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What's New

v4.4 (in development)​

Target Release Date: Q1 2025

See the v4.4 Roadmap for more details.

v4.3​

Release Date: October 16, 2024

A minor release that includes:

  • TypeScript - Typecript v5.6.
  • Node.js - Node.js v20 is now the primary supported Node.js version.
  • Loader/Writer APIs - Improved type inference for loader / writer options and return types.
  • DataSource API Multi-step data loadingi mprovements.
  • Website - Live examples are now available for more loaders / formats.
  • Examples - Migrated to React functional components. Minimized boilerplate code.

@loaders.gl/core

  • Loader type inference improvements: load(), parse(), parseSync() and parseInBatches() now infer correct option and return types when an array of loaders is passed.
  • Writer type inference improvements: encode(), encodeSync() and encodeInBatches() now infer correct option and data types matching the specified writer.
  • createDataSource - Create a DataSource from a list of Source objects.
  • selectSource - Select the appropriate Source from a list of Source objects.

@loaders.gl/mvt

  • TableTileSource - Geospatial tables can now be vector tiled dynamically in the browser.

@loaders.gl/textures

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles

  • 3D Tiles 1.1 Writing Tile3DWriter now supports writing 3DTiles 1.1
  • 3D Tiles 1.1 Extensions EXT_mesh_features and EXT_structural_metadata are now supported.

@loaders.gl/tile-converter

  • Removed 'extended SLPK' usage from the converter, --slpk is now a default behavior
  • Removed slpk-extractor tool
  • Added option --egm=None to disable egm conversion
  • tile-conveter source code has been converted to TypeScript

v4.2​

Release Date: April 9, 2024

A minor release that includes:

  • deck.gl v9: All website examples updated to deck.gl v9.
  • TypeScript: Loader objects are typed via as const satisfies, preserving more type information.
  • TypeScript: Loaders with workers now declare the workerUrl field in their ...LoaderOptions types.
  • Build tooling: loaders.gl itself now builds ~10x faster via esbuild, and installs ~2x faster via yarn 4.

@loaders.gl/core

  • selectLoader() - MIME type comparisons are now case insensitive.

@loaders.gl/pmtiles

  • PMTilesSource - now uses pmtiles version 3.
  • PMTilesSource - Now refreshes the already loaded index if the underlying PMTiles file being loaded from is changed.

@loaders.gl/parquet

  • ParquetLoader - Now supports the Zstandard compression if the zstd-codec library is supplied (or pre-registered).
  • ParquetLoader - Many parquet files that previously failed to load now load correctly.
  • GeoparquetLoader - Improved support for large Polygons and MultiPolygons.

@loaders.gl/i3s

  • SLPKLoader - Load from a local SLPK archive in the browser (Experimental).

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles

  • Tile3DLoader - Ignores unknown Draco3D attributes such as FLOAT64, INT64 and UINT64, when loading from e.g. .PNTS files. See LAS to 3D Tiles conversion.

@loaders.gl/draco

  • DracoLoader now ignores unsupported attributes such as FLOAT64, INT64, UINT64.
  • DracoLoader, DracoWriter - Now uses draco3d v1.5.7 decoders.
  • Note: Still uses the draco3d v1.4.1 encoder to avoid performance regression.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • GLTFLoader: Support models with more complex use of KHR_texture_transform extension.

@loaders.gl/las

  • LASLoader: Memory leak plugged.

@loaders.gl/wms

  • WMSService: getFeatureInfo() now also supports querying WMS 1.3 services.

@loaders.gl/tile-converter

  • tile-converter - Resume conversion from the last tile processed in case of an interruption.
  • tile-converter - Quiet mode.
  • tile-converter - Convert I3S to 3D Tiles from local SLPK file.

v4.1​

Release Date: February 6, 2024

  • Tooling upgrades: Typescript 5.3, vite 5.0, docusauraus 3.0

@loaders.gl/arrow

@loaders.gl/flatgeobuf

  • Loading flatgeobuf into a GeoJSONTable now extracts a Schema object from the flatgeobuf header, and uses it to infer the types of the columns in the table.

