Cesium for Omniverse v0.25.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.16.2

CesiumJS 1.131

Open Standards

Editor's note: Cesium is committed to open source, open standards, and rapid innovation. We power training, planning, operations, and analysis across the US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. We're proud to have collaborated with NUWC Division Newport and NSWC Carderock Division on this article about the impact of OTAs. Read the PDF here.

In March 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued the memo “Directing Modern Software Acquisition to Maximize Lethality,” mandating the use of the Software Acquisition Pathway for all Department of Defense (DOD) software development procurements. This memo also instructs DOD components to prioritize Other Transaction Authority agreements (OTAs) and Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs) as the preferred methods for acquiring software capabilities. 

OTAs were created in 1958 to give DOD flexibility to incorporate business practices that reflect commercial industry standards and best practices into how it awards contracts. DOD historically employed OTAs in conducting research and development; in 2016, the National Defense Authorization Act expanded the use of OTAs to include prototype and production. This expansion provided the warfare centers with another alternative to a Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)-based procurement contract. 

NAVSEA’s warfare centers have been doing business this way for years. 

In 2016, the Undersea Technology Innovation Consortium (UTIC) was stood up as a non-profit research organization comprised of small and large technology companies, academia, and nonprofits who are developing undersea technologies and addressing defense and security challenges.  

By 2018, UTIC, represented by management firm Advanced Technology International, and NUWC Newport Division signed a three-year OTA contract (renewable for up to 10 years) to explore Undersea Technology Innovation in a broad range of undersea and maritime prototyping activities. NUWC Newport Division’s contracting professionals began exploring how to use OTA to deliver prototypes to the submarine Fleet faster and soon released its first Call for Topics under the OTA—the first warfare center to pursue this option.

Their success led to collaboration with other warfare centers including the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock Division via Dave Sracic, Distinguished Software Engineer for Fleet Signatures Systems.  

Sracic needed a solution that would let him approve software development without micromanaging it. In 2019, Sracic awarded two agreements utilizing NUWC Newport Division’s UTIC OTA, one of which went to Analytical Graphics Inc., whose subcontractor was Cesium.  

Cesium specializes in 3D geospatial technology, particularly for visualization and analysis. The company is considered a “non-traditional” government partner, which was a major aspect of the success of the collaboration. 

As part of the OTA prototype agreement, Cesium provided a platform for building 3D geospatial applications, including CesiumJS, an open-source library for 3D visualization in web browsers designed for robust interoperability and scaling for massive datasets. Cesium works to advance the geospatial ecosystem and open source, open standards, data sharing, and interoperability.  

In May 2024, NSWC Carderock awarded $2.2 million to Cesium through the OTA.  

Stills from Cesium’s bathymetry data set.

“UTIC had already proven to be effective for my team and our small initial toe-in-the-water approach had been highly successful. Given the choice between working with NUWC Newport to put together a new Request for Prototyping versus pursuing a traditional FAR-based path, it wasn’t much of a choice at all—I’ll take six weeks over 18 months any day,” said Sracic. 

Trent Tinker, director of Cesium’s federal business development, said, “From Cesium’s perspective, the OTA streamlined administrative processes and allowed for a direct line of communication with Navy customers. The OTA got us a step closer to the end users, and ensuring their data supports better, faster decisions is something that we’re really excited about.” 

According to Sracic, “Open source software is a building block of nearly every DOD system, and at some level, virtually all of the world’s most complex software systems. Our key challenge in building Navy combat systems is in using open-source software without finding ourselves trapped when it evolves faster than we do. Our thought was we’re using this open source CesiumJS and it does 80 percent of what we want, so let’s pay the experts who built it to make it do more.” 

As Sracic explained, “We got those changes back into CesiumJS, upstream, open source version, which means we do not have to keep a Navy fork of that software. The open source community maintains those specific changes. We care deeply about those features and use them heavily. Now that they’re part of the master branch, with test cases, we have reasonable confidence they won’t die, and we don’t pay some kind of sustainment fee. This is what the DOD policy aspires to—the government contributing back to open source.” 

“The OTA also enables Cesium to work with warfare centers on the open source position of their challenges,” said Tinker. “While some of the development stays with the government, other roadmap-aligned services go to the open source baseline and benefit everyone.” 

“Public-private partnerships between the Navy and UTIC members enable the Navy to create new paths to acquire and improve technological capabilities aboard its fleet, focusing on critical missions rather than the building blocks of visualization. Dave Sracic was proactive and flexible, and our terms were Firm Fixed Price, pairing our risk tolerance and desire to do meaningful work as a technology growth company,” said Patrick Cozzi, Cesium founder and Bentley Systems chief platform officer. 

