringing your own panoramic imagery to render within a scene, as well as loading panoramas from external providers such as Mapillary. In the example below, panoramic images were captured alongside LiDAR point cloud data using a mobile mapping system, and CesiumJS allows both datasets to be visualized together in the same 3D scene. 

A CesiumJS scene featuring a panorama image aligned with a LiDAR point cloud, courtesy of Bentley iTwin Capture. 

Split Screen: Panoramic and Point Cloud

Ready to enhance your 3D scenes with high-resolution, geospatially accurate panoramic imagery? Check out the tutorials on displaying panoramic images and using Google Street View to get started. 

Introducing Panoramic Imagery in CesiumJS 

Attendees at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference in Philadelphia.

We are thrilled to announce the return of the Cesium Developer Conference, taking place June 8-10, 2026, in Philadelphia, PA, USA, at the Loews Hotel. Join us to connect with fellow developers and innovators from around the globe who are shaping the future of open geospatial technologies.

The 2026 Cesium Developer Conference is a unique opportunity for the community to come together, share ideas, and collaborate on solving real-world challenges. We invite you to be a part of the conversation by submitting a presentation proposal. The call for presentations is open now, January 5, through Friday, January 30.

We are looking for engaging, technically oriented presentations that showcase the incredible work being done across 3D geospatial. Whether you're pushing the boundaries of 3D, AI, and data technology, transforming AEC and digital twin workflows, or pioneering new applications in aerospace and defense, we want to hear from you.

Last year's conference featured a wide range of inspiring sessions, including:

 "A Cesium-Based Web Application for Accessing NOAA Scientific Data"

"Accelerating AEC Workflows with 3D Geospatial Context in Runtime Engines"

"Gaussian Splatting with 3D Tiles and glTF"

"High Fidelity NASA Surface Operations for Astronaut Training Using Cesium Moon"

“One World Terrain’s Well Formed Format 2025”

This year, we look forward to another lineup of groundbreaking presentations from the community. We encourage both full-length talks (20 minutes) and lightning talks (5 minutes) that highlight your innovations and experiences with 3D creation engines, CesiumJS, iTwin, 3D Tiles, interoperability, and openness. Submit your presentation here; the submission window will close end of day on January 30, 2026. 

The conference will feature community-driven tracks, a pre-conference workshop for a hands-on deep dive, and numerous opportunities for networking and collaboration.

Call for presentations: January 5 - January 30

Early bird registration: January 19 - March 16

Conference + pre-conference workshop: $650

US government employees: complimentary. Contact us for your registration code.

Students (conference only): Discounted registration is available; contact us for your discount code.

Don't miss this opportunity to share your expertise, learn from your peers, and help grow the open geospatial ecosystem. Submit your presentation proposal and be a part of the event that is "a glimpse into the future of geospatial technology," as one attendee put it.

Share Your Vision: Present at the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference

This year, NORAD Tracks Santa turns 70.  

Its origin story is as mythical as Santa himself: A 1955 Sears ad advertised a Santa hotline. A single number was misprinted, leading to a call to the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Center in search of Santa Claus. The rest is history, with North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) taking over responsibility from CONAD in 1958. Over the years, the Santa-tracking process has become more elaborate, including visualizing the jolly old elf’s real-time location in 3D with CesiumJS. 

Each year, NORAD estimates, the hotline receives more than 380,000 calls to the call center at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, and the NORAD Tracks Santa website gets visitors from over 200 countries.  

Cesium is proud to have been a part of the program since 2012.  

NORAD Tracks Santa 2025

 Tracking such a magical feat requires serious coordination and cooperation.  

The effort includes several systems that offer a real-time snapshot of Santa’s whereabouts:  

Radar: The North Warning System, a powerful radar system with 47 installations across North America, is the first to detect Santa's departure from the North Pole.  

Satellites: NORAD uses a network of satellites in geosynchronous orbit to track Santa.  

Santa Cams: A network of high-speed digital cameras, strategically placed around the world, captures images and videos of Santa and his sleigh.  

Fighter jets: Canadian and American NORAD pilots have the unique honor of escorting Santa for a portion of his journey. 

Kris Kringle takes flight over Japan in the NORAD Tracks Santa app.

Here’s a look under the hood at how Cesium helps bring this experience to life: We combine 3D terrain, high-resolution satellite imagery, a NASA star map, a 3D model of Santa’s sleigh, and more in CesiumJS for efficient, accurate streaming on the web.  The lighting is dynamic, reflecting the position of the sun throughout December 24.  

