3d Flyover Architecture

1. Provider initialization

Create the Viewer with baseLayer: false, UI widgets disabled, and contextOptions.webgl.preserveDrawingBuffer: true. Never hide the credit display.

Landscape

Add MapTiler satellite-v2 with UrlTemplateImageryProvider, then load terrain-quantized-mesh-v2 with CesiumTerrainProvider.fromUrl({requestVertexNormals: true}). MapTiler supplies both datasets; no Cesium ion token is required.

City

Do not add MapTiler. Hide the globe, then add:

Lower maximumScreenSpaceError improves refinement at substantial download/render cost. Start at 4 for a hero landmark and 6–8 for wider urban shots. Enforce the Google 30-second promotional video ceiling in the component.

Load Cesium from the CDN after setting window.CESIUM_BASE_URL; the tested version is 1.143.

2. The camera path — structure & generation

Four properties matter, in order:

1. Continuous curvature — the camera must flow through curves, never “fly straight, snap to a new heading, fly straight.” The component applies three passes of Chaikin corner cutting to every supplied path. Each pass replaces a segment with quarter and three-quarter points, rounding a corner into a curve. Three passes are the default; four is softer, two is tighter.
2. Constant ground speed — precompute cumulative distance along the rounded curve and interpolate by arc length. Do not animate by source-point index; unequal source spacing creates speed bumps.
3. Minimized amplitude — for detailed landscape centerlines, dampen the prepared path toward its straight start→end chord by a fixed fraction DAMP (0 = dead straight, 1 = full river). This is the single swerve-amplitude knob.
4. Enough length — PATHKM ≥ TRAVEL_KM + 2·LOOK_AHEAD_KM so the look-ahead aim never clamps.

../scripts/prep-cesium-path.mjs does: clip a window of the source centerline → resample to even arc-length spacing (0.1 km) → moving-average smooth (±2.8 km window, 2 passes) → dampen toward the chord (DAMP=0.45). Validate with the heading-delta probe it prints — deltas should be small and change gradually (water-wars: 3,0,-1,-3,-4,1,7,9,5,-5,-12,-7,…). Big jumps = corners = bad.

The component then applies Chaikin smoothing to this prepared route, or directly to a short hand-authored city route. Keep city control points sparse and intentional; smoothing cannot rescue a zig-zagging route that crosses the subject repeatedly.

Source data: OSM via Overpass (~0.3 km vertex spacing) — Natural Earth is too coarse for inner gorges. overpass-api.de is often busy → mirror overpass.kumi.systems.

3. Camera animation per frame (position, heading, pitch, bank)

Walk the path by arc length (precompute cumulative distances once). Every frame:

• Position = the point at dCam km along the path, altitude lerp(ALT_START, ALT_END, prog).
• Heading = bearing from the camera point to a real point LOOK_AHEAD_KM further along the same path. A far aim averages wiggle → smooth heading; on a curved path it leads into the bend, so the heading turns gently with the path. (A local-tangent aim spins the camera at every kink — don’t.)
• Pitch = constant. We keep a MapLibre-style param PITCH_FROM_NADIR (90 = horizon), then convert: Cesium pitch = -(90 - PITCH_FROM_NADIR) (Cesium: 0 = horizon, -90 = straight down). 76° → -14°.
• Bank (roll) = lean into the turn — the helicopter tell. Measure turn rate as the bearing change between aim and a point 2·LOOK_AHEAD_KM ahead; roll = clamp(dH · BANK_GAIN, ±MAX_BANK). Because the path is smooth, dH changes gradually → the bank eases in and out, never jerks.

Cesium vs MapLibre conventions (gotcha): Cesium heading is radians, 0 = north, clockwise. Pitch 0 = horizon, negative = down (MapLibre is the inverse). Roll positive = bank right; tune the sign by eye.

4. The feel — proven water-wars values

A slow camera renders fast. At 0.54 km/s the camera moves ~18 m/frame, so tiles stay cached and each settle() returns almost immediately; the 720-frame render completed in one pass (no chunk-rendering).

5. The complete component

The full, runnable component is ../assets/CesiumFlythrough.tsx — read it directly. Its shape:

• loadCesium() — inject CESIUM_BASE_URL + the CDN Cesium.js, resolve when loaded.
• init effect — build the Viewer (§1), setCamera(…, 0), await settle(viewer), continueRender.
• settle(viewer) — loop viewer.render() until globe.tilesLoaded for landscapes or tileset.tilesLoaded for cities is stable for ~8 ticks (cap ~600).
• per-frame effect — delayRender({timeoutInMilliseconds: 60000}) → setCamera(prog) → settle() → continueRender.

6. Render

--gl=angle is mandatory. Use --concurrency=1; settle() already serializes tile loading.