Cesium in 2016 - what do you want to see?

CesiumJS
1

Hi all,

As we do every year, we’d like to kick off 2016 by asking for your input on what you want to see in Cesium this year. Here’s a few ideas to get started:

  • Finish 3D Tiles - massive 3D buildings, point clouds, vectors, etc.
  • Label declutter
  • Terrain on by default - including Entity API and polylines on terrain
  • Improved KML support - #873
  • Improved tutorials and code examples
  • Improved CZML documentation
  • Shadows
  • Native VR - branch
  • WebGL 2 - #797

Of these, what do you need most? What else is important to you?

Thanks,

Patrick

2

Needed most : submarine terrain !!

Webgl2 !

3
  1. Prioritization of frame rate (smoother camera motion rendering):

Let me explain. When used as a low-altitude flight simulator Cesium will frequently stall/stutter while loading new terrain. This is worst during a sudden yaw maneuver which suddenly brings a lot of new terrain into view. My uneducated guess is that cesium blocks while trying to download the new terrain detail. This block can last long enough to drag the frame rate down considerably. The stuttering in the scene movement is highly undesirable.

  1. 3D Tiles for buildings:

I’ve transitioned from GE to cesium for our real-time and post-flight flight test visualization and the MOST frequent question is “where’s the buildings?”. I would love to make this question go away. I’ve downloaded several local relevant buildings as models from the Sketchup 3D Gallery and hacked them in as entity models but they really are quite poorly made. On top of which the shading is wrong (it follows the camera position). If I could get back to having someone else serve up building a la GE I would be much much happier.

  1. Entity and polylines on terrain:

I sorely miss being able to plant models and polylines on the terrain.

  • M
4

Matt - good ideas, thanks for the input!

For (1), do you have a link to the app? Cesium doesn’t block on download and throttles texture uploads to try to avoid cases like you describe. However, it could be the GC. Part the 3D Tiles roadmap is to introduce a request and job scheduler that may help here.

Also, that reminds me of another feature that may be of interest to folks for 2016:

  • Do not render when paused. #1865

Patrick

5

It’s all behind a firewall unfortunately. By GC do you mean the graphics card?

My main loop:

6

My number 1 is definitely:

Terrain on by default - including Entity API and polylines on terrain.

And specifically the ability to be able to lock entities/lines to terrain and have them stay on top of it as you move the time slider back and forth. Currently I am not aware of a way to do that.

7

Hello,

As first priority, we would like to see 3D-Tiles finished and merged into the master branch.

Also building shadows for 3D-Tiles would be nice.

Jannes

8

Great feedback everyone, keep it coming!

@Matt by GC, I mean the JavaScript runtime’s Garbage Collector.

@Jannes when we implement shadows, it will be a general approach that works for everything: buildings in 3D Tiles, 3D models from glTF, terrain from quantized-mesh, etc. It will be very cool.

Patrick

9

在 2016年1月5日星期二 UTC+8下午11:26:41，Patrick Cozzi写道：

Hi all,

As we do every year, we'd like to kick off 2016 by asking for your input on what you want to see in Cesium this year. Here's a few ideas to get started:
Finish 3D Tiles - massive 3D buildings, point clouds, vectors, etc.Label declutterTerrain on by default - including Entity API and polylines on terrainImproved KML support - #873Improved tutorials and code examplesImproved CZML documentationShadows
Native VR - branchWebGL 2 - #797
Of these, what do you need most? What else is important to you?

Thanks,
Patrick

--

twitter.com/pjcozzi

It is strongly recommended to solve this problem ： Entity being clamped to ground is not supported.

10

To me it would be :

  • Terrain on by default - including Entity API and polylines on terrain
  • Finish 3D Tiles - massive 3D buildings, point clouds, vectors, etc.
  • WebGL2
    Thanks for all your efforts!
11

would like vector tiles and model orientation

12

Hi Matt,

Re: #2- CyberCity 3D creates high res building models for use in Cesium. We have a few demos up on the Cesium website that you can check out. We largely work with cities/downtown development organizations, but have worked with simulators in the past. I think we could help- let me know if you’re at all interested.

Austin

alogie@cybercity3d.com

13

Option to install only the files needed to run.

No doc's, No samples, etc.

14

Susan - what exactly do you mean by model orientation?

Thanks,

Patrick

15

Thanks Patrick,

Yes, I’m sorry that I was vague. It seemed there was some talk of making czml model orientation easier than figuring out quaternions. I’d be very interested
in that. I am unable to orient a model on a given lon, lat, height path in czml with “orientation : unitQuaternions”. My model stays in a fixed orientation. The only way I am able to get my glider to follow a path is to hardwire it into the html, eeks!
– just so that I may use the easy way to orient the model with “orientation : new Cesium.VelocityOrientationProperty(position)”.

