Registration is now open for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference! Save your spot.

Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.15.5

CesiumJS 1.128

Open Standards

We’re pleased to be able to share the full agenda and plenary highlights for this year’s Cesium Developer Conference. Join us June 23-25 in Philadelphia for meaningful talks, networking, and learning. 

Register for the Cesium Developer Conference

You can now peruse the full conference agenda!

There are six tracks of content, spanning approximately 70 20-minute sessions and over 20 lightning talks that will be presented on the main stage. The lightning talks will be hosted by the dynamic Dr. Christopher Tucker, Chairman of the American Geographical Society and active startup entrepreneur.

Philadelphia as Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via Cesium ion.

We’re thrilled that notable geospatial industry contributors from a variety of commercial, non-profit, and academic organizations will join us. Specifically, we’ll be featuring:

Dr. Nadine Alameh, Executive Director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute

Peter Rabley, CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium

David Rees, Senior Director for Viz/Sim at Maxar

Dr. Amy Rose, CTO of the Overture Maps Foundation

Ronda Schrenk, CEO of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation

Scott Simmons, Chief Standards Officer of the Open Geospatial Consortium

Emily Stearns from the Metaverse Standards Forum

Sean Wohltman, Global Head of Cloud Geography, Google

A special fireside chat will be conducted with Dr. Vijay Kumar, Professor and Nemirovsky Family Dean from Penn Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Khronos and the Khronos Group logo are registered trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc.

Patrick Cozzi, Cesium founder, has been a significant contributor to open 3D standards, and the Khronos Group has helped provide a forum and process for establishing and promoting standards such as glTF.

In coordination with the conference team, Neil Trevett of NVIDIA and Alexey Medvedev of Meta will lead a Khronos Group feedback session, the glTF Ecosystem Forum, held in the main stage room of the conference. With glTF as an industry-wide standard for transmission of 3D content on the web, the group is eager to hear developer-suggested updates and discussion around it.

We’ll release more details on keynotes and events as we get closer to June. We look forward to bringing together the open geospatial community.

Full Agenda and Plenary Highlights for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference

The overwhelming response to our call for submissions for the first Cesium Developer Conference has us both excited and needing to catch up after weeks of reviewing, sorting, notifying, and organizing sessions! We received over three times the number of submissions we originally had planned for the event, so we ended up making changes to the format of the conference to include more sessions.

The conference is June 23-25 in Philadelphia. Find out more information and register to attend here.

The conference will feature six themed tracks with more than 60 20-minute full talks over both main days of the conference and a block of more than 20 5-minute lightning talks on June 24, highlighting openness and interoperability. Five tracks will run concurrently during the user sessions parts of the agenda. We’ll release talk abstracts in early May so you can carefully plan your days.

Digital twin technologies are revolutionizing architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) project delivery and asset performance. By enabling stakeholders to visualize and analyze projects within a geospatial context, these technologies improve collaboration, boost efficiency, maximize asset performance, and reduce costs. Learn from developers who create innovative solutions for smart planning, construction, and operations, making the infrastructure around us more resilient and reliable.

The global scope of climate change and scale of natural disasters require better understanding and communicating impacts and solutions. Open geospatial technologies enable developers to create innovative approaches for new tools and workflows to help address issues that touch communities everywhere.

Open geospatial technology has become a critical tool in enabling the analysis of Earth, monitoring trade and agriculture, and transforming orbital space into an active commercial and operational environment. Learn from developers who are using 3D geospatial data, game engines, and new experiences to support users in the most challenging domains.

Advances in 3D, AI, and data technologies have rendered geospatial an essential component of applications from social games to autonomy. Thanks to a huge community of developers, open geospatial enables XR experiences, spatially distributed connected systems, analysis of terabytes of Earth observation data, and more.

Delivering high-value experiences and solutions with open geospatial technologies requires an understanding of the trends and opportunities that create maximum impact for new applications, services, and data. For developers and technologists who want to go beyond the “what” and explore the “why,” this track offers a perspective on the market opportunities and impacts of the open geospatial industry.

The teams working on open technologies such as Cesium, iTwin, and 3D Tiles dive into their latest work on topics requested by the community and enabling advances in performance and interoperability. Cesium- and iTwin-related open geospatial technologies are advancing rapidly and powering new applications from the sea floor and into space.

Beyond the six tracks, the conference will feature networking opportunities and intensive training and discussions:

Pre-conference “Cesium Deep Dive” open to 50 attendees

glTF Ecosystem Forum hosted by the Khronos Group

Cesium Certified Developer networking social

Mainstage panel discussion on open standards

Community tables for universities and non-profits

Food and refreshments provided throughout the event

We’re excited to host the open geospatial developer community, and we encourage attendees to register soon. Conference admissions and hotel rooms are filling up fast!

