Subject: Feature Request: Exporting Stories Annotations / Waypoints to KML
To: Cesium Development Team
Date: September 12, 2026
Greetings Cesium Team,
I am relatively new to Cesium, and my primary goal is replacing Google Earth Pro to navigate, plan, and curate prospective mountain trails on the property I maintain.
My field workflow relies on handheld GPS tracking apps (on my phone/iPad) while physically hiking. I chose Cesium as my desktop planning hub to synthesize high-resolution 3D models, legacy tracks, and ground-truth experience before putting boots on the ground.
Recently, I created a high-detail 3D terrain overlay using a drone photogrammetry pipeline (DJI drone, Map Pilot, and Maps Made Easy) and loaded the resulting Wavefront 3D object into Cesium ion. The outcome is incredible—navigating the mountain terrain in 3D works remarkably well.
However, I’ve hit a critical friction point: the inability to export manually created Stories Annotations (waypoints) out to KML/GPX.
My Core Use Case:
- In Cesium Stories, I imported legacy waypoints from previous GPS tracks alongside my 3D terrain model.
- Using Cesium’s 3D perspective as my authoring workspace, I visually curated a brand-new set of 15 waypoints—selecting the best contenders for our prospective trail based on terrain slope, clearings, and personal memory.
- To test these new points in the field, I need to transfer them back onto my handheld GPS app. Because there is no “Export Annotations” button in the Stories interface, I am left manually copying and pasting coordinates one by one.
Since trail design is an iterative loop (plan on 3D desktop $\rightarrow$ verify in field $\rightarrow$ update desktop model), having a simple “Export Annotations as KML/GPX” button inside Cesium Stories would bridge this gap seamlessly.
Cesium is a top-drawer platform, and I am thoroughly impressed with the tools you’ve built. Adding this export functionality would complete an otherwise perfect planning workflow.
Best regards,
Mark Trumpold