I don’t know how to put Cesium functions into a czml and it seems that the milktruck czml is able to do this with something in the html header. I am a little
lost as to piecing together the parts I need out of the many provided examples in sandcastle or in calculating quaternions.

Thank you for your attention. I would really be excited to get the model into my Cesium App!

Susan

Hardcoded into my html:

…

//Generate a pattern with varying heights.

function computeFlight(lon, lat, height) {

var concavex = [-89.0000,-88.5833,-88.0500,-87.5667,-87.1667,-86.8000,-86.4167,-86.1500,-85.8333,-85.6333,-85.3833,-85.2667,-85.1833,-85.2333,-85.2500,-85.2167,-85.2167,-85.3000,-85.3000,-85.4333,-85.7333,-86.2833,-86.8667,-87.2500,-87.5833,-87.8000,-87.9833,-88.2500,-88.4833,-88.6167,-88.9000,-89.1333,-89.3167,-89.6500,-90.0667,-90.5333,-91.0000,-91.4167,-92.0000,-92.4667,-92.8500,-93.1333,-93.4333,-93.4500,-93.3833,-93.1167,-92.9667,-92.7000,-92.3500,-92.2000,-91.9000,-91.5500,-91.1000,-90.7167,-90.3167,-89.9667,-89.6833,-89.5333,-89.2167,-88.4667,-87.6833,-87.6000,-87.6500,-87.9500,-89.0833,-89.9333,-90.8000,-91.7333,-92.8500,-92.9833,-93.3500,-93.8500,-94.3833,-94.8167,-95.4167,-95.8500,-96.1500,-96.1833,-96.1667,-96.1500,-96.0667,-96.0667,-96.2000,-96.3000,-96.2667,-96.1000,-95.8333,-95.5667,-95.3000,-94.7333,-94.1500,-93.7667,-93.4333,-93.1000,-92.9167,-92.9333,-93.0167,-93.0333,-93.0833,-93.1500,-93.1667,-93.1667,-93.1167,-92.9667,-92.6667,-92.3833,-92.1167,-91.4833,-90.8167,-89.4333,-88.8667,-88.6500,-88.0167,-87.7500,-87.7167,-87.9167,-88.4833,-89.2167,-90.1000,-90.8000,-91.2000,-91.5833,-91.9500,-92.0833,-92.0500,-91.4000,-90.5667,-90.0167,-89.5167,-88.9167,-88.4000,-88.0500,-87.7333,-87.5667,-87.4667,-87.4500,-87.4500,-87.5333,-87.7500,-88.0333,-88.5667,-89.5667,-90.0833,-90.6333,-90.6333,-90.7667,-90.4667,-89.8500,-89.4500,-89.1167,-88.7833];

var concavey = [28.2000,28.1667,28.1500,28.0500,27.9500,27.8833,27.7667,27.5833,27.4167,27.2500,27.0667,26.9000,26.6500,26.5000,

26.2667,25.8667,25.4833,25.1333,24.8833,24.7000,24.4333,24.2333,24.1667,24.1500,24.2000,24.3333,24.4167,24.6167,

24.8167,24.9333,25.1667,25.4167,25.6000,25.7667,25.8333,25.8500,25.8500,25.8333,25.8000,25.8000,25.8000,25.8667,

26.0167,26.2333,26.4333,26.7333,26.8333,26.9667,27.0833,27.1167,27.1833,27.2500,27.2833,27.3833,27.3667,27.4500,

27.5333,27.6667,27.8333,27.8000,27.3667,27.0167,26.5500,26.2667,26.1500,26.0667,26.0000,25.9500,25.8333,25.8000,

25.8833,25.8333,25.8000,25.8000,25.7333,25.6667,25.4000,25.0000,24.6333,24.1500,23.7167,23.4167,23.0500,22.6167,

22.2167,21.9167,21.7667,21.5833,21.5167,21.5167,21.5167,21.5167,21.5667,21.6333,22.0333,22.5167,22.7167,22.9667,

23.1833,23.4000,23.7167,24.2167,24.5333,24.7500,25.1000,25.2167,25.3667,25.8500,26.0833,26.4500,26.4833,26.4833,

26.2500,25.8500,25.2667,24.8667,24.5167,24.3667,24.3000,24.2667,24.0833,23.8333,23.4167,22.8000,22.6167,22.3500,

22.4000,22.5167,22.6000,22.8333,23.2000,23.4667,23.7500,23.9667,24.2500,24.5500,24.9667,25.2833,25.5167,25.7833,