Plus we receive and integrate real-time positional data from NORAD's tracking systems to make sure you know where The Big Guy is at any moment. Cesium enables features like camera flights that smoothly transition to different locations and billboards that provide information about the places Santa has visited. You can take a deeper look at the technology here.  

We look forward to our continued role in this heartwarming tradition that brings joy to millions.    

Track all the jolly action on December 24 at the Official NORAD Tracks Santa website. 

NORAD Tracks Santa: A Cesium-Powered Christmas Tradition 

The Cesium team will be at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida, December 1-4! 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. 

Join us in BOOTH 221 for Cesium demos curated specifically for the modeling, simulation, and training community. 

Come by the booth to engage directly with our teammates. We look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions and demonstrate the latest capabilities and integrations that enable better decisions, faster. 
  
We will also be hosting a happy hour 3-5 p.m. Tuesday, December 2, at our booth. 

US Army One World Terrain Well Formed Format built on 3D Tiles 

We continue to collaborate with the community to evolve 3D Tiles, including specific enhancements that are part of the US Army’s One World Terrain contract. See live demos of new features in the One World Terrain Well Formed Format (WFF), an extension of 3D Tiles. We’ll stream a massive One World Terrain dataset via Cesium ion to CesiumJS—the same data used for analysis and planning can be used for execution. 

We’ve incorporated iTwin Capture technology to bring reality modeling and analysis to Cesium ion. Reconstruct 3D reality models from photos, such as high-res drone imagery, as 3D Tiles mesh and seamlessly stream them. Combine your reality data with Cesium World Terrain or other curated 3D data for a unified view and improved situational awareness. Run AI-powered reality analysis on point clouds for segmentation and embedded metadata.  

Released in September, Cesium Mars is a 3D Tileset to enable developers, researchers, and mission planners to create visualizations and simulations of the Red Planet. It comprises precise terrain captured by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), paired with colorized imagery. Access Cesium Mars and Cesium Moon via Cesium ion. 

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

Cesium for Unreal is 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 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 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 powers Cesium's runtime integrations and is an open source foundational layer for any 3D geospatial software, especially those streaming 3D Tiles. 

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

Ansys: Ansys Geospatial Data Cloud. Tuesday, December 2, noon-6:30 p.m. 

Battle Road: AtomEngine and 3D Tiles for Godot. Wednesday, December 3, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 

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

Google Maps 2D Tiles are now available through your Cesium ion account. With the addition of Google Maps 2D Tiles, Cesium ion users now have access to another high-resolution, up-to-date global imagery option to pair with Cesium World Terrain for precise and visually compelling context for 3D geospatial applications. 

This CesiumJS sandcastle shows how to include the Google Maps 2D Tiles and Bing Maps Imagery assets available through Cesium ion in a CesiumJS app.

Cesium ion includes a suite of preconfigured Google Maps 2D Tiles content assets: 

Cesium ion SaaS users will find the data in the Asset Depot, ready to stream. The next release of Cesium ion Self-Hosted will enable those users to link their installations to their SaaS accounts to access the data, or they can contact support to configure access.

Google Maps 2D Tiles assets available in Cesium ion.

These assets are easy to integrate into Cesium runtime engines. If you're building with Cesium for Unreal or Cesium for Unity, you can quickly add Google Maps 2D Tiles assets to your project via the Quick Add panel. 

In the Unreal Engine Editor, the Cesium for Unreal plugin Quick Add panel lists commonly used combinations of global imagery and terrain available from Cesium ion. Cesium ion's Google Maps 2D Tiles assets are now included. 

Using the APIs, developers can also customize these assets by including options for overlays or styling, allowing for tailored visualizations that suit application needs. For example, in the CesiumJS Sandcastle below, the satellite data has been adjusted to add roads and labels and to set the color of road markers.  

Explore this CesiumJS Sandcastle to learn how to customize the styling of Google Maps 2D Tiles assets provided through Cesium ion.

To simplify usage tracking, Google Maps 2D Tiles have been added to the Bing Maps monthly quota to create the new Global Imagery quota. The monthly allowances for each type of Cesium ion plan are unchanged.

As Microsoft retires the Bing Maps service, Cesium is taking proactive steps to ensure a smooth transition and a range of imagery choices for our users. Adding Google Maps 2D Tiles is just the beginning. In the coming months, we’ll share more updates about new imagery options and the timeline for Bing Maps data deprecation through Cesium ion. We’re committed to ensuring our users have ample time to transition. 

