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Cesium for Omniverse v0.28.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.23.1

CesiumJS 1.140

Open Standards

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

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

Visualizing national scale subsurface data with 3D Tiles voxels

GeoTOP demo by Bedrock.engineer

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

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

Subsurface visualization with 3D Tiles voxels

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Jules Blom, Cofounder Bedrock.engineer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amanda: We’re thrilled to welcome Don McCurdy to the Platform team at Bentley. I know Don through his work with open standards: he formerly co-chaired the 3D Formats working group responsible for glTF and created popular open source tools like glTF Transform. As the senior director of open standards at Bentley, vice chair of the Khronos 3D Formats working group, and co-chair of the Metaverse Standards Forum 3D Asset Interoperability working group, I’m passionate about the openness that standards enable. With an eye to the future of standards development, I sat down with Don and with Sean Lilley, who is a lead engineer behind 3D Tiles and a driving force in Cesium’s development, to talk about their contributions to open standards and what they see ahead as developers.

Amanda: Don, you’ve been deeply involved with the development of glTF, the Khronos standard for models and scenes. How did you first get involved in open standards?

Don: I happened to be personally interested in building my own projects with WebGL around the time draft versions of glTF 2.0 were coming together. Loading 3D models into the scene correctly was a real challenge—existing loaders weren’t enough if the format itself wasn’t designed for runtime transmission or isn’t carefully documented in a technical specification.

The vision for glTF immediately felt right—runtime transmission, detailed specifications, and a scope that was opinionated and focused enough for complete implementation and specification to be possible.  I started contributing to a glTF loader in three.js and was introduced to Patrick Cozzi and others at the Khronos Group soon after that.

After that, finding more ways to get involved was easy: there are always more interesting technical challenges than people to solve them. I was also very fortunate to be working with a team that allowed me to spend a percentage of my time on self-directed work in open standards and open source.

Since then I’ve written the glTF Transform library, which is popular for optimizing existing 3D models, but at the same time it’s a very flexible framework for creating or modifying glTF models, or managing custom glTF extensions. I’ve also written three-ish glTF loaders now (too many?)  and a couple popular viewers like gltf.report/.

Amanda: Sean, you’ve been a key contributor to 3D Tiles since its inception. 3D Tiles is an OGC community standard for streaming massive 3D datasets, and is built on glTF. What drew you into the open standards space?

Sean: I first got involved in open standards when I joined Cesium in 2015. Previously, I was using COLLADA and OpenGL in a personal game engine project and was already a big fan of Khronos. One of the first projects I worked on at Cesium was obj2gltf, which started during a code sprint in the Poconos, and later gltf-pipeline.

This was also the year 3D Tiles was announced; I contributed to the specification, CesiumJS implementation, tiling pipelines, and was quite active on the Cesium Community Forum.

Amanda: Both 3D Tiles and glTF have revolutionized the way people visualize 3D data, but that’s just the beginning. I know we have some key work going on in 3D Formats right now with a new glTF version on the horizon and a new 3D Tiles coming right behind it. How do you see these standards evolving over time?

Don: glTF has been successful over the years, at least in part because of its unique focus on efficient, last-mile transmission to runtime. The line glTF needs to walk as it evolves, I think, is to keep that focus while understanding that the mission is a moving target, and that capabilities of runtimes and last-mile 3D data are also evolving.

Other open source or standards projects like OpenPBR, MaterialX, and USD are worth mentioning here. While they don’t necessarily share that transmission-to-runtime goal, they absolutely represent an evolution (for the better!) in 3D content creation, and these changes feed into workflows around glTF.

Importantly, glTF today provides the “building block” for extension into very different use cases – 3D Tiles and VRM especially. I hope that doesn’t change; it’s an important balance of scope.

Sean: At the same time, the community might benefit from glTF and 3D Tiles converging over time. In 3D Tiles 1.0 we had the Batched 3D Model and Instanced 3D Model formats that wrapped binary glTF. In 3D Tiles 1.1 we saw these capabilities move into glTF extensions that allowed 3D Tiles to reference glTF directly.

