I3S is used to stream 3D geospatial content of any size to mobile, web and desktop clients.

14 January 2021: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on the proposal for a revision to the OGC Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) Community Standard. The proposed revision is defined in the I3S Version 1.2 Community Standard Work Item Justification document. Comments are due by February 15, 2021.

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 proposed revisions for I3S version 1.2 include:

• Introduction of paged node access pattern – which significantly reduces the client-server traffic by bundling individual node metadata resources into compact pages of nodes.
• Introduction of a more compact geometry layout for 3D Object and Integrated Mesh layers binary geometry payloads – using a well-known quantization encoding (Draco).
• Introduction of an advanced material definitions property such as physically based materials.
• More optimal selection strategy – standardizes on Oriented Bounding Boxes (OBBs) based node selection criterion.
• Editorial updates/corrections.

These new enhancements are based on the Esri I3S version 1.7 product release.  OGC I3S v1.2 is backwards compatible with OGC I3S v1.1.

The work item proposal for the Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) v1.2 Community Standard is available for review and comment on the OGC Portal. Comments are due by February 15, 2021, and should be submitted via the method outlined on the Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) v1.2 Community Standard’s public comment request page.

About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 500 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.
Visit ogc.org for more info on our work.