Cesium

CesiumJS is an open source JavaScript library for world-class 3D mapping. It is downloaded more than 15,000 times every month and powers apps that reach millions of users.

cesiumjs.org Cesium on GitHub

Open Standards & Formats

When it comes to visualizing diverse geospatial data, in real time, Cesium is breaking new ground. We've adopted open formats wherever they were available, and we've developed open formats where they weren't, setting the standard for open 3D geospatial formats.

3D Tiles

A specification for streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets such as photogrammetry, CAD, and 3D building models. Bringing techniques from graphics research, the movie industry, and the game industry, 3D Tiles define a spatial data structure and a set of tile formats designed for 3D and optimized for streaming and rendering. 3D Tiles are in the Open Geospatial Consortium Community Standard process.

glTF

The open standard 3D runtime asset format. Think of glTF as JPEG for 3D. The Cesium team worked closely with the Khronos Group to create the GL Transmission Format. glTF has been adopted by Microsoft, Google, Oculus, NVIDIA, and others.

quantized-mesh

Enables efficient 3D terrain streaming and rendering. In addition to Cesium, Systems Tool Kit, a desktop aerospace engineering platform from Analytical Graphics, and WhirlyGlobe-Maply, an open source iOS and Android mobile mapping engine, both support quantized-mesh.

CZML

The "Cesium Language", a JSON schema for describing time-dynamic 3D scenes, such as of satellites and aircraft.

Open Source Projects

To realize the full potential of 3D geospatial, we've also started and contributed to open source projects in the 3D ecosystem in addition to CesiumJS.

Our GitHub

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / webglreport

A web page that reports a browser's WebGL capabilities.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / 3d-tiles-tools

Tools for debugging, analyzing, and validating 3D Tiles tilesets that we developed with the University of Pennsylvania.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / czml-writer

A C# and Java library for writing CZML content.

glTF Ecosystem

We cultivate a number of projects in support of glTF:

KhonosGroup / COLLADA2GLTF

A tool to convert COLLADA files to glTF that we contributed to, originally started by Motorola Mobility.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / obj2gltf

A tool to convert OBJ assets to glTF that we developed.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / gltf-pipeline

Content pipeline tools for optimizing glTF assets that we developed with the University of Pennsylvania.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / gltf-vscode

An extension for Visual Studio Code that adds features for previewing and editing glTF files that we developed that Microsoft contributes to.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / gltf-utilities

A JavaScript utility library that provides a consistent API for loading glTF resources from a remote URL that we developed.

AnalyticalGraphicsInc / wetzel

A documentation tool to generate Markdown documentation from JSON Schema we developed that Microsoft contributes to.

Community Building

We don't just make our source code available; we help users become heroes with CesiumJS by supporting their work.

Forum

We maintain the Cesium forum as a free place for anyone to ask and answer Cesium-related questions, create connections, or share news. The forum has over 5,500 threads, with more than 400 posts a month and over 1,300 subscribers. The core Cesium team follows the forum closely and provides free community support.

Mentoring

We regularly mentor University of Pennsylvania students, and we've also mentored students for Google Summer of Code and the European Space Agency Summer of Code in Space. These students have produced significant open source projects in the Cesium, 3D Tiles, WebGL, and glTF communities.

Conferences

Our team members have served on committees for open source conferences such as FOSS4G NA and FeoGeoDay, and we regularly sponsor, attend, and present on Cesium, 3D graphics, and building open source communities at many conferences and universities.

Ecosystems

We encourage adoption of open source and open standards by curating projects and bringing developers together. We're invested in supporting formats and tools around Cesium, 3D Tiles, and glTF that serve the entire community.

Open Source 3D Mapping

What began as a single JavaScript library for building 3D maps now includes an ecosystem of multiple open source projects, open standards, and community building efforts.