Latest version of the I3S Community Standard, used for streaming large 3D datasets to desktop and mobile devices, adds Point Cloud Scene Layer type, improved performance, and more.

11 February 2020: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the OGC Membership has approved version 1.1 of the OGC Community Standard Indexed 3D Scene Layer and Scene Layer Package Format Specification, more commonly known as I3S.

I3S enables the streaming and storage of arbitrarily large amounts of 3D geographic data. An I3S dataset, referred to as a Scene Layer, can consist of millions of discrete 3D objects with attributes, integrated surface meshes, symbolized points, or billions of point cloud data covering vast geographic areas. Designed for performance and scalability, a scene layer enables the efficient encoding and transmission of various types of geospatial content for an interactive visualization experience on web browsers, mobile, and desktop apps for both offline and online access. A Scene Layer can be accessed in the form of a web service or Scene Layer Package (SLPK) – a file-based exchange format.

I3S is web and cloud friendly and is rooted in modern standards and technological advancements in the areas of 3D graphics, data structuring, and mesh and texture compression. I3S is accessible for efficient client-side filtering. I3S empowers city and local governments, content providers, and GIS professionals to share scene layers consisting of terabytes of nation-wide point cloud coverage, city and site scale 3D mesh data collected at frequent intervals, 3D planning scenarios fusing both ‘as built’ and modeled information, and more. The increased accessibility and ease of consumption of geospatial content by both domain experts as well as casual users is being rapidly accelerated by standards such as I3S.

The changes included in v1.1 of the OGC I3S Community Standard include:

• Addition of the Point Cloud Scene Layer (PCSL) type. A PCSL is designed to quickly display large volumes of symbolized and filtered point cloud data. A PCSL in addition to being scalable, allows for quick discovery and selection of the appropriate level of detail by a client application, whether its consumed on a mobile, web, or desktop platform.
• For existing layer types, the addition of Oriented Bounding Boxes as an optimal bounding volume, Attribute Domain Rules specifying an attribute schema, and an Index hash table for Scene Layer Packages for improving file access performance.
• Numerous editorial updates/corrections to improve readability.

Version 1.0 of I3S was approved by the OGC Membership as an  OGC Community Standard in 2017. Since then, new features have been developed and implemented by the I3S community, and integrated to form v1.1. The I3S Community Standard was submitted to OGC by Esri.

As with any OGC standard, the open I3S Community Standard is free to download and implement. Interested parties can view and download the standard from  OGC’s I3S Community Standard Page.

About OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 530 businesses, government agencies, research organizations, and universities driven to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

OGC’s member-driven consensus process creates royalty free, publicly available geospatial standards. Existing at the cutting edge, OGC actively analyzes and anticipates emerging tech trends, and runs an agile, collaborative Research and Development (R&D) lab that builds and tests innovative prototype solutions to members' use cases.

OGC members together form a global forum of experts and communities that use location to connect people with technology and improve decision-making at all levels. OGC is committed to creating a sustainable future for us, our children, and future generations.