Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S)

This community standard defines an open 3D content delivery format used to rapidly stream and distribute large volumes of 3D GIS data to mobile, web and desktop clients. I3S content can be shared across enterprise systems using both physical and cloud servers.

A single I3S data set, referred to as a Scene Layer, is a container for arbitrarily large amounts of heterogeneously distributed 3D geographic data. Scene Layers are designed to be used in mobile, desktop, and server-based workflows and can be accessed over the web or as local files.

The delivery format and persistence model for Scene Layers, referred to as Indexed 3d Scene Layer (I3S) and Scene Layer Package (SLPK) respectively, are specified in detail in this OGC Community Standard. Both formats are encoded using JSON and binary ArrayBuffers (ECMAScript 2015). I3S is designed to be cloud, web and mobile friendly. I3S is based on JSON, REST and modern web standards and is easy to handle, efficiently parse and render by Web and Mobile Clients. I3S is designed to stream large 3d datasets and is designed for performance and scalability. I3S is designed to support 3D geospatial content and supports the requisite coordinate reference systems and height models in conjunction with a rich set of layer types.

The open community GitHub version of this standard is here: https://github.com/Esri/i3s-spec