@loaders.gl/loader-utils

  • Request Scheduling
    • RequestScheduler now includes a 'debounceTime' option. When enabled, may reduce bandwidth usage and total loading time during interactive view transitions.

v4.0​

Release Date: Oct 30, 2023

A major release that brings:

  • Typed loaders - The load() and parse() APIs now infer types from the supplied loader.
  • Writers - More writers for formats such as CSV, GeoJSON etc.
  • File format documentation - articles describing the file formats supported by loaders.gl.
  • Node.js v18 & v20 - Supports the current set of Node.js LTS releases.

@loaders.gl/pmtiles - NEW

@loaders.gl/parquet

@loaders.gl/mvt

@loaders.gl/csv

  • New CSVWriter allows export of tables in CSV format.
  • Migration: The promise of parse() now returns { shape: string; data: [] } instead of [], so you should add .data to get the records.

@laoders.gl/json

  • New GeoJSONWriter allows export of tables in GeoJSON format.
  • New JSONWriter allows export of tables in JSON format.
  • New NDJSONWriter allows export of tables in NDJSON format.
  • New NDGeoJSONWriter allows export of tables in NDGeoJSON format.

@loaders.gl/wkt

@loaders.gl/zip

  • ZipArchive - now enables file-by-file reads from large zip archives without loading the entire archive into memory (in Node.js).
  • Supports hash-info generation from Zip Central Directory Headers. Used in I3S Archive format (SLPK) and 3D Tiles Archive format (3TZ).

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • Support for EXT_mesh_features and EXT_mesh_features glTF extensions for 3D Tiles v1.1. This completes 3D Tiles datasets attribute load support (adding to the current EXT_feature_metadata support). Attribute data can be used for "feature picking" capabilities of i3s viewers.

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles

@loaders.gl/arrow

@loaders.gl/draco

@loaders.gl/geopackage

  • Now uses latest sql.js v1.8.0.

@loaders.gl/core

  • fetchFile() now supports fetching from local filesystem in Node.js

@loaders.gl/schema

  • The loaders.gl schema and type system is serializable counterpart to the Apache Arrow schema and type system. This simplifies transferring schemas between workers.

@loaders.gl/crypto

  • All hashes now accept an encoding parameter allowing the app to choose between 'hex' and 'base64' encoding (rather than getting 'base64' by default).

@loaders.gl/i3s

  • New SLPK-loader allows the load of SLPK files into a web app using loaders.gl (like i3s explorer)
  • "Multiply" mode added to the existing "replace" mode for colourization by attribute for i3s datasets

@loaders.gl/loader-utils

  • New functions that allow loaders to call sub-loaders with full type inference, without importing the core module.
  • parseWithContext(), parseSyncWithContext() and parseInBatchesWithContext()

loaders.gl/polyfills

  • Polyfills now contains Node dependent code for other modules, minimizing the risk of Node.js-dependency related bundling complications when using other loaders.gl modules in the browser.
  • Polyfills no longer installs fetch/Response/Headers polyfills under Node.js, instead leveraging the built-in fetch() support in Node.js v18+.

@loaders.gl/tile-converter

  • New command-line tools for working with I3S archive format (SLPK) files

    • i3s-server - serve SLPKs as a local HTTP server
    • slpk-extractor - extract an SLPK to a dataset that can be served via i3s-server

  • tile-converter tool has been improved:

    • Offline Mode - offline conversion. No internet is required during the conversion process.
    • RAM usage improvements
    • Can now convert large I3S SLPKs (>2GB) to 3D Tiles.

  • 3D TILES <-> I3S conversion improvements:

  • Improved support for I3S archive format (SLPK)

    • Hash generation for SLPKs without a hash

  • Pre-processing for conversion 3DTiles > I3S:

    • Detect topology type (for example TRIANGLE and TRIANGLE_STRIP will pass further for conversion, POINT or TRIANGLE_FAN will notify this mesh type is not supported for conversion)
    • Detect attributes classes for EXT_feature_metadata and for EXT_mesh_features extensions. Choose a class to convert in CLI with arrow keys.
    • New tile-converter "--analyze" option for users to only run the analysis without running conversion afterwards

v3.4​

Release Date: May 16, 2023.