The island of Kauai, Hawaii, visualized from above with Cesium World Terrain and the Google Maps 2D Contour asset from Cesium ion. 

The stunning mountains of Kauai, Hawaii, visualized with Cesium World Terrain and the Google Maps 2D Satellite asset from Cesium ion.

Buildings surrounding Basílica de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain, visualized with Google Maps 2D Roadmaps and Cesium OSM Buildings assets from Cesium ion.

Google Maps 2D Satellite imagery of Boulder, Colorado, accessed from Cesium ion and with custom styling to add roadmaps with selected colors.

Ready to explore Google Maps 2D Tiles in your application? Check out this tutorial to get started. We’d love to hear your feedback and learn what other imagery datasets you’d like to see in Cesium ion. 

Introducing Google Maps 2D Tiles in Cesium ion 

Last year, Cesium released the first readily accessible, comprehensive 3D Tileset of the Moon. Today, we are excited to introduce Cesium Mars. Cesium Mars is a 3D Tileset to enable developers, researchers, and mission planners to create visualizations and simulations of the Red Planet. 

Cesium Mars comprises precise terrain captured by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), paired with colorized imagery. Cesium Mars is provided as 3D Tiles, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) community standard created by Cesium. 

Cesium Mars is a 3D Tileset to enable developers, researchers, and mission planners to create visualizations and simulations of the Red Planet. 

Cesium Mars

Enabling a digital ecosystem for planetary data 

A wealth of Mars data has already been captured by orbital and rover missions. The seven man-made satellites from five space agencies currently orbiting Mars and the two active rovers on Mars, NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance, send home more data every day through the Mars Relay Network. In addition, two space agencies are actively planning manned missions to Mars, and several additional agencies are planning for continued robotic exploration and orbital analysis. Cesium Mars lowers the barrier to entry for studying existing and new Mars data and for leveraging this ever-increasing data as part of the planning, execution, and analysis for Mars programs. A precise, easily accessed model of Mars supports the space community in its efforts toward an open, interoperable platform for a digital ecosystem supporting data captured beyond Earth.  

Mars viewed from space. Data for Cesium Mars from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on the NASA Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the ESA Mars Express. 

The Gale Crater, visualized with Cesium Mars.  

Cesium Mars draped with a Mars MOLA elevation map from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. 

The launch of Cesium Mars comes at the right time when there's a need for planetary-scale digital twins and simulation for the next leap in human and robotic spaceflight. Buendea intends to leverage Cesium Mars within NASA’s XR Operations Support System (XOSS) to expand our digital twin environments beyond the Moon and into Mars. By combining Cesium’s geospatial platform with our high-fidelity interactive environments in Unreal Engine, we are creating a foundation for next-generation mission planning, astronaut training, and real-time operations in support of these efforts.  

Cesium Moon in XOSS in VR mode. Courtesy Buendea and NASA’s Advanced Operations Concepts Lab.

Since Cesium Moon’s release, the dataset has become a foundation for digital twins for mission planning, for training simulators, and for games. We anticipate similar uses for Cesium Mars. 

Space architects designing for the Moon and Mars are already employing workflows like those used for infrastructure on Earth. Cesium Mars enables those processes to converge, as users leverage functionality available for our open source runtime engines. Use Cesium Mars as a base layer to place models of habitats, vehicles, or rovers on the Martian surface. If you have your own high-resolution terrain data, clip and inset it so your projects can live within a single continuous 3D surface rather than multiple separate project areas. Share realistic, interactive 3D design visualizations with large, dispersed teams to facilitate review, highlight design alternatives, and present designs as they change over time. 

NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars, viewed with Cesium for Unreal in Unreal Engine.

Cesium Mars is provided as 3D Tiles using the IAU_2015:49901 CRS and is composed of the ⁠Mars Viking Colorized Global Mosaic 232m imagery and ⁠Mars MGS MOLA - MEX HRSC Blended DEM Global 200m for terrain, along with higher resolution data for the Jezero and Gale craters. Cesium’s visualization engines—CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium for Omniverse—are ready for you to start building with Cesium Mars using an accurate representation of the planetary ellipsoid for measurement and analysis. Cesium Mars is available via Cesium ion SaaS and Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

This CesiumJS Sandcastle provides an example of how to include Cesium Mars in a web app. A sample level in Cesium for Unreal provides an example for how to get started with development using Cesium Mars in Unreal Engine. 