Tracks Announced: Discover and Learn at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference 

We are excited to announce the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference!  

The in-person event, June 23-25 in Philadelphia, PA, USA, is designed to enable the community to connect and share their latest innovations and experiences featuring open technologies that reflect the diversity and impact of the ecosystem, such as geospatial capabilities for 3D creation engines, CesiumJS, iTwin, 3D Tiles, and open data. The conference will be hosted by Bentley Systems and will feature presentations and speakers from across the open geospatial community. 

Philadelphia, home of the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference.

The conference will reflect the inclusiveness and range of the application of geospatial developer technologies applied to digital twins in AEC, the aerospace industry, gaming and simulation, and many other domains. This inaugural event will feature technically oriented, community-driven tracks and a limited-space pre-conference day. 

We encourage the community to submit a lightning talk or full talk, actively participate in sessions, and celebrate openness and interoperability with hundreds of developers and creators at the event. The submission page is here, and the submission window will close February 28, 2025. 

General conference registration will open up in February. 

We’re excited to be able to host the event this year! The community has guided Cesium’s progress, and we look forward to working together to make connections and grow the open ecosystem further through the conference. 

Use this form to submit your presentation, or drop us a line at hello@cesium.com to tell us what matters most to you. 

Updated February 24, 2025: We extended the talk submission deadline after initially publishing this blog.

Present at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference

At Cesium, we believe that collaboration is the key to advancing the 3D geospatial ecosystem for the benefit of all. For over a decade, we have supported interoperability with leading GIS providers like Esri to meet the growing need for comprehensive solutions that represent the natural and built environment with reality capture models, BIM/CAD designs, and traditional GIS layers. 

3D Tiles support for Esri products, and collaboration with Esri and standards organizations like the Open Geospatial Consortium ("OGC"), enables users to find the best solutions for their geospatial use cases.

Collaboration enabled with OGC standards like 3D Tiles and I3S to support streaming, analyzing and creating 3D geospatial content and applications.

Esri ArcGIS helps users solve complex GIS problems to show hidden patterns, trends, and relationships. Combining this with efficient streaming and 3D visualization capabilities enables users to build solutions delivering advanced spatial data management and analysis.


The combination of GIS and 3D streaming capabilities can address a number of cases in the rapidly growing area of digital twins. For example, a design firm that is creating a spatially accurate 3D representation of a proposed project that includes utility, traffic, and zoning information can share multiple versions of their detailed architectural models to collect public feedback. Or a community group building a virtual experience of their city can combine 3D buildings with route planning to key landmarks or locations.  Facilitated by open standards like 3D Tiles and Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), Esri and Cesium are helping users unlock geospatial insights, increase access to spatial data, and empower a large and diverse community of users.

Cesium Esri examples

Last fall, Esri announced the integration of 3D Tiles into the ArcGIS System of Record as a way of enhancing 3D GIS workflows. This integration allows users to combine 3D Tiles with other OGC community standard GIS layers, such as Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), for use in exploration tools, analysis, animation, layouts, and more. With 3D Tiles seamlessly integrated, users can elevate their data beyond a realistic visualization by leveraging the analytic power of a complete GIS. 

ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro and Drone2Map

ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro and Drone2Map can be used to process aerial and drone imagery to create full resolution Digital Surface Models (DSMs), true orthos, and 3D point clouds, as well as 2D meshes and photo-realistic 3D meshes that can be exported as 3D Tiles.

With ArcGIS Pro, users can visualize 3D Tiles layers together with other 2D or 3D layers, view layers with different spatial references together, drape 2D layers on top of 3D mesh layers, and edit features based on 3D Tiles layers. With 3D Tiles layers, users can now interactively analyze scenes and perform exploratory analysis like viewsheds and view domes. ArcGIS Pro also allows users to share 3D Tiles layers from a scene to ArcGIS Online.

Users can integrate 3D Tiles integrated mesh layers into Scene Viewer. Like the existing Integrated mesh scene layer, a 3D Tiles integrated mesh layer can represent built and natural environments through realistic textures and elevation information and be used in combination with other geospatial content.

Along with other OGC Services, users can add 3D Tiles as a local tileset or via a hosted service in ArcGIS Online or third party web servers to ArcGIS Earth, Esri’s free application for visualizing and exploring geospatial content in 3D.

Both the 200.4 release of the ArcGIS Maps SDKs for Native Apps and the 4.29 release of the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript adds support for 3D Tiles.  These features allow developers to leverage the power of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 3D Tiles format, providing a seamless integration of yet another type of 3D geospatial data into their custom applications.

ArcGIS Scene Viewer with 3D Tiles with draped graphics for relative energy ratings and labels for construction years for buildings in the city Utrecht - from Esri Developer IntegratedMesh3DTilesLayer sample application - https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/sample-code/layers-integratedmesh3dtileslayer/live/

Open and connected APIs and data services from other providers help to unlock the value of the 3D geospatial ecosystem. Cesium has long-supported the integration of ArcGIS Terrain, Imagery, and Map services within CesiumJS.  

