2026-07-03 –, A02
iTowns is an open-source, community-driven web framework designed for geospatial
data visualization, navigation and interaction. It provides seamless 3D
rendering in a single, integrated package. Sponsored by the french National
Map agency (IGN) and Ciril Group, iTowns benefits from institutional
and industry support to ensure long-term development and innovation.
Technique
Built with extensibility and interoperability in mind, iTowns out-of-the-box
supports commonly-used OGC's open formats and protocols. This includes:
- fetching imagery and elevation data from WMS, WMTS and TMS servers
- streaming large 3D datasets: 3D Tiles, pointclouds; ...
- importing various vectors formats: vector tiles, geoJSON, GPX, ...
- and those requested by the community!
The iTowns team would like to present an introduction to the tool, from the first steps to the design of complex 3D geographic web service.
After a quick presentation of the library, we will see how easy it is to set up a first standard OGC data viewer (WMS, WMTS, VectorTiles) on a 3D globe.
Then we will move on to setting up richer applications combining 3DTiles data, point clouds (EPT or COPC), etc., always in a simple and fluid way.
Then, since iTowns is based on ThreeJS, we will show how it is possible to use the richness of Three.JS in an iTowns view.
Finally, we will show the latest developments in the library and present upcoming new features.
Build easily a 3D web visualisation as :
- https://www.itowns-project.org/itowns/examples/view_3d_map.html
- https://www.itowns-project.org/itowns/examples/vector_tile_3d_mesh_mapbox.html
- https://www.itowns-project.org/itowns/examples/3dtiles_loader.html?3dtiles=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2FiTowns%2FiTowns2-sample-data%2Fmaster%2Fpointclouds%2Fpnts-sete-2021-0756_6256%2Ftileset.json
and other exemples.
Level of the workshop: 1: beginner Pre-requirements for attendees:Know the geographic flow data (2D and, if possible, 3D).
knowledge in development, especially in JavaScript, would be a plus. But people without any knowledge will still be able to do great things.
Coding knowledge required?:This workshop is open to everyone. Those with some knowledge of JavaScript will be able to go further with the examples. Those who also have some knowledge of 3D will be able to explore more features.
We recommend that you bring a computer to this workshop withan IDE (integrated development environment) so that you can code the sample websites.
Link to software source code repository: Link to software source code repository
I am the head of a development team at IGN. My team works on creating tools for producing image data (as orthophotos), 3D data (LiDAR data for the whole of France, DTM, DSM) and digital twins. My team also has a large component dedicated to developing web visualization of 3D data for iTowns.