“This is quantifiable value and return on investment, and sufficient to justify follow-on efforts to integrate capability into a combat system, which is a win for Navy in that it’s already risk-reduced and well understood,” explained Sracic. “And it’s a win for industry, which can do that work through non-competitive follow-on to the OTA.”

Our third installment highlights two more tracks at the 2025 Cesium Developer Conference: community-contributed aerospace and defense topics and sessions on Cesium, iTwin, OGC 3D Tiles, and other open technologies compiled by the teams at Cesium and Bentley Systems who work on them.

With Cesium’s roots in aerospace and commitment to interoperability and rapid innovation for tackling the hardest problems in 3D geospatial, we were excited to receive a group of full and lightning talk submissions focused on space, the Moon, flight systems, and mission-critical visualization and analysis.

To provide the community with a closer look into the advancements happening with Cesium and 3D Tiles, we decided to group a set of talks from the Platform team in Bentley Systems. The Platform team comprises development teams from Cesium, iTwin, and iTwin Capture, bringing together global geospatial, cloud-based-BIM (building information modeling), and reality capture.

Register for the Cesium Developer Conference

Calculating access to communications satellites in DigitalArsenal's OrbPro. Courtesy DigitalArsenal.

In today’s complex geopolitical environment, we’re seeing expanded interest in access to open geospatial technologies. Recent investments in the space industry have created satellite constellations with thousands of new spacecraft in just the last few years, and we’re hearing from developers who want to implement full global geospatial 3D experiences for training, planning, operations, and analysis.

These trends are reflected in the talk submissions we grouped in the Aerospace and Defense track, including:

A presentation by Maxar on 3D Tiles and One World Terrain

A photogrammetry sandbox built with Cesium for Unreal by the French Air Force

A flight status indication system from Takram

Military planning using agentic AI from our former colleague Brady Moore

Astronaut training on the Moon with Buendea

The Aerospace and Defense sessions are in a track the morning of June 24, and a series of seven lightning talks will be featured during the afternoon of the 24th on the main stage.

Maxar Precision3D Surface Model of Kabul International Airport. Courtesy Maxar Technologies.

We want the community to take center stage, and we want to feature enough sessions that developers can get a taste of what is happening now that Cesium is part of Bentley Systems.

The track focusing on Cesium, iTwin, and 3D Tiles will feature sessions on topics such as:

Bringing AI analytical tools for reality capture data into Cesium ion

Working with BIM data and the Design Tiler

How Gaussian splats and 3D Tiles are coming together

An exploration of new user interfaces combining geospatial and BIM data from the Bentley iLab team

The Cesium, iTwin, and 3D Tiles track will run through the morning of June 24 and into the morning of June 25.

You can find out more about what’s happening with Cesium and 3D Tiles in the pre-conference Cesium Deep Dive workshop and in mainstage presentations.

An iModel of a Philadelphia Metrostation on top of an iTwin Reality Mesh shown in CesiumJS.

There are six tracks with over 90 full sessions and lightning talks. We’ll be releasing more information about our fantastic mainstage presentations soon, including a closing session that will feature two reality capture stories featured in recent news!

The full agenda for the conference is live. Read more about this year’s tracks on the Cesium blog.

Our speakers are excited to meet up with industry colleagues, share learnings, and hear feedback. Register to attend and connect with the community in Philadelphia. We’ll see you there.

Aerospace, Defense, and Open Geospatial Technologies at the Cesium Developer Conference

This is a guest post by Nef Gonzalez Campos and Brent Elmer of Battle Road. Battle Road built the 3D Tiles for Godot plugin with support from a Cesium Ecosystem Grant.  

At Battle Road, we reap the benefits of open source software through technologies we love and use every day. Some of our favorites include Godot, Kubernetes, Nakama, and, of course, Cesium. That’s why we’re excited to be giving back with the 3D Tiles for Godot plugin, bringing the innovative capabilities of 3D Tiles to the Godot game engine.

This Godot implementation joins the family of Cesium Native offerings already available for other 3D creation engines: Cesium for Unreal, Cesium for Unity, and Cesium for Omniverse. 

Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, visualized with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via 3D Tiles for Godot. Courtesy Battle Road.

Getting a project up and running with the plugin is simple. 

To begin, you need a stable release of Godot 4.1 or newer. Next, head to either the Godot Asset Library or the 3D Tiles for Godot GitHub repository Releases section to find the newest version of the plugin.  

Download the binaries and follow the README starting from the Setting Up a Project section. 

After importing everything to the project and signing into Cesium ion, you are ready to start adding and fetching your geospatial data and imagery! If you run into issues along the way, we invite you to open an issue in the GitHub repo.  

