Quantized-Mesh revolution

Hello,

I’m just raising a possible evolution for Cesium terrain model.
So far I have used and generated HeightMap and later on QuantizedMesh terrains over the past years.

Today 3D-Tiles Next is available, everything is a GLTF extension.

The idea here would be to do the same with QuantizedMesh, after all everything in a QMesh can go in a GLB with all the benefits it can bring in compression, speed and source code simplification.

  • QMesh vertices → GLTF primitive positions
  • QMesh lightning → GLTF primitive normals
  • QMesh watermask → GLTF texture
  • QMesh metadata → GLTF extras

The missing elements : Center; MinimumHeight; MaximumHeight; BoundingSphereCenter; BoundingSphereRadius; HorizonOcclusionPoint;

  • Could be used if present in the metadata
  • Or use the clipping/frustum culling technique from the 3d-tiles implicit-tiling

This would allow users to have a 3dtiles data both as terrain and scene, which is often the case.

What do you think ?