1.0 Release of Giro3D, for 3D geospatial data on the web

The Giro3D team is pleased to announce the release of Giro3D 1.0.

Giro3D, an open-source geospatial visualization project

Giro3D is a geospatial data visualization library for the Web. Free and open source, it is compatible with many types of geospatial data sources (rasters, vectors, point clouds, etc.). Giro3D’s mission is to enable you to visualize all your georeferenced GIS data—whether 2D or 3D—efficiently on the web.

Free and community-driven

Giro3D aims to be free and community-driven. We welcome all contributions, whether to the source code, documentation, or tests: everyone is welcome!

Giro3D has started the incubation process with OSGeo; you can find the project page on the OSGeo.org website.

Extensible and easy to integrate

Giro3D is designed for integration into applications and has been successfully integrated into React and Vue.js environments. Designed as a toolbox for building geospatial web applications, it is also easy to create your own plugins and data connectors for Giro3D.

Giro3D has also been successfully integrated into QGIS Web Client (QWC), providing this application with 3D visualization capabilities.

High performance

Giro3D leverages web technologies such as web workers and GPU-side processing to enable the display of massive datasets like HD LIDAR or 3D Tiles. Indexing techniques and the use of optimized formats allow the management of very large data volumes, such as terabytes of point clouds.

👉 Feature summary

Geospatial visualization

Projected or globe mode
Supports many 2D data types (GeoTIFF, WMS, WMTS, Vector tiles…)
Supports many 3D data types (point clouds, 3D Tiles, meshes…)
Lighting and natural illumination (sun, atmosphere, etc.)
Hillshading
Advanced visualization (inpainting, EDL, etc.)
Contour lines
Clipping planes
Billboards
Color ramps for terrain and point clouds
Masks
Raster blending modes
Raster color projection onto point clouds
3D grids
Full access to the Three.js rendering engine and its ecosystem

Geospatial processing

Support for multiple CRSs
Raster reprojection
3D building extrusion
OpenLayers styles for vector data
Optimizations for very large data volumes (e.g. billions of points)
No-data value handling
Classification filters

Tools and widgets

Measurement (distance, area, angles, heights, etc.)
Drawing (point, line, polygon, etc.), drawing on DEM
Scene inspector for developers
Elevation profile
Minimap
Data query tool

Giro3D is accompanied by Piero, a fully configurable, turnkey application.

✨ What’s new in version 1.0

Improved coordinate system handling

Proper coordinate system handling is vital to ensure the accuracy and fidelity of displayed data.

Giro3D now correctly handles vertical units in coordinate systems. For example, the Autzen Stadium point cloud uses two different units for its horizontal (feet) and vertical (US feet) axes!

To register a coordinate system, you must now use CoordinateSystem.register():

import CoordinateSystem from "@giro3d/giro3d/core/geographic/CoordinateSystem.js";

const epsg2154 = CoordinateSystem.register(
  "EPSG:2154",
  `PROJCRS["RGF93 v1 / Lambert-93",
    BASEGEOGCRS["RGF93 v1",
        DATUM["Reseau Geodesique Francais 1993 v1",
            ELLIPSOID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,
                LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]]],
        PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,
            ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]],
        ID["EPSG",4171]],
    CONVERSION["Lambert-93",
        METHOD["Lambert Conic Conformal (2SP)",
            ID["EPSG",9802]],
        PARAMETER["Latitude of false origin",46.5,
            ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
            ID["EPSG",8821]],
        PARAMETER["Longitude of false origin",3,
            ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
            ID["EPSG",8822]],
        PARAMETER["Latitude of 1st standard parallel",49,
            ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
            ID["EPSG",8823]],
        PARAMETER["Latitude of 2nd standard parallel",44,
            ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
            ID["EPSG",8824]],
        PARAMETER["Easting at false origin",700000,
            LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],
            ID["EPSG",8826]],
        PARAMETER["Northing at false origin",6600000,
            LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],
            ID["EPSG",8827]]],
    CS[Cartesian,2],
        AXIS["easting (X)",east,
            ORDER[1],
            LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],
        AXIS["northing (Y)",north,
            ORDER[2],
            LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],
    USAGE[
        SCOPE["Engineering survey, topographic mapping."],
        AREA["France - onshore and offshore, mainland and Corsica (France métropolitaine including Corsica)."],
        BBOX[41.15,-9.86,51.56,10.38]],
    ID["EPSG",2154]]`
);

Registration of the RGF93 v1 / Lambert-93 coordinate system — France

Oriented images

The new OrientedImageCollection entity enables the display of oriented images in the 3D scene, such as drone photographs.

Data from a LIDAR drone survey: point cloud and georeferenced photos. ©2017, Piero Toffanin

Video layers

It is now possible to use a video as a layer for a Map, for example to represent a meteorological timelapse.

import Extent from '@giro3d/giro3d/core/geographic/Extent.js';
import VideoSource from '@giro3d/giro3d/sources/VideoSource.js';

const source = new VideoSource({
    extent: new Extent(CoordinateSystem.epsg4326, {
        west: -180,
        east: +180,
        south: -90,
        north: +90,
    }),
    source: 'https://3d.oslandia.com/giro3d/videos/humidity.webm',
});

Creation of a video layer in Giro3D

A video layer. ©NOAA

Multi-attribute coloring for point clouds

The PointCloud entity now supports multi-attribute coloring. For example:

intensity + classification
color + elevation

Color only. ©United States Geological Survey

Classification only. ©United States Geological Survey

Mixed classification and color. ©United States Geological Survey

Going further

Piero

Based on Giro3D, Piero is a web application that allows you to visualize, annotate, and analyze 2D and 3D geospatial data:

Terrain
Imagery
BIM
3D Tiles
Point clouds…

Fully configurable and extensible through a plugin system, Piero aims to become the reference application in the field of open-source geospatial 3D.

👉 Interactive demo: https://piero.giro3d.org

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jérémie Piellard (PhoenixLidar) and Karl Tayou for their contributions to this release!

Giro3D in 2026

In 2026, the Giro3D team will continue its improvement efforts. The goals are multiple:

Implement new data formats (for example 3D Gaussian Splatting, meteorological data)
Improve integration with the three.js engine
Fully leverage the possibilities offered by 3D Tiles Next
Enhance Giro3D’s capabilities in the field of digital twins

👉 And you—what would you like to see in the next versions? Tell us ! infos+3d@oslandia.com