And now, in the other direction, there's an industry wide push towards using glTF for complex scenes; for example, the AEC industry using glTF for massive design models, and e-commerce using glTF for level of detail.

It seems to me that 3D Tiles and glTF are meeting somewhere in the middle, while staying true to efficient transmission.

Amanda: What community projects using glTF and 3D Tiles are you keeping an eye on?

Don: I worked with R&D at The New York Times a few years back, and they’ve done some really excellent work using both glTF and 3D Tiles in different projects, such as visualizing the progress of the fires in Maui in 2023. They’ve also written “field guides” sharing their processes and learnings for publishing 3D content in journalism.

Sean: Ever since the Google Maps Platform released their worldwide dataset as 3D Tiles, members of the larger community have been building all sorts of interesting applications with that data, like visualizing building projects in context or showing stadium locations in sports reels.

I'm really looking forward to Cesium Native getting WebAssembly support so that we can bring Cesium Native's 3D Tiles streaming engine to the browser.

I'm also actively following Garrett Johnson's 3D Tiles Renderer for Three.js.

Amanda: It’s clear both of you have contributed significantly to the tools and standards making 3D graphics easier than ever to share. What does it mean for Bentley to bring this kind of talent together?

Sean: It’s exciting. Don’s work has influenced how developers and artists optimize and publish 3D content. His tools like glTF Transform and gltf.report are widely used. Having him on board means we’re doubling down on our commitment to open standards and high-quality tooling.

Don: I’ve collaborated with the team before, including on 3D Tiles 1.1. Joining Bentley now feels like a natural next step: Bentley’s investment in open standards is a big reason I’m here. It’s rare to find a company that not only uses open formats but invests in helping define them.

Amanda: For readers interested in pushing the forefront of open standards, how would you recommend getting involved?

Sean: The Cesium community forum is very active and a great place to help other people building in 3D. And the 3D Tiles repo on GitHub is a great place to share ideas.

Don: There’s always need for people to pitch in. If you’re passionate about open standards, the Khronos Group is always looking for volunteers interested in supporting the future of graphics. And the Metaverse Standards Forum, as you know, is doing some really interesting interdisciplinary work.

Amanda: We’re deeply committed to building the tools for an open ecosystem. If you’d like to join us, check out our current openings.

Advancing 3D Tiles and glTF in an Open Ecosystem

From roads and bridges to campuses and cities, infrastructure design relies on precise geospatial context. With its 2025 release, MicroStation—Bentley Systems’ flagship computer aided design (CAD) software—introduced support for Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 3D Tiles using Cesium Native to efficiently deliver that context to professionals worldwide. This integration also makes MicroStation the first CAD software to support Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

MicroStation is a foundational software application for infrastructure design, central to thousands of landmark projects. It’s trusted by architects, engineers, designers, drafters, and BIM managers to design, manage, and efficiently deliver infrastructure projects. Professionals across transportation, energy, utilities, construction, government, and campus and facility management sectors rely on MicroStation to bring their vision to life.  

The software has played a central role in countless notable infrastructure projects worldwide. Examples include London’s Crossrail Elizabeth Line, New York’s Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, and the Sydney Airport. It was also recently used by Italian engineering firm Italferr to create a highly detailed digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica to preserve its architectural and cultural significance.

London, UK, rendered with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles in MicroStation.

Integrating 3D Tiles enables efficient streaming and visualization of massive geospatial datasets providing highly accurate real-world context within MicroStation. With the latest MicroStation release, users can now bring Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and engineering-grade reality data formatted as 3D Tiles via Bentley iTwin Reality Management directly into their designs.   

“Support for 3D Tiles in Bentley’s MicroStation is a major step forward for the open geospatial ecosystem. It brings the 3D Tiles open standard into the hands of infrastructure professionals worldwide and unlocks new use cases across industries,” said Patrick Cozzi, Bentley chief platform officer and Cesium founder. 

