Bentley and AGI Announce Cesium Consortium—Accelerate Virtual Globe For BIM/Infrastructure

Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI) and Bentley Systems have announced that Bentley Systems as a co-founder of the new Cesium Consortium.

Open-Source Browser-based Virtual Globe

Cesium is an open source, brower-based virtual globe and it was first developed by AGI in 2011 for the aerospace and defense industries. Cesium’s unparalleled performance in streaming very large datasets through a browser to desktops, tablets, and smartphones has enabled it to become the virtual globe of choice for geospatial viewing.

The new consortium will now enable Bentley and AGI to accelerate the Cesium roadmap which involves complex visualization of 2D and 3D assets integrated on this virtual globe. A principle goal is the support of BIM models. Also, the consortium will support feature development, priority bug fixes, expansion of outreach efforts, and the hosting of social coding events such as code sprints and bug bashes.

Cesium and Bentley Infrastructure Engineering Models

Bentley Systems is adopting Cesium to visualize and interact with highly detailed infrastructure engineering models set in the reality context of their surrounding environment. The digital engineering models are created with Bentley’s MicroStation and BIM applications, and the context is provided through reality meshes, created from digital photography and scanning devices using Bentley’s ContextCapture.

01 – This image shows the Javascript-powered Cesium virtual globe technology with BIM-infrastructure 3D data on top of this powerful system. We did spend a lot of time exploring the interface details of this platform and were impressed with the speed. Image: Bentley. All rights reserved.

Keith Bentley, founder, and CTO of Bentley Systems, said, “We are thrilled to join the Cesium Consortium as a founding member. I commend AGI for their leadership and vision, not only for creating an open source solution for highly performant 3D web-based applications but, more importantly, for fostering an ecosystem to leverage it. I expect Bentley and our users will build Cesium-based Web clients for immersively viewing BIM models, reality context, asset databases, IoT streams, and myriad other ‘Geo3D’ services. We look forward to working hand in hand with AGI and future members of the consortium to expand Cesium as an open standard.”

Bentley’s work to date illustrates the advantages that the infrastructure community can expect from Cesium. Data created with both MicroStation and ContextCapture can be exported to 3D Tiles, an open format developed by the Cesium team to stream massive geo-coordinated 3D datasets. Cesium will enable Bentley users to stream their digital engineering models over the Web to desktop and mobile devices with unprecedented performance and precision.

“We are very excited to collaborate with Bentley. Bentley shares our vision and technical approach and has already done some fantastic work with Cesium and 3D Tiles,” said Patrick Cozzi, Cesium founder. “Bentley’s support will be key within our submission team proposing 3D Tiles as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Community Standard.”

For more information on how to join and accelerate the Cesium Consortium, please contact info@agi.com.

About Cesium

Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI) is the incubator of the Cesium team, which is the founder and primary contributor to the Cesium open source project. In addition, the Cesium team also builds cesium.com, which is available as a hosted or on-premise solution for the rapid creation of 3D worlds and dissemination of geospatial datasets. For more information, visit www.cesiumjs.org.

About Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems is a global leader in providing architects, engineers, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators with comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley users leverage information mobility across disciplines and throughout the infrastructure lifecycle to deliver better-performing projects and assets. Founded in 1984, Bentley has more than 3,000 colleagues in over 50 countries, more than $600 million in annual revenues, and since 2009 has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions. Additional information about Bentley is available at www.bentley.com.