Recently, Esri collaborated with Cesium to enable Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) within CesiumJS. This open source contribution from Esri brings extensive collections of I3S content from ArcGIS to CesiumJS developers and users. I3S, an OGC standard, facilitates the efficient transmission of various 3D data types, including discrete 3D objects with attributes, integrated surface meshes, and point cloud data across vast areas, as well as detailed Building Information Model (BIM) content. This capability supports delivery to web browsers, mobile apps, and desktop environments. Currently, the I3S integration into CesiumJS supports 3D Objects, Integrated Mesh, and Building Scene Layer data types, enabling the integration of 3D and 2D data from multiple sources, including Cesium ion and ArcGIS Online, into a single geospatial application.

ArcGIS Terrain and Basemaps in Cesium ion as shown in Esri Developer Tutorials

ArcGIS I3S Services, ArcGIS Basemap and Cesium World Terrain as shown in Esri Developer Tutorials

Another layer of integration between the ArcGIS and Cesium platforms is at the developer level where we have collaborated to bring ArcGIS Location Services and the ArcGIS Maps SDKs into CesiumJS.  ArcGIS Location Services provide services for building mapping and spatial analysis applications, available as part of ArcGIS. The inclusion of the various ArcGIS APIs is another step in the multi-year effort to steadily add open source support for ArcGIS APIs, data, and services to CesiumJS.  

Additionally, Esri’s Developer site provides over 20 tutorials showing users how to integrate ArcGIS locations services and CesiumsJS. Through this collaboration, CesiumJS users can combine ArcGIS location services and Google Map Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles to quickly and easily create powerful 3D geospatial visualizations. 

Esri Location Services with Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform streamed into CesiumJS

See the reference materials for more info. As we begin the next chapter at Cesium, open standards remain at our core. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with industry leaders like Esri to offer additional value and capabilities to the 3D geospatial community. 

If you have ideas about integrations between Cesium and Esri or other third party organizations, please share them on the Cesium Community Forum.

Updated 10/04/2024 to include ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript

3DTilesRendererJS is a library originally developed at NASA/Caltech-JPL for rendering 3D Tiles  in Three.js. The project was released as open source and is now maintained by Garrett Johnson, who worked there for more than a decade. 

In April 2024 Garrett Johnson was awarded a Cesium Ecosystem Grant to expand support in 3DTilesRendererJS for new 3D Tiles metadata extensions and to enable data overlays useful for understanding 3D Tiles Mars terrain data from NASA JPL. Those improvements have now been implemented; this post by Garrett describes the work completed.

This year I was grateful to have been awarded a Cesium Ecosystem Grant to enhance 3DTilesRendererJS, an open source library originally developed by NASA/Caltech-JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) for rendering JPL-generated Martian datasets. The project enables efficient rendering and interaction of 3D Tiles in Three.js, an open-source, cross-browser JavaScript library for 3D graphics in a browser. Thanks to the work supported by the grant, the library now supports glTF metadata extensions from 3D Tiles 1.1 and alternate tile texture overlays. These new features will enable end users to implement more robust AEC and GIS applications with 3D Tiles and Three.js. 


3DTilesRendererJS now supports the glTF `EXT_structural_metadata` and `EXT_mesh_features` extensions. The mesh features extension allows for parsing and reading associated IDs with varying levels of granularity in a model, which can subsequently be used for looking up more complete data. And the structural metadata extension gives users the ability to look up detailed, structured data based on embedded identifiers, including those from mesh features.

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

The plugins for the `EXT_structural_metadata` and `EXT_mesh_features` extensions compatible with Three.js’ `GLTFLoader` are located in the [src/three/loaders/gltf](https://github.com/NASA-AMMOS/3DTilesRendererJS/tree/master/src/three/loaders/gltf) project directory, along with associated type definitions exported from the package. To use the plugins they must be registered to a `GLTFLoader` instance used for loading the files after creating the `TilesRenderer` instance for loading a tileset:

```javascript
import { 
    TilesRenderer, 
    GLTFMeshFeaturesExtension, 
    GLTFStructuralMetadataExtension, 
} from '3d-tiles-renderer';

// ... 

// Create a tiles renderer and intialize a GLTFLoader with both
// metadata extensions

const tiles = new TilesRenderer( url );
const loader = new GLTFLoader( tiles.manager );
loader.register( () => new GLTFMeshFeaturesExtension() );
loader.register( () => new GLTFStructuralMetadataExtension() );
tiles.manager.addHandler( /(gltf|glb)$/g, loader );
```

Once the tiles are loaded the data from the extensions can be accessed via the `meshFeatures` and `structuralMetadata` fields in the associated objects' `userData`. These fields can be accessed when hovering over or clicking on a tile after a raycast, for example, to display metadata tables or highlight the object by id:

```javascript
const triangle = new THREE.Triangle();
const barycoord = new THREE.Vector3();
const invertedMatrix = new THREE.Matrix4();
domElement.addEventListener( e => {
    
    // ... set up raycaster
    
    const hits = raycaster.intersectObject( scene ); 
    if ( hits.length > 0 ) {
        
        const { object, face, point, faceIndex } = hits[ 0 ];
        
        // ... calculate the barycoord of the point on the geometry face
        
        const { meshFeatures, structuralMetadata } = object.userData;
        if ( meshFeatures && structuralMetadata ) {
            
            // get the metadata features and property table indices
            const features = meshFeatures 
                .getFeaturesAsync( faceIndex, barycoord );
            const tableIndices = meshFeatures 
                .getFeatureInfo().map( info => info.propertyTable );
                
            // read and log the structural metadata
            const data = structuralMetadata 
                .getPropertyTableData( tableIndices, features ); 
            console.log( data );

        }
        
    }

} );
```

Two 3D Tiles datasets from Cesium ion are available for demonstration here; to use the demo please retrieve the trial ion access token from the Cesium repository. Refer to the example implementation for code showing how to use custom materials for tileset brushing and reading data, and see supporting documentation for API documentation and function definitions.


To support the implementation of the new extensions, a variety of contributions were made to the broader Three.js ecosystem to enable improved performance for reading data from textures and to add new math utilities. Changes were made to allow copying texture subframe data to the GPU to avoid stalls from uploading a whole texture. This allows for only uploading and reading a single pixel of data so it can be quickly read back when querying mesh features and structural metadata textures without blocking page interactivity.

Likewise, thanks to initial work from @sciecode on Github, GPU texture data buffers can now be read back to the CPU asynchronously in Three.js. This is used for reading texture-encoded metadata values without waiting for remaining GPU work to complete, allowing for a significantly smoother user experience when reading the values.

And lastly, a new Matrix2 core math data type has been added to the library. Matrix2 is a type supported by glTF and WebGL vertex attributes, in addition to being used to store metadata values and is now available to be used and expanded on in Three.js.

At NASA JPL, texture overlays are used on top of terrain geometry to help provide more context for robotics and science operations. The texture overlay plugin is designed to support loading one or more replacement textures for a set of tiles to display alternate data overlays–including properties like slope, roughness, or error metrics. This feature will extend to other pre-processed texture data visualizations for photogrammetric tilesets should they provide alternate textures per-tile. By providing the ability to replace textures for the full tileset rather than using a 2D projection, overlay detail can be included across the full extent of the tileset, including concave geometry surfaces. For this demonstration a Martian tileset was produced using NASA JPL tools and data from the Mars 2020 mission using slope magnitude as an example overlay. In practice NASA JPL uses a variety of these kinds of precomputed texture skins to aid with operations on Mars, including displays for robotic kinematic reachability or surface roughness.

Check out the demo for the data overlay, which shows loading ten wedge tilesets with slope magnitude overlay textures. One or more of these alternate textures can be blended with the original using custom shaders or used as opaque replacement textures for the tiles.

Texture overlay of Mars data showing multiple sets of overlays including slope magnitude. Left: original textures, center: blended slope visualization, right: opaque slope texture overlay.

To produce a sample dataset for this feature and ensure functionality for the practical operational use case, the open source NASA-AMMOS/Landform project, used internally by JPL to generate merged and per-wedge 3D Tiles datasets for Mars 2020 missions operations, was used to generate the sample terrain. Color imagery and alternate image products from the official NASA JPL Planetary Data Systems (PDS) data archive were used, which hosts historical data from a variety of NASA missions for download. For the sake of demonstration only a single alternate set of textures highlighting slope magnitude have been produced, though other alternate textures can be generated from available PDS data.

Documentation for the TilesOverlayPlugin is available on the plugins documentation page. If your dataset contains alternate sets of textures, the plugin can be instantiated and textures applied to tiles materials like so:

```javascript

import { Tiles Renderer } from '3d-tiles-renderer';
import { TextureOverlayPlugin } from './examples/plugins/TextureOverlayPlugin.js';

// ... 

const tiles = new TilesRenderer ( url );
const plugin = new TextureOverlayPlugin( {
    textureUpdateCallback: ( scene, tile, plugin ) => {
        
        // Retrieve the loaded texture layers for this tile
        const slopeTexture = plugin.getTexturesForTile( tile ).slope;
        scene.traverse( child => {
            
            if ( child.isMesh ) {
                
                // Replace the original texture with the new one 
                child.material.map = textures.slope;
            
            }
        
        } );

    },
} );

// Set up a new layer textures to trigger when a new tile geometry is loaded
plugin.registerLayer( 'slope', url => {
    
    // Adjust the tile geometry url to load the associated texture
    const url = tileUrl 
        .replace( '/tilesets/', '/textures/slope/' ) 
        .replace( /\.glb$/i, '.png' );
        
    // Load the texture and fix the texture settings
    return new TextureLoader()
        .loadAsync( url )
        .then( tex => {
            
            tex.colorSpace SRGBColorSpace;
            tex.flipY = false;
            return tex;
        
        } );
    
} );

tiles.registerPlugin( plugin );
```