26.0667,26.5500,26.7000,26.7667,26.7667,27.0667,27.3833,27.8333,28.0500,28.2333,28.3833];

var concaveh = [326172.4138,298396.5517,272482.7586,254068.9655,245689.6552,242482.7586,234775.8621,229913.7931,226810.3448,

226189.6552,224844.8276,224896.5517,224068.9655,223758.6207,223137.931,224275.8621,223344.8276,222465.5172,

222568.9655,220137.931,218896.5517,247137.931,322086.2069,352034.4828,367965.5172,366000,350120.6897,

313913.7931,214241.3793,214500,216155.1724,218586.2069,223137.931,226396.5517,226034.4828,219568.9655,

217758.6207,222310.3448,243827.5862,233482.7586,229034.4828,225258.6207,232913.7931,292293.1034,306051.7241,

322655.1724,322913.7931,318103.4483,316137.931,318206.8966,328241.3793,320793.1034,306051.7241,329637.931,

327724.1379,329896.5517,325396.5517,326120.6897,321051.7241,278224.1379,249931.0345,246931.0345,248482.7586,

246000,239017.2414,230068.9655,219775.8621,274137.931,229551.7241,224741.3793,227275.8621,225879.3103,

226655.1724,232758.6207,300931.0345,344431.0345,346189.6552,332275.8621,305793.1034,277862.069,260586.2069,

270206.8966,271189.6552,268862.069,265189.6552,258465.5172,260741.3793,251120.6897,239172.4138,218120.6897,

231051.7241,231982.7586,230120.6897,233844.8276,226293.1034,210827.5862,204724.1379,200689.6552,200844.8276,

200586.2069,199913.7931,201000,200741.3793,201775.8621,210724.1379,216103.4483,224431.0345,250086.2069,

223344.8276,242327.5862,256241.3793,261465.5172,245689.6552,231568.9655,218896.5517,266689.6552,306568.9655,

210672.4138,200637.931,202603.4483,202034.4828,200586.2069,200637.931,199448.2759,207672.4138,388706.8966,

390827.5862,390827.5862,391396.5517,391810.3448,390413.7931,390465.5172,384620.6897,380172.4138,354775.8621,

310603.4483,218741.3793,219258.6207,223500,232137.931,241086.2069,244706.8966,253706.8966,301603.4483,

301603.4483,308896.5517,325034.4828,344431.0345,333465.5172,335379.3103,322241.3793];

var property = new Cesium.SampledPositionProperty();

for (var i = 0; i<150; i +=1) {

//var radians = Cesium.Math.toRadians(i);

var time = Cesium.JulianDate.addSeconds(start, i, new Cesium.JulianDate());

var position = Cesium.Cartesian3.fromDegrees(concavex[i],concavey[i],concaveh[i]);

property.addSample(time, position);

}//for var i loop

return property;

}//function computeCircularFlight

//Compute the entity position property.

var position = computeFlight(-92.248, 24.0793, 483065);

//Actually create the entity

var entity = viewer.entities.add({

//Set the entity availability to the same interval as the simulation time.

availability : new Cesium.TimeIntervalCollection([new Cesium.TimeInterval({

start : start,

stop : stop

})]),

“name”:“Glider”,

“description” : “\r\n

<img src=‘glider.jpg’ height=‘80’ width=‘150’ scrolling=‘no’ style=‘float:left; margin: 0
1em 1em 0;’ Glider
\r\n

”,

//Use our computed positions

position : position,

//Automatically compute orientation based on position movement.

orientation : new Cesium.VelocityOrientationProperty(position),

//Load the Cesium plane model to represent the entity

model : {

uri : ‘SampleData/models/glider/model.glb’,

minimumPixelSize : 45

}//,

});//var entity

…

[two drop-down lists to select two czml’s at a time …I have a whole bunch of czml’s and I would like one of the selectable czmls to be the glider with its path
and orientation]

…

Sandcastle.reset = function() {

Viewer.dataSources.removeAll(false);

…

On Behalf Of Patrick Cozzi

16

Patrick,

Improved KML support would be a nice addition. Another thing which be nice to have would be a terrain Exaggeration improvement, if the value of terrain exaggeration is changed primitives/entities would be adjusted accordingly.

Thanks

Jerry

17

I would really like to see along with “Terrain on by default” terrain with orthometric elevations , rather than elliptical

thanks for all the hard work so far !!

18

Saving terrain for offline use!

19

My number one is Shadows.

20

@Berwyn do you have more details on orthometric elevations?

@Svetoslav would love to see shadows too, especially with the upcoming 3D buildings support. What is your use case?

Thanks,

Patrick