What is Cesium?
Cesium is an open-source JavaScript library for creating interactive 3D globes and 2D maps in a web browser without the need for a plugin. Developed by Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI), Cesium uses WebGL for hardware-accelerated graphics to visualize large geospatial datasets including 3D terrain, imagery, vector data, and point clouds. Key capabilities include:
- High-performance 3D globe visualization handling large geospatial datasets with global coverage
- Fluid camera control for panning, zooming, and flying to locations
- Visualization layers for imagery, terrain, vector data, point clouds, and 3D models
- Accurate mapping from 3D to 2D coordinate reference systems
- Client-side data manipulation and analysis without server-side processing
- Cross-platform and cross-browser support including mobile devices
- Easy to integrate and customize with JavaScript API
With its complete set of geospatial visualization and analysis tools, Cesium enables creating a wide range of applications such as flight simulators, forest fire spread modeling, GPS tracking visualizations, virtual globes, and oil/gas exploration data viewers.