To support this work, a new extensible plugin system was added to the `TilesRenderer` class, which has subsequently been used for the development of other new plug-and-play features for 3D Tiles.

The addition of a new TilesRenderer plugin system for tile overlays has enabled a new addon architecture for 3D Tiles rendering. Previously a full subclass of the TilesRenderer class would need to be made, making it very difficult and brittle to use multiple extended classes at once. 

The new TilesFadePlugin has been added to smooth the transition between tile levels of detail by modifying materials to add dither animation when fading in and out. The TilesCompressionPlugin compresses loaded tile geometry data and reduces texture mipmap usage, which can improve GPU memory usage by over 30% in some cases. And the UpdateOnChangePlugin can improve performance per frame by only triggering tileset traversal when the camera or tileset has changed.


These plugins and others are available in the examples and core directory of the project. In the future, plugins could be added for other features including Three.js BatchedMesh support, tile geometry modification, new 3D Tiles features, and other user plugins.

With the work enabled by this grant the NASA-AMMOS/3DTilesRendererJS project now supports a variety of new features expanding the utility for scientific as well as architectural use cases. The tiles renderer project has benefited greatly from reports and contributions from the community to improve it over time so please feel free to provide feedback on the new features and try it out and let us know what you think.

Learn more about the Cesium Ecosystem Grants program and other ways Cesium engages with the broader community to see how you can get involved. 

Enhancements to the Three.js 3D Tiles Renderer

We are excited to announce Cesium’s AECO Tech Preview Program. Throughout our community we see many Cesium experiences that combine the natural and built environment. 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.

Join us in connecting architecture and geospatial.

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

For those building AECO-focused applications who are looking for a faster way to provide smaller, more accessible and secure applications, or want an easier, more efficient way to share your design data via the web or other visualization platforms, your process will benefit from the end-to-end workflows using Cesium and 3D Tiles.

The new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In improve workflows and capabilities that place AECO content in a 3D geospatial context.

Incorporating interactive 3D visualizations with AECO projects is becoming increasingly prevalent as a way to plan a project, collaborate with colleagues, analyze design options, and communicate the vision to stakeholders. Building and deploying AECO-focused applications that share complex and highly detailed designs with end users is challenging. These apps often contain many gigabytes of data from multiple sources, must react to frequent design updates, and are difficult to get into the hands of project decision-makers. Using Cesium’s Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, users can transform design data into 3D Tiles, including metadata for querying, filtering, styling, and analytics, for efficiently streaming massive scale AECO content to the web or through project-centered applications via Cesium’s geospatial platform. We have been developing and testing these capabilities, streaming 3D Tiles from design data with projects containing over 4 million individual objects and 800 million mesh triangles.

Streaming complex design data as 3D Tiles, including metadata for querying, filtering, styling and analytics. Hospital sample model provided courtesy of Autodesk.

Streaming IFC content as 3D Tiles, including metadata for querying, filtering, styling, and analytics. Source data BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International.

AECO Tech Preview Program: Hospital Sample

Open APIs and standards to support interoperability are at the core of Cesium and 3D Tiles. Developed by buildingSMART International, IFC is an open standard, widely adopted in the AECO industry, with support from major software packages by vendors such as Autodesk and Bentley Systems. IFC’s rich data structure captures not only geometric information but also metadata, including material properties, schedules, and the relationships between building elements, making it ideal for complex projects requiring detailed and interoperable data. With support for IFC, 3D Tiles can now be generated from a wide range of AECO verticals, including architecture, structural engineering, and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) designs. With IFC data as 3D Tiles, there is greater performance, increased interoperability, and less manual effort to optimize this rich content for viewing and distribution.

Sample IFC data including structure and MEP as 3D Tiles. Sample data courtesy of BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International.

Because Autodesk Revit is widely used for designing buildings and infrastructure in 3D, and much of our sample data was in Revit files, our engineering team built a Revit Add-In that integrates with the Design Tiler to generate 3D Tiles. The exported 3D Tiles include the metadata, materials, and textures from your Revit files for efficient streaming on the web or in your visualization engine of choice. Cesium’s Revit Add-In provides a bridge connecting the architecture and geospatial worlds, unlocking value for both.