For patch releases, see CHANGELOG.

General Improvements

  • New website, built with docusaurus.
  • Typescript upgraded to v5.0.
  • Examples upgraded to React v18, deck.gl v8.9, react-map-gl v7.0.

@loaders.gl/core

  • query strings - for loaders that need to pass their query strings to subloaders, LoaderContext now provides a queryString field.

@loaders.gl/bson (New module)

  • New module supporting the BSON (Binary JSON) format.
  • BSONLoader - loads BSON encoded binary data into a "JSON like" JavaScript structure
  • BSONWriter - writes a JSON like JavaScript structure into a BSON encoded binary data block.

@loaders.gl/images

  • ImageLoader now supports for loading images in the AVIF image format.
  • getSupportedImageTypes() New function returns a list of MIME types of supported image formats
  • isImageFormatSupported() New function tests if a specific image format is supported in the current environment (mainly required for WebP and AVIF).

@loaders.gl/gis

  • triangulate parameter added to geojsonToBinary().

@loaders.gl/pcd

  • PCDLoader now supports loading intensity and label columns if present in the PCD file.

@loaders.gl/ply

  • PLYLoader now supports custom attributes such as intensity and confidence if present in the PLY file.

@loaders.gl/tiles

  • Improved handling of query parameters for tilesets and subtiles.
  • Preserves internal session URL parameter to support Google 3D Tiles.

@loaders.gl/wms

  • WMSService
    • WMS version 1.3.0 is now the default. When connecting to older servers, version dependent parameters, coordinate conventions etc are remapped under the hood.
    • HTTP Authentication: loadOptions now enables overriding fetch options, including supplying an HTTP Authentication header.
    • Transparent rendering: The transparent prop is now enabling requesting images that are transparent where there is no data.
    • Pre-specified parameters (layers, crs etc) can now be specified during construction, no longer need to repeatedly pass them to getMap etc methods.
  • WMSCapabilitiesLoader
    • Now handles version 1.3.0, and when loading older capabilities, fields and parameters that have changed across WMS versions are automatically remapped to 1.3.0 equivalents (CRS vs SRS etc).
    • Extracts more information (such as version, abstract fields, layer bounding boxes, available dimensions (time etc) and flags (opaque, queryable, cascaded), MIME types for exceptions) etc.
  • CSWService
  • WMSCapabilities type has some breaking changes, please refer to the upgrade guide.

@loaders.gl/xml

  • HTMLLoader - New minimal HTML loader, intended for small ad-hoc use cases such as extracting an error message or a link from a short HTML page.

@loaders.gl/tile-converter

  • Support TRIANGLE_STRIP mesh topology type during 3DTiles -> I3S conversion

v3.3​

Release Date: February 17, 2023.

For patch releases, see CHANGELOG.

General Improvements

  • vite bundler - Most examples are now bundled with vite. vite is now an officially supported bundler for loaders.gl.

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • GLTFLoader glTF extension support:
    • KHR_texture_transform - textures can now optionally be processed and removed during load by transforming UV coordinates. Useful if renderer or post processing stage does not have support for this extension.

@loaders.gl/draco

  • Now uses the draco3d v1.5.5 decoders
  • Note: Still uses the draco3d v1.4.1 encoder to avoid performance regression.

@loaders.gl/wms (New module)

@loaders.gl/xml (New module)

  • New module for parsing XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
  • XMLLoader

@loaders.gl/tile-converter

  • Now leverages Node.js workers to increase conversion speed.
  • Limited support for converting 3D Tiles Next source tilesets:
  • New conversion options:
    • split-nodes - create multiple I3S nodes from one glTF file when the source glTF has multiple materials.
    • instant-node-writing - RAM usage management option. Keep JSON resources on disk instead of memory in cost of conversion speed.

v3.2​

Release Date: May 12, 2022.