Photorealistic 3D Tiles are a 3D mesh textured with high-resolution imagery, available for 2,500 cities and 49 countries, bringing real-world data to infrastructure visualizations. By replacing manual workflows for modeling and detailing existing environments, infrastructure professionals can focus their time on the proposed designs. This shift has led to major time savings: Tasks that previously consumed over 1,000 hours for long linear projects can now be completed in as little as 200-300 hours. 

Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles of the 17th Street Causeway Bridge, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, seen through multiple viewports viewed in MicroStation.

This integration also marks the first Bentley application to use Cesium Native—a collection of high-performance C++ libraries designed for 3D geospatial applications. Cesium Native includes 3D Tiles runtime streaming, lightweight glTF serialization and deserialization, high-precision geospatial math types and functions, and support for a wide range of geospatial standards.  

To support MicroStation specifically, new capabilities were added to Cesium Native, including multiple viewport support and orthographic camera functionality. These features are now also available in Cesium for Unreal and will be added to other Cesium Native integrations based on the community’s interest.  

Pairing 3D Tiles and Cesium Native with MicroStation illustrates our commitment to expanding and strengthening the open geospatial ecosystem, creating new opportunities for developers and empowering users to design, manage, and deliver better, more resilient infrastructure. 

Bring detail and efficiency to your infrastructure projects with 3D Tiles.

MicroStation Advances Infrastructure Design with 3D Tiles

With our work at the intersection of computer graphics and 3D geospatial, Cesium has a long history with SIGGRAPH. We’re excited to join again this year—the team will be in Vancouver, Canada, August 10-14. 

Accelerating AEC Workflows with 3D Geospatial Context in Runtime Engines 

Vancouver Convention Centre, West Building, Ballroom C 

Cory Barr will join Adam Liss, Philip Luhn, and David Willard of HNTB to discuss how HNTB uses Cesium to enhance AEC workflows and integrate 3D geospatial context. 

glTF: Innovations in 3D Content Delivery and Use

Vancouver Convention Centre, East Building, Room 15 

Get an in-depth look at how glTF is evolving to support richer, more realistic textures and new interactive applications, including gaming and metaverse use cases. Sean Lilley will deliver "Advancements in glTF for Geospatial," covering Gaussian splats, voxels, AEC rendering, and glX.

ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization Birds of a Feather (Carto BOF)

Vancouver Convention Centre, East Building, Room 8 

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 datasets. Jake Adelgren will discuss 3D Tiles. 

Metaverse Standards Forum Frontier Workshop: Town Hall: Gaussian Splats - Ready for Standardization 

Gaussian splats are a rapidly emerging method for the fast and efficient creation of photorealistic 3D visualizations. This Frontier Workshop will address the current technologies, formats, and use cases and investigate the potential for standardization to enable interoperability and sustainable growth. Jason Sobotka and Patrick Cozzi will participate. 

Metaverse Standards Forum State of 3D Asset Interoperability using USD and glTF BOF 

This session covers updates on alignment of PBR materials, physics extensions, roundtripping between glTF and USD, interactivity, animation, FBX, and new geometric representations. Amanda Morgan, Adam Morris, and Patrick Cozzi will participate. 

Hands-On Class: A No-Code Introduction to Creating Geospatial Worlds with 3D Tiles and Cesium 

Vancouver Convention Centre, West Building, Exhibit Hall B 

This class walks participants through how to create global-scale virtual worlds using real-world geospatial data that leverages Cesium and 3D Tiles on the web and in game engines. Cory Barr will lead this hands-on lab. 

glTF & 3D Commerce: Unlocking New Possibilities for Real-Time 3D 

Fairmont Waterfront Hotel, British Ballroom 

Sean Lilley will address glX and 3D Tiles. 

Fairmont Waterfront Hotel, Waterfront Ballroom Foyer (lobby level) 

Cesium is proud to be a sponsor of this event. Meet members and enjoy a cold drink and snacks after a long day of sessions. See live demos in action and make some new connections. Please RSVP if you plan to join us. 

We look forward to seeing you in Vancouver! 

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.

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