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

As Cesium moves toward an official release of the Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, we are pleased to offer early access to these new tools through the AECO Tech Preview Program. Participants will have access to the Design Tiler and Revit Add-In as we continue to develop them in parallel. Your experience and feedback will be invaluable as we refine and enhance these tools to meet your needs. This is a unique opportunity to influence the direction of our product and work directly with our engineering team.

UPDATE (12/03/24): The Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In are now available through Cesium ion and the Autodesk Application Store. We look forward to collaborating with you to shape the future of 3D visualization in AECO.

Try the Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In

Join the Cesium AECO Tech Preview Program

The Cesium team traveled to Denver, Colorado in July to attend the 51st installation of SIGGRAPH, the premier conference in computer graphics. SIGGRAPH, which explores the intersection of art and technology and celebrates the rapid trajectory of 3D graphics, is a long-standing Cesium tradition. We love participating and experiencing the excitement of new discoveries and new connections with members of the graphics community. 

Cesium team members at SIGGRAPH 2024, in front of the iconic Blue Bear at the Colorado Convention Center.

Trending: Open standards, Generative AI, and Digital Twins

SIGGRAPH 2024 saw the further development of trends from previous years, including ongoing conversations in open standards and interoperability, particularly around OpenUSD and glTF. There's also been a surge in research and discussions about the possibilities of generative AI. These themes were further reinforced by OpenUSD Day and Generative AI Day.

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, discussed the future of generative AI in two keynotes, one of which also featured Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. 

We also observed continued investment in digital twins and simulation at scale. We're proud to see 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium, being widely adopted as a means to stream massive 3D geospatial datasets into digital environments. 

We also noted the interest in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and 3D geospatial, and we were happy to discover some additional examples of Cesium offerings and 3D Tiles. One, a demo of Voxel Earth created by Ryan Lewis, rendered Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles as voxels in Minecraft. Another, “Lights, Quality, Action!” featured a presentation from HNTB on their quality control application for AEC, built with Cesium for Unity.

The Cartographic Visualization Birds of a Feather presenters.

Cesium presented at the "Cartographic Visualization (Carto) Birds of a Feather," coordinated by Theresa-Marie Rhyne, for the twelfth time in a row. I gave an overview on exciting highlights at Cesium and was joined by Ryan Lewis, Cornell University; Rex Hansen, Esri; Nicholas Polys, Virginia Tech; Mike McCann, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and Casey Gomez, Versar. 

glTF was a hot topic at SIGGRAPH, with proposed advancements to the specification and conversations about how it will interop with OpenUSD as both standards evolve. 

We're excited by the focus on open standards. Cesium has a long history of open standards advocacy, driven by Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi, the creator of 3D Tiles and one of the co-creators of glTF. We're proud to participate in the Metaverse Standards Forum, Alliance for OpenUSD, The Khronos Group, and the Open Geospatial Consortium as well as facilitate important discussions through the Building the Open Metaverse podcast. 

Patrick Cozzi moderated the Birds of a Feather panel, "The State of 3D Asset Interoperability using USD and glTF," organized by the Metaverse Standards Forum. 

I also joined to discuss how Cesium uses 3D Tiles and glTF in combination with OpenUSD to enable geospatial applications, particularly in Cesium for Omniverse. 

Patrick Cozzi moderating "The State of 3D Asset Interoperability using USD and glTF."

Cesium’s Sean Lilley and Adam Morris also presented on glTF in two Birds of a Feather sessions: "glTF: Innovations in 3D Content Delivery and Use" and “glTF: Transforming 3D Asset Delivery for Real-Time Graphics,” addressing AEC and geospatial. 

Sean and Adam discussed Cesium’s use of glTF to represent 3D geospatial data, both standalone and as payloads in 3D Tiles. They also gave a preview of upcoming extensions to the glTF spec that will enable Cesium to represent more geospatial data with glTF. In both sessions, the crowd showed strong interest in the upcoming extensions, asking good questions about the presented proposals. We are excited to see the variety of glTF advancements and are eagerly watching for progress and convergence. 

Sean Lilley (left) and Adam Morris presenting at "glTF: Transforming 3D Asset Delivery for Real-Time Graphics."

Cesium also co-sponsored the midweek Networking Reception hosted by The Khronos Group. We set up a station with several demos, the most popular of which was a lunar minigame to celebrate the release of Cesium Moon Terrain. Created by Ryan Veenstra, Senior Solutions Architect, the game featured a lunar lander that players must guide to a landing pad. Many players camped in front of the table, repeatedly attempting to get to the top of the competitive high score boards … including some of our teammates.

Cesium T-shirts and the lunar lander game at the Khronos Networking Reception.

See our presentations page to view slides and materials from SIGGRAPH 2024 sessions. 

We hope to catch you at the next SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, Canada.

Working at the intersection of computer graphics and 3D geospatial, Cesium has a long history with SIGGRAPH. We’re excited to participate again this year, and the Cesium team will be in Denver, CO, July 28-August 1.

Here’s the schedule of Cesium-related events:

Birds of a Feather Session: ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization (CARTO)

This session is organized by our friend Theresa-Marie Rhyne and explores how viewpoints and techniques from the computer graphics community can be effectively applied to cartographic and spatial data sets. Janine Liu, 3D Software Developer, will present, along with Esri and Web3D Consortium.

Birds of a Feather Session: glTF: Innovations in 3D Content Delivery and Use

Cesium will join Leonard Daly (Daly Realism), Alexey Medvedev (Meta), and Eric Chadwick (DGG) for presentations, panels, demos, and attendee discussions on the activities at Khronos in support of 3D content creation, including physics, interactivity, scene building and management, content creation pipeline, and more.

Birds of a Feather Session: Metaverse Standards Forum: Advancements on USD and glTF Interoperability and Discussion on the 3D Web Landscape

Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi joins Neil Trevett (Metaverse Standards Forum, NVIDIA); Guy Martin, Director of Open Source & Standards at NVIDIA, Founding Board Member & Steering Committee Vice Chair at AOUSD; Henrik Edström, Distinguished Architect, Graphics at Autodesk; Michael Min, Sr. Manager 3D Graphics at Adobe; and Janine Liu, 3D Software Developer, Cesium. 

Patrick will present the "3D Asset Interoperability using USD and glTF Working Group Update" and Janine will present, "USD and glTF for Geospatial and Beyond"

Hyatt Regency Denver, Capitol Ballroom 6+7

Cesium is proud to be a sponsor of this event. Meet Khronos Group members, hear from presenters, and enjoy a drink and hors d'oeuvres. Please RSVP if you plan to join us at the reception.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Denver!

Cesium is excited to announce a partnership with Vexcel that will increase access to 3D content for Cesium ion Self-Hosted users. Now available through Cesium ion Self-Hosted, Vexcel 3D Cities is a high quality 3D Tiles reality mesh covering more than 60 major cities across the globe. Use Vexcel 3D Cities with Cesium to build immersive and accurate 3D cityscapes at scale within disconnected environments. 

Vexcel data

Vexcel builds photogrammetric aerial sensors, operates a fleet of aircraft, and has an aerial imagery library across 30+ countries. Each step from aircraft flight lines to its imagery processing pipeline is managed to create the content needed to generate high quality 3D imagery. This ultra high-resolution aerial imagery​​ and geospatial data are the building blocks for 3D Cities.

Spanning more than 62,000 km2 on four continents, Vexcel 3D Cities features extensive coverage of the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan, with more cities being added on a regular basis. 

As the creators of 3D Tiles, the Open Geospatial Consortium Community Standard, Cesium celebrates the adoption of the specification across industries. Vexcel 3D Cities brings a valuable product into the 3D Tiles ecosystem. By adopting the 3D Tiles specification, the data is highly interoperable across platforms and is optimized for high-performance streaming to all runtime environments including CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium for Omniverse.

“Vexcel selected 3D Tiles as the format for our 3D Cities product because it is an open, flexible, and widely used standard that enables us to deliver realistic and detailed 3D models of urban areas across various platforms and applications,” said Robert Carroll, Vice President, Go To Market with Vexcel Data. “The 3D Tiles format also lets our users leverage the power of Cesium ion to host and serve our 3D Cities with high performance streaming and rendering of massive datasets, which is crucial for our customers who need to visualize and analyze large metropolitan areas at scale.”

Vexcel 3D Cities data of Tokyo, Japan in Cesium for Unreal.

Vexcel 3D Cities data of New York City in Cesium for Unreal.

Vexcel 3D Cities data of London, UK in Cesium for Unreal.

We are eager to see how these complementary components - high quality 3D geospatial data and a high performance streaming and visualization platform - are leveraged in self-hosted deployments across government, telecom, architecture and other industries.

Contact us to add Vexcel 3D Cities into your Cesium ion Self-Hosted deployments. 

Vexcel 3D Cities Now Available with Cesium ion Self-Hosted

Cesium joined our colleagues and partners in San Jose, California, for NVIDIA GTC 2024 in March. 

This was my first time attending GTC, the first in-person one since 2019. In that time, quite a lot changed, with the expansion of digital twins and the growth of AI bringing us new tools and technologies. From the opening keynote through the conference sessions, meetings, and events, the energy of more than 18,000 attendees was palpable. 

Over 12,000 attendees packed the GTC keynote inside the SAP Center.

The session lineup was impressive, hosted by a variety of industry leaders, with several focused on advancing 3D geospatial technology and digital twins across architecture, engineering, environmental, and industrial markets. It was inspiring to see how engineers are integrating 3D Tiles, Cesium’s ecosystem, OpenUSD, and NVIDIA Omniverse to build valuable solutions. Now all of the sessions from GTC are available to watch free and on demand. This includes the sessions highlighted here.

Digitizing the World’s Largest Industries with OpenUSD and Generative AI

Cesium’s CEO, Patrick Cozzi, participated in a panel of enterprise leaders to provide an update on industrial metaverse projects. The progress of industrial digitalization was discussed, with a focus on the art of balancing what is possible with what is actually needed. Patrick was joined by leaders from Amazon Robotics, Jaguar Land Rover, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Siemens Digital Industries Software, VentureBeat, and Wistron.

Enabling 3D Geospatial Workflows for Industrial Digital Twins

Cesium participated in GTC’s OpenUSD Day through the technical session led by Shehzan Mohammed, Cesium’s Director of 3D Engineering and Ecosystems. He shared insight into the creation of our Cesium for Omniverse extension. By leveraging NVIDIA Omniverse’s OpenUSD and Fabric, combined with 3D Tiles and glTF, Cesium supports high-fidelity streaming and rendering for global-scale digital twins using open standards.

Shehzan sharing insight into the creation of Cesium for Omniverse.

Transforming 2D Imagery Into 3D Geospatial Tiles With Neural Radiance Fields

One of the most compelling GTC sessions was focused on a demonstration of a real-time process for taking 2D geotagged drone images and transforming them into high-resolution 3D Tiles. During this presentation, a development team from NVIDIA was able to process drone imagery through NeRFs and into 3D Tiles streaming via Cesium ion, ultimately shown within Omniverse via our Cesium for Omniverse extension.

Overall, GTC 2024 showcased the rapid evolution of digital twin technology and its integration with AI, highlighting the innovative strides made by industry leaders within the OpenUSD ecosystem. 

The conference underscored the role of platforms like Cesium in driving forward the digital transformation of industries as it continues to unlock new possibilities for creating and visualizing high-fidelity, global-scale digital twins.

To dive deeper into the insights and advancements shared at GTC 2024, explore the sessions mentioned above.

Cesium Takes in NVIDIA GTC 2024: Trip Report

You can now import 3D models from Sketchfab into Cesium ion to create 3D Tiles, making it easier to create context and content for geospatial experiences. 

Sketchfab is part of Epic Games and one of the most widely used 3D asset marketplaces. Over 10 million users have used Sketchfab to share and find over 5 million 3D models since its launch in 2012. In 2017 Sketchfab added glTF download support for all downloadable Sketchfab scenes regardless of their source format, immediately making Sketchfab the largest online repository of glTF models, many of which are free under Creative Commons licensing. 

Cesium applauds Sketchfab and Epic Games’ commitment to open standards as the best way to grow a vibrant 3D ecosystem, and we’re thrilled to make Sketchfab assets available through Cesium’s open platform for building 3D geospatial experiences.

Cesium ion makes it easy to discover 3D models in Sketchfab and add them to your geospatial experiences. Suspension bridge model by coffeecat with CC Attribution.

Sketchfab and Cesium Integration

With Cesium ion’s Sketchfab integration, you can:

Link your Sketchfab account to your Cesium ion account, including using Sketchfab as a method to log into ion

Import the model to your Cesium ion account as a 3D Tiles asset

Import models from Sketchfab directly into Cesium ion

The number and variety of models in Sketchfab provide endless possibilities to add context and impact to your geospatial projects.

Real-world drone scans become the foundation of a digital twin. In this example, a high-resolution inset of Fénis Castle in northern Italy is combined with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and visualized with Unreal Engine.

Sketchfab model: Fénis Castle by LZ Creation with CC Attribution

Reality models for construction jobsites, mines, and other real-world locations can be combined with interactive elements to create simulation and training apps. This quarry in County Kildare, Ireland is placed on Cesium World Terrain with Bing Imagery and rendered with Unreal Engine. 

Sketchfab model: Roadstone Quarry - Allenwood by capturingaworld with CC Attribution 

Architectural models can inform and inspire. Here, Singapore's famous Helix Bridge is placed across the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and visualized with Unreal Engine. Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles provide broader geospatial context. 

Sketchfab model: Helix Bridge by Sengchor with CC Attribution 

Cesium is committed to lowering the barrier to creating geospatial experiences by continuing to make connections across the 3D ecosystem. If you’re new to Cesium, welcome! Cesium ion is free for non-commercial use. Sign up today to get started. 

Add Sketchfab 3D Models to Your Geospatial Experiences with Cesium ion

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. 

Full Agenda and Plenary Highlights for the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference

Tracks Announced: Discover and Learn at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference

Present at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference

Esri and Cesium Collaborations

Enhancements to the Three.js 3D Tiles Renderer

Join the Cesium AECO Tech Preview Program

SIGGRAPH 2024 Trip Report