For patch releases, see CHANGELOG.

@loaders.gl/arrow

  • ArrowLoader now recognizes recommended Arrow MIME types application/vnd.apache.arrow.file, application/vnd.apache.arrow.stream.

@loaders.gl/json

@loaders.gl/geopackage

  • The GeopackageLoader now supports tables as well as geojson output data shapes, defaulting to tables. This is configurable via options.gis.format.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • EXT_meshopt_compression extension support.

@loaders.gl/terrain

  • Fix winding order of "skirt" geometries, to prevent them from being incorrectly hidden by GPU face culling during rendering.

@loaders.gl/worker-utils

  • Experimental support for Node.js workers.

@loaders.gl/wkb

  • The WKBWriter supports options within a wkb key, instead of at the top level.

@loaders.gl/textures

  • Upgrade basis_universal libraries to v1.16.3.

v3.1​

Release Date: Dec 7, 2021.

For patch releases, see CHANGELOG.

@loaders.gl/textures

  • Parse KTX2 with BasisLoader.
  • New KTX2BasisWriter enables transcoding textures to basis (works both in browser and Node).
  • Upgrade basis_universal libraries to v1.15.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • GTLTLoader now decodes Basis super compressed textures if present (via the KHR_texture_basisu glTF extension).

@loaders.gl/i3s

  • Support KTX2-Basis textures.

@loaders.gl/json

  • New NDJSONLoader which handles new-line delimited JSON files.

@loaders.gl/csv

  • CSVLoader now recognizes TSV files via .tsv file extension or the text/tab-separated-values MIME type.

@loaders.gl/flatgeobuf

@loaders.gl/parquet NEW

@loaders.gl/pcd

  • PCDLoader now supports compressed binary data.

@loaders.gl/wkt

  • New WKBWriter for encoding GeoJSON geometries to WKB.

v3.0​

Release Date: July 13, 2021.

loaders.gl v3.0 is a major release, that adds a range of new loaders and features and continues the transition of the loaders.gl code base to typescript. Some deprecated APIs have been removed, check the upgrade guide for breaking changes.

For patch releases, see CHANGELOG.

General improvements

  • New loader option: options.<loader>.shape to control format of data. Will gradually be supported by all loaders.
  • TypeScript: improved types for many loaders.gl APIs.
  • TypeScript: many loaders now export a LoaderOptions type that can be used to typecheck loader options, e.g import type {CSVLoaderOptions} from @loaders.gl/csv.

@loaders.gl/core

  • New loader option: options.mimeType to override loader selection.
  • New loader option: options.fallbackMimeType to control fallback loader selection.
  • New loader option: options.limit to limit number of rows returned during batched parsing.
  • New processOnWorker() function allows applications to run certain non-loader tasks (such as compression and decompression) on workers.

@loaders.gl/compression

  • New compressions: brotli, snappy, LZO (limited).
  • New CompressionWorker exports enable compression and decompression on worker threads using the new processOnWorker() function.
  • Improved API (see upgrade guide)

@loaders.gl/crypto

  • New CryptoWorker export enables CRC32, CRC32c and MD5 hashing on worker threads using the new processOnWorker() function.

@loaders.gl/csv

  • options.csv.type can be explicitly set to
    • 'object-row-table' (default) transforms rows to JS objects with the header row as keys.
    • 'array-row-table' in which the row will be returned as an array of values.
  • Duplicate column names will have a counter suffix added to ensure that they are unique.

@loaders.gl/gis

  • Added getSingleFeature() function for extracting a single GeoJSON feature from a BinaryGeometry

@loaders.gl/draco

  • Updated to draco3d@1.4.1
  • Supports binary array fields in draco metadata.
  • Significant performance improvements for loading and decoding.

@loaders.gl/json

  • Removed deprecated json parse option _rootObjectBatches. Use loader option metadata instead.
  • Replaced batch.batchType root-object-batch-partial with partial-result.
  • Replaced batch.batchType root-object-batch-complete with final-result.