As lunar and interplanetary missions proceed, the need for an open, interoperable, standards-based platform to support simulation, planning, and analysis has never been greater. Cesium Mars, along with Cesium Moon, is a step toward this vision, offering a precise and scalable foundation. 

To access Cesium Mars, sign up or sign in to Cesium ion, locate the asset in the Cesium ion Asset Depot, and add the tileset to your Asset Library. Then start building! Create Cesium Stories, incorporate the data into a CesiumJS web app, or build advanced visualizations with 3D creation engines such as Unreal Engine. 

本記事は、2025年6月23日にShehzan Mohammedによってリリースされた記事を、今回日本語化したものです。

CesiumがBentley Systemsの一員となってから約9ヶ月が経ちました。この間、私たちはBentleyの技術を深く理解し、それをコミュニティにどのように還元できるかを探ってきました。今回、初のCesium Developer Conferenceを機に、皆さまからのご意見を広くいただくべく、iTwinによるデジタルツイン機能をCesiumに統合するためのロードマップ案を共有します。

当社のミッションは、「人工環境と自然環境が融合する3D地理空間体験をコミュニティが自由に構築できるようにすること」です。3D Tilesの活用は着実に拡大しており、Google、Esri、Ansys、FOX Sports、 The Weather Company、 GE Aerospace、 MathWorks、 CAE、 Trimble、 そして DroneDeployなど、多くの企業に採用されています。Cesium ionも月間30,000人以上のアクティブ・ユーザーから3億回以上のリクエストを受けています。Cesiumはオープンソースへの継続的な投資を通じて、コミュニティの拡大とともに、CesiumJS、Cesium for Unreal、Cesium for Unity、Cesium for Omniverseといったランタイムエンジンを活用し、新たな3D地理空間アプリケーションの迅速な開発を可能にし続けています。

また、現在以下のようなニーズに限りないほどの強い需要がある状況です。

多様な入力形式に対応する高性能なタイル変換パイプライン

より効率的なエンドツーエンドのワークフロー支援ツール

Bentleyの一員として、私たちはBentleyの最先端技術を活用し、3D地理空間コミュニティ全体を根本的に強化・拡大していく機会を得ています。

Cesiumはこれまでも常にコミュニティの声を指針としてきました。今回のロードマップに掲げたテーマについても、皆さんのフィードバックをぜひお寄せください：

リアリティモデリングおよびAI解析サービスのCesium ionへの統合

iTwinプラットフォームAPI／サービスをCesium経由で利用可能にする

データを3D Tilesとして最適化するための柔軟に構成可能な(composable)タイル処理パイプラインの導入

新3D Tilesへの拡張やプラットフォーム統合に対応したCesiumランタイムエンジンの進化

高品質な整備済みの地形・都市・惑星データ提供をさらに拡充

再利用可能でカスタマイズ可能なUXツールとウィジェットの提供

学習教材の充実と継続的なメンテナンス強化

3D Tilesは、Cesiumプラットフォームの中核を成す存在です。
 プラットフォーム全体とコミュニティを貫く「軸」として、エンドツーエンドの一貫したワークフローを形づくり、開発者が卓越したアプリケーションを構築できる力を与えてきました。私たちは現在、コミュニティから長年にわたって求められてきた複数の新機能を3D Tilesに追加しようとしています。

あらゆる業界のユーザーが、これまでになく高解像度かつ高頻度で、さまざまな種類のデバイスを使って環境をキャプチャするようになっています。
 このような指数関数的なスケーリングの進展は、空間的整合性を保ちつつ、時間とともに更新される3D地理空間データを、より効率的に保存・ストリーミング・可視化・分析できるよう、3D Tiles仕様を拡張する絶好の機会を生み出しています。

時系列対応 3D Tilesは、3D Tilesに時間軸の概念を効率的に組み込むための拡張仕様です。
 これを使えば、1つのタイルセットを時間の経過とともに更新でき、各キャプチャで変更があった部分のタイルだけを差分更新することが可能になります。

もはや、更新のたびに完全な新しいタイルセットを作り直す必要はありません。
 1つのタイルセットに変更履歴を保持しながらインクリメンタルに更新できるため、再生成の効率も速度も大幅に向上します。

この仕組みは、時間に沿った変更点の分析や、タイルセットと設計モデルの時系列比較といった分析ワークフローにも活用可能です。 詳細や意見交換はGitHubのIssueページ にて。

