The 3DCityDB-Web-Map-Client is 3DCityDB’s front-end for web-based 3D visualization and interactive exploration of arbitrarily large semantic 3D city models. The 3DCityDB-Web-Map-Client has been developed based on the Cesium Virtual Globe, which is an open source JavaScript library developed by Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI). It utilizes HTML5 and the Web Graphics Library (WebGL) as its core for hardware acceleration and provides cross-platform functionalities like displaying 3D graphic contents on the web without the needs of additional plugins.

While developing the 3DCityDB-Web-Map-Client, various extensions have been made to the Cesium Virtual Globe in order to facilitate users to view and explore 3D city models conveniently. The major one among those extensions is that the KML/glTF models exported using the Import/Export tool can now be directly visualized along with imagery and terrain layers within a web browser using the 3DCityDB-Web-Map-Client, which additionally can link the KML/glTF models with table data exported using the Spreadsheet Generator Plugin (SPSHG) and allows querying the thematic data of every city object. See the new functionalities in the online demos.

The 3DCityDB-Web-Map-Client is also equipped with an extension that provides better support for mobile devices. The extension comes with a built-in mobile detector, which can automatically detect and adjust the client’s behaviors accordingly to whether the 3DCityDB-Web-Map-Client is operating on a mobile device. Some of the most important mobile features enabled by this extension as well as how to use them are described on the tool’s GitHub page.