Case study: Cesium vs. ArcGIS API for JavaScript

CesiumJS
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I’d like to share the results of a student project in a Master’s degree program in Cartography which I supervised this semester. The project aims to compare Cesium and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript in terms of functionality and documentation. As a test scenario, the settlement development of a city in Switzerland was chosen. For each API, the student implemented a buildings map including 3D tiles, terrain, a WMS as base map, and simple animations. The workflow of data processing and visualization as well as a comparison of development resources is described in her final report:

http://www.ika.ethz.ch/studium/cartography_lab/2017_staehli_report.pdf

Due to the limited time frame, not all requirements could be resolved: Open issues for the ArcGIS API for JavaScript were the WMS integration and the translation animation of buildings. In Cesium, increasing the ambient lighting and placing buildings on the terrain were problematic (maybe you can give us some hints to solve this). Nevertheless, the outcome of both APIs is quite appealing:

http://osgl.ethz.ch/showcases/#usability-of-virtual-globe-toolkits

Overall, the student judged choosing one API over the other as a matter of use case and preference.

Have fun the reading report and exploring the two web applications. And thanks for the development and continuous improvements of the Cesium globe!

Raimund

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Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

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Hi Raimund,

Very cool, thanks for sharing! It’s always great to see what we are doing well, as well as what we can improve on. Would you be interested in writing a blog post for cesium.com?

Thanks,

Gabby

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Hi Gabby,

Thank you for your offer. Currently the student is busy with writing her master thesis and I just started a new project, so interested readers can get details of the comparison in the report mentioned above. But I keep the possibility of writing a blog post in mind for the future. We teach Cesium in one of our cartography courses and I'm using it for research.

Kind regards,
Raimund

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Hi Raimund,

Great to hear you use Cesium in your courses and research! We’re always interested in collaboration if you have any interesting projects to showcase or ideas for blog posts.

Thanks,

Gabby