時系列対応3Dタイルを使えば、1つのタイルセットを時間の経過に沿って更新でき、各キャプチャごとに影響を受けたタイルだけを差し替えることが可能になります。

さらに現在、BentleyのSYNCHRO 4D Schedule APIと連携し、時間変化に対応する3D Tilesetを生成する手法も検討しています。
 SYNCHRO 4D Schedule APIは、時間軸を含んだプロジェクトデータをWeb経由で取得・活用できる仕組みを提供しており、この連携により、時間的に変化するジオメトリと業務インテリジェンスとの融合が実現されます。

ボクセルによるボリューム（体積）データ表現

地質学、海洋学、気候科学など、連続的なデータ表現が求められる多くの分野において、ボリュームデータは現実世界を可視化する重要な手法となっています。

3D Tiles仕様は、大規模かつ多様なデータを最適に表現できるよう、さまざまなジオメトリ形式を柔軟にサポートするよう設計されています。

3D Tilesにボクセル（体積要素）を3Dペイロードとして導入することで、地球規模のボリュームデータを扱うアプリケーションの構築が可能になります。

現在私たちは、glTFをボクセルのペイロード形式として活用しながら、楕円体・直方体・円柱型のボクセルを3D Tiles仕様の出発点として開発を進めています。

これにより、地中・地表・大気・宇宙空間など、さまざまな領域における体積データの表現と活用が可能になります。

 詳細はVoxels拡張仕様のドラフトをご覧ください。

CesiumJSでボクセルを使用して、メキシコ湾の海水温を表現

3D Gaussian Splats（3Dガウシアン・スプラット）

近年のコンピュータグラフィックス分野で最も注目を集めている技術の一つが、3D Gaussian splats（3Dガウシアン・スプラット）です。

高解像度のリアリティメッシュや点群は、自然環境のデジタル化に非常に優れた手段ですが、ケーブル、樹木、鉄棒、通信塔といった一部の情報の捉え方には限界があります。

その点、3D Gaussian splats は、極めて高い再現性を保ちつつ、視覚的なディテールを精緻に再現できる優れたソリューションであることが証明されています。

私たちは現在、3D Tilesのペイロードタイプのひとつとして3D Gaussian splatsを追加することに取り組んでいます。

これに伴い、iTwin Captureで使われている技術をCesium ionに統合し、Gaussian splatsのモデリングとタイル化を可能にする計画も進めています。

さらに、glTFコミュニティと連携し、glTFに対応した3D Gaussian splat拡張仕様の策定にも取り組んでいます。

3D Tilesで表現した3D Gaussian splats（左）と、Reality Mesh（右）との比較。特にワイヤー、パラボラアンテナ、支柱、足場といった細長い形状の表現力に注目。

ジオメトリの強調表示とカスタマイズ機能

Bentley Systemsは、3D Tilesの初期採用企業の一つであり、インフラの詳細モデルに必要な3Dビジュアライゼーション機能を強化するための拡張機能を独自に開発してきました。CesiumがBentleyの一員となったことで、こうした拡張機能やランタイム実装を統合し、コミュニティ全体に提供する機会が生まれています。現在私たちは、以下のような表現機能の追加に取り組んでいます：エッジ表示とワイヤーフレーム、線の描画とマテリアル設定（線幅、パターン、色など）、ポイントサイズのカスタマイズ、注釈表示用のビルボード、その他多数の拡張機能

glTFの EXT_mesh_primitive_edge_visibility 拡張を用いてエッジをハイライト表示した、iTwin.js 上の3D Tilesetの例。

暗黙面を使うことで、パイプ、柱、梁、ボックス、球体、円柱といったパラメトリック（数式で定義される）形状を表現できるようになります。

さらに、他の暗黙面と組み合わせて使用することで、三角形メッシュでは表現が難しい複雑なジオメトリの作成も可能になります。

この手法の主な利点は、ストレージ効率の向上と解析精度の向上にあります。

というのも、これらの面は三角形メッシュによって近似されるのではなく、数学的に厳密な形状として保持・描画されるため、ジオメトリ的な誤差が発生しないのです。

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

Cesium at GEOINT 2026

AI-Driven Semantic Search in Cesium Sandcastle Now Available

Introducing Panoramic Imagery in CesiumJS

Share Your Vision: Present at the 2026 Cesium Developer Conference

NORAD Tracks Santa: A Cesium-Powered Christmas Tradition

Cesium at I/ITSEC 2025