@loaders.gl/kml

  • KMLLoader - updated loader, now works under Node.js.
  • GPXLoader, TCXLoader - new loaders to parse common formats for recorded GPS tracks.

@loaders.gl/arrow

  • Upgrades apache-arrow version to 4.0.0

@loaders.gl/excel NEW

  • New table category loader for Excel spreadsheets in both binary .xls, .xlsb and XML-based .xlsx formats.

@loaders.gl/i3s

  • Thanks to a major contribution from Esri, the I3SLoader now offers full I3S 1.7 support including:
    • page nodes
    • compressed geometry
    • compressed textures
    • attributes (object picking)

@loaders.gl/mvt

  • Binary output is now 2-3X faster for large datasets thanks to parsing directly from PBF to binary, rather than going through GeoJSON as an intermediate representation. Speed comparison on some example data sets (MVT tiles parsed per second):
Via GeoJSONDirectSpeed increase
Block groups2.86/s5.57/s1.94X
Census layer6.09/s11.9/s1.95X
Counties Layer72.5/s141/s1.94X
Usa Zip Code Layer8.45/s20.3/s2.4X

Benchmarks ran using scripts on a 2012 MacBook Pro, 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB, measuring parsing time of MVTLoader only (network time and rendering is not included)

  • When using the MVTLoader with binary: true the triangulation of polygons is performed in a worker, speeding up loading of polygon geometries and easing the work on the main thread.

@loaders.gl/terrain

  • New options.terrain.tesselator option in TerrainLoader for selecting desired method of mesh generation. Use 'martini' for a faster method that works in most cases or 'delatin', which is slower but supports non-square images.

@loaders.gl/textures NEW

  • textures website example shows which compressed texture formats work on the current device.
  • CompressedTextureLoader now supports KTX2, DDS and PVR containers.
  • BasisLoader with latest binaries.
  • CrunchLoader
  • CompressedTextureWriter is available (for Node.js only)
  • Texture loading API for multi-image-based textures loadImageTexture, loadImageTextureArray, loadImageTextureCube
  • A new NPYLoader to parse N-dimensional arrays generated by the NumPy Python library for high bit depth data and image textures.

@loaders.gl/tile-converter NEW

  • Thanks to a major contribution from Esri, the new tile-converter module implements conversion between the OGC 3D tiles and the OGC I3S tileset formats, through:
    • A tile-converter CLI tool for automated batch conversion of multi-terabyte tilesets.
    • A docker image to facilitate easy installs of the converter.
    • A Node.js converter class API is also available for programmatic use.

v2.3​

Release Date: October 12, 2020

This release brings a new Shapefile loader, compression codecs (Zlib, LZ4, Zstandard), support for binary output from geospatial loaders, and a range of improvements supporting loaders.gl integration with kepler.gl, a major geospatial application.

@loaders.gl/shapefile NEW

  • A new loader for the ESRI Shapefile format has been added. It loads .SHP and (if available) .DBF, .CPG and .PRJ files and returns a geojson like geometry.

@loaders.gl/compression NEW

  • A new module with compression/decompression transforms for compression codecs (Zlib, LZ4, Zstandard). As always, these work reliably in both browsers and Node.js.

@loaders.gl/crypto NEW

  • A new module for calculating cryptographic hashes (MD5, SHA256 etc). Provided transforms enables hashes to be calculated incrementally, e.g. on incoming binary chunks while streaming data into parseInBatches.

@loaders.gl/draco

  • Draco3D libraries are upgraded to version 1.3.6.
  • Draco metadata can now be encoded and decoded.
  • Custom Draco attributes are now decoded.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • GLBLoader can now read older GLB v1 files in addition to GLB v2.
  • GLTFLoader now offers optional, partial support for reading older glTF v1 files and automatically converting them to glTF v2 format (via options.glt.normalize).

@loaders.gl/json

  • Binary output is now available for the GeoJsonLoader, via options.gis.format: 'binary'.

@loaders.gl/kml

  • Binary output is now available for the KMLLoader, via options.gis.format: 'binary'.

@loaders.gl/las

  • Uses a newer version of the laz-perf parser (1.4.4).

@loaders.gl/mvt

  • Binary output is now available for the Mapbox Vector Tiles MVTLoader, via options.gis.format: 'binary'.

@loaders.gl/core

  • parseInBatches() now allows the caller to specify "transforms" that shoud be applied on the input data before parsing, via options.transforms. See the new crypto and compression modules for available transforms to calculate cryptographic hashes on / decompress "streaming" data.
  • parseInBatches() can now be called on all loaders. Non-batched loaders will just return a single batch.
  • options.fetch (load, parse etc.) can now be used to supply a either a fetch options object or a custom fetch function.
  • (BREAKING) selectLoader() is now async and returns a Promise that resolves to a loader.
  • selectLoader() can now select loaders through content sniffing of Blob and File objects.
  • selectLoaderSync() has been added for situations when calling an async function is not practial.

@loaders.gl/polyfills

  • fetch polyfill: Files with .gz extension are automatically decompressed with gzip. The extension reported in the fetch response has the .gz extension removed.
  • fetch polyfill: Improved robustness and error handling in Node.js when opening unreadable or non-existent files. Underlying errors (ENOEXIST, EISDIR etc) are now caught and reported in Response.statusText.
  • Blob and File, new experimental polyfills.

v2.2​

Framework and loader improvements based on usage in applications.

Release Date: June 18, 2020

General Improvements

  • Typescript type definitions (d.ts files) are now provided for some loaders.gl modules that export APIs (functions and classes).

@loaders.gl/core

  • parseInBatches a new options.metadata option adds an initial batch with metadata about what data format is being loaded.
  • selectLoader (and parse etc) now recognizes unique unregistered MIME types (e.g application/x.ply) for every loader. This enable applications that can set content-type headers to have precise control over loader selection.

@loaders.gl/images

The ImageLoader now loads images as Imagebitmap by default on browsers that support ImageBitmap (Chrome and Firefox). The performance improvements are dramatic, which can be verified in the new benchmark example.

@loaders.gl/i3s

Addresses a number of compatibility issues with different I3S tilesets that have been reported by users.

@loaders.gl/terrain

A new QuantizedMeshLoader has been added to the terrain module to decode the Quantized Mesh format.

@loaders.gl/video (new loader module)

An experimental new module with video loading and GIF generation support.

@loaders.gl/wkt

A new WKBLoader has been added to the wkt module to decode the Well-Known Binary format.

Worker support for the WKTLoader, designed to support future binary data improvements.

@loaders.gl/json

  • parseInBatches now accepts options.json.jsonpaths to specify which array should be streamed using limited JSONPath syntax (e.g. '$.features' for GeoJSON).
  • parseInBatches returned batches now contain a batch.bytesUsed field to enable progress bars.
  • parseInBatches partial and final result batches are now generated when setting the metadata: true options.
  • .geojson files can now alternatively be parsed by a new experimental GeoJSONLoader (exported with an underscore as _GeoJSONLoader), introduced to support future binary data improvements.

@loaders.gl/csv

  • parseInBatches now returns a batch.bytesUsed field to enable progress bars.
  • Header auto-detection available via options.csv.header: 'auto'.

@loaders.gl/arrow

Updated to use apache-arrow version 0.17.0.

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles

The Tile3DLoader now installs the DracoLoader. The application no longer needs to import and register the DracoWorkerLoader.

@loaders.gl/gltf

The GLTFLoader now installs the DracoLoader. The application no longer needs to import and register the DracoWorkerLoader.

@loaders.gl/polyfills

  • The fetch and Response polyfills for Node.js have been significantly improved, supporting more types of input and parameters with higher fidelity
  • The fetch polyfill now automatically add the accept-encoding header and automatically decompresses gzip, brotli and deflate compressed responses.

v2.1​

Release Date: Mar 16, 2020

This release adds a number of new geospatial format loaders. The new loaders enables rendering frameworks to visualize various geospatial datasets.

MVTLoader +

MVTLayer

(v2.1)

TerrainLoader +

TerrainLayer

(v2.1)

I3SLoader +

Tile3DLayer
  • I3S

(v2.1)

@loaders.gl/i3s (new loader module)

  • A new loader module for I3S tiles is added to the 3D Tiles family. Checkout the San Francisco Buildings example. This is a collaboration with ESRI and Tamrat Belayneh @Tamrat-B

@loaders.gl/mvt (new loader module)

@loaders.gl/terrain (new loader module)

  • A new loader module for reconstructing mesh surfaces from height map images. Check out the example with deck.gl's TerrainLayer.

@loaders.gl/wkt (new loader module)

  • A new loader module for the Well-Known Text geometry format.

@loaders.gl/core

  • The load and parse functions can now read data directly from Stream objects both in node and browser.

@loaders.gl/arrow

  • The ArrowJS dependency has been upgraded to v0.16.
  • The ArrowJS API documentation in the loaders.gl website has been improved.

@loaders.gl/images

  • Images can now be loaded as data: Using the ImageLoader with options.image.type: 'data' parameter will return an image data object with width, height and a typed array containing the image data (instead of an opaque Image or ImageBitmap instance).
  • ImageBitmap loading now works reliably, use ImageLoader with options.image.type: 'imagebitmap'.

@loaders.gl/json

  • The streaming JSON loader now has an experimental option _rootObjectBatches that returns the top-level JSON object containing the JSON array being streamed, as additional first (partial) and last (complete) batches.

Mesh Category

v2.0​

Release Date: Dec 20, 2019

The 2.0 release brings potentially dramatic bundle size savings through dynamic loading of loaders and workers, significant overhauls to several loaders including , image loading improvements and the glTF loader, and a powerful loader composition system.

  • Loader-Specific Options Each loader now defines its own sub object in the options object. This makes it possible to cleanly specify options for multiple loaders at the same time. This is helpful when loaders.gl auto-selects a pre-registered loader or when passing options to a sub-loader when using a composite loader.

  • Smaller Loaders Big loaders such as DracoLoader and BasisLoader that use large libraries (e.g. WASM/WebAssembly or emscripten/C++ transpiled to JavaScript) now load those libraries dynamically from unpkg.com CDN resulting in dramatic bundle size savings. E.g the bundle size impact of the DracoLoader was reduced from > 1MB to just over 10KB.

  • Worker Loaders

    • Ease-of-use: Worker loading is provided by the main loader objects. It is not necessary to import the ...WorkerLoader objects to enable worker loading (but see below about bundle size)
    • Performance: Loading on worker threads is now the default: All worker enabled loaders now run on worker threads by default (set options.worker: false to disable worker-thread loading and run the loader on the main thread).
    • Debugging: Development builds of workers are now available on unpkg.com CDN, eabling debugging of worker loaders.
    • Bundle size: Workers are no longer bundled, but loaded from from the unpkg.com CDN.
    • Bundle size: Note that the old ...WorkerLoader classes are still available. Using these can save even more bundle space since during tree-shaking since they do not depend on the non-worker parser.

  • Composite Loaders

    • The new composite loader architecture enables complex loaders like Tiles3DLoader and GLTFLoader to be composed from more primitive loaders without losing the ability to run some parts on worker, pass arguments to sub-loaders etc.

@loaders.gl/basis NEW

  • A new module for the basis format that enables. This module also provides a CompressedImageLoader for more traditional compressed images.

@loaders.gl/json NEW

  • A new streaming JSONLoader that supports batched (i.e. streaming) parsing from standard JSON files, e.g. geojson. No need to reformat your files as line delimited JSON.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • the GLTFLoader is now a "composite loader". The perhaps most important change is that load(url, GLTFLoader) also loads all sub-assets, including images, Draco compressed meshes, etc making the loaded data easier for applications to use.

@loaders.gl/images

  • New ImageLoader options options: {image: {}} contain common options that apply across the category
  • options.image.type, Ability to control loaded image type enabling faster ImageBitmap instances to be loaded via type: 'imagebitmap. Default auto setting returns traditional HTML image objects.
  • