Image credit: “ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization Birds of a Feather” © Rhyne
By The ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization BOF Team (Theresa-Marie Rhyne, Project Lead)
The ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization Birds of a Feather (Carto BOF) was founded in 1996 to bring together researchers and practitioners working in geospatial data visualization. Over the years, the BOF has featured presentations and discussions from organizations including the International Cartographic Association, the Web3D Consortium Geospatial Working Group, the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Google Earth Team, Cesium (as it evolved from an Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI) project into an independent company), and ESRI.
At SIGGRAPH 2026, the Carto BOF celebrates its 30th anniversary with presentations from Cesium, ESRI, and the Web3D Consortium. Join us on Tuesday, 21 July from 11:45 am–12:45 pm PDT in the ACM SIGGRAPH 365 program, room 404 AB, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Highlights of the presentations include:
Cesium will present its 3D-native approach to vector data visualization at geospatial scale as part of ongoing work on 3D Tiles 2.0. Moving beyond traditional 2D-centric vector tiling models, the presentation will demonstrate techniques for real-time streaming and rendering of massive vector datasets across the full 2D-to-3D spectrum, enabling more scalable and immersive geospatial visualization workflows, urban planning, and immersive storytelling.
ESRI will present their perspective on how open standards — from I3S to the cross-consortium KHR_gaussian_splatting effort in glTF — are making Gaussian Splats, photogrammetry, and GeoAI-driven 3D content interoperable across geospatial workflows. Drawing on ArcGIS 3D GIS and ongoing work in OGC, Khronos, and OpenUSD, the presentation will show how georeferenced, semantically rich 3D content provides the foundation for living digital twins that unite planners, architects, and data scientists around a shared view of the world.
The Web3D Consortium Geospatial Working Group will present progress on incorporating 3D Tiles into X3DOM, an X3D-based browser for visualization of interactive 3D data on the Web. Complementing this effort — funded through a Cesium Ecosystem Grant — is the development of a workflow for producing 3D Tile data from seafloor mapping observations. This workflow is being developed within MB-System, the widely used open-source software package for processing multibeam sonar and lidar data.
Be sure to register for SIGGRAPH 2026 so you don’t miss this session. Then, add the ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization Birds of a Feather to your agenda. We’ll see you on 21 July in Los Angeles!
Theresa-Marie Rhyne is the organizer of the ACM SIGGRAPH Cartographic Visualization Birds of a Feather session that has been held every year since 1996. Presenting with her will be colleagues for Cesium, ESRI, and the Web 3D Consortium Geospatial Group. These real-time demonstration presentations are confirmed but specific speaker names are not known at this time.