For questions about the plugin, connect with us in the 3D Tiles for Godot category on the Cesium community forum.   

Our next update on sessions and tracks at the Cesium Developer Conference includes two significant sets of community-submitted talks: one focused on Climate and Disaster Resilience and the other on 3D, AI, and Data Technology.

As we saw in the fantastic abstracts submitted by the community, these topics are deeply integrated as emerging technologies and user experiences enable new tools and analyses that we can bring to bear when examining the impacts of climate change and planning for and responding to natural disasters.

We live on a dynamic planet, and open geospatial technologies enable us to monitor, measure, and respond to weather and climate-related changes in the built and natural environment around us.

Both main days of the conference, June 24 and June 25, will feature blocks focused on stories of open technologies applied to climate and risaster Resilience. On the 24th, we’ll kick off our lightning talks with four stories, including using Cesium to simulate the world at +4ºC by Columbia University and building a Cesium-based geospatial search tool for NOAA scientific data. The lightning talks will be given on the conference main stage to the entire audience.

June 25 features a block of 20-minute sessions on related topics. These talks will discuss using open geospatial technologies to build a first responder AR tool, mapping the USS Midway with GeoCam and Cesium, and using OGC GeoPose for real-time collaboration during emergency management operations.

Because the Cesium Developer Conference is a technology-focused event, we would be remiss to not feature tracks and sessions that are oriented at geospatial technologies more generally. The conference will feature blocks of sessions on both days and a block of lightning talks focused on a range of technologies and applications of open data and open geospatial software and standards.

Here are some of the topics that stand out: 

Panoramic images in talks by Virtual City Systems and AerialSphere

Integrating 3D Tiles into the Godot open game engine

Demonstrating cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs in CesiumJS by HoBu

Several sessions on extended reality (XR) and augmented reality (AR)

Integrating CesiumJS and 3D Tiles into open developer tools

Scaling the production of Gaussian splats with Atomic Maps

Using open geospatial technologies to build games with the Athens School of Fine Arts

Philadelphia City Hall at night from Broad Street.

Yes. There are six community and colleague-submitted tracks, represented in full sessions and lightning talks. Plus we have mainstage talks that will cover these topics and more. Find out more about the themed tracks in our blog and on the conference pages.

The full agenda for the conference is now live.

Climate Change, Disaster Resilience, and Technology Converge at the Cesium Developer Conference 

We’re proud to welcome Google Cloud as the technology sponsor and Geospatial World as the knowledge partner for the inaugural Cesium Developer Conference, June 23-25 in Philadelphia.  

Yosemite National Park, California, United States, visualized with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles using Cesium for Unity.

We are grateful to be able to announce Google Cloud as the conference technology sponsor. At Cesium and the broader Bentley Systems, we are big fans and users of Google Cloud for the innovation it helps us bring to our customers, including the innovations we harness from Google Maps Platform. This is the 20th anniversary of the launch of Google Maps, a significant industry event that transformed digital mapping. Google Maps Platform is used by millions of websites and apps, not just to solve their geospatial problems but to unlock new capabilities. 

We’re excited to have Sean Wohltman, Google Global Head of Cloud Geography, present on the main stage during the event and share about Google’s recent impacts in the open geospatial market and about their initiatives to continue to deliver valuable spatially connected services and applications into the future.  

In the last two years, Google entered into partnerships with Cesium and Bentley Systems. The Cesium partnership helped bring to the market the availability of Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles for users in 2022. Recently, Google and Bentley announced a new initiative connecting Blyncsy to the Google Imagery Platform, which will allow access to Google Street View and Google’s Vertex AI for automated roadway asset identification. 

Geospatial World has been a driving force in geospatial thought leadership. With a mission to enable more sustainable societies, economies, and environments, Geospatial World delivers actionable insights to decision-makers via its Consulting, Events, and Communications divisions—bringing together leaders from government, industry, and academia. At this year’s Cesium Developer Conference, Geospatial World will participate as the Knowledge Partner. 

GW Consulting, the boutique research and intelligence arm of Geospatial World, provides developers, innovators, and organizations with tailored insights through consulting services, syndicated reports, technology and policy analysis, and access to the industry’s first Geospatial Resource Platform. 

The Geospatial World team will present two sessions at the conference, focused on the business value and socioeconomic impact of the open geospatial ecosystem, offering insights into how open data and interoperable tools can unlock real-world outcomes. 

We’re just two months away from celebrating the open ecosystem with you. Join us for the pre-conference workshop, two full days of learning and connecting with leaders and peers, and social opportunities throughout the event. 

Technology and Knowledge Partners for the Cesium Developer Conference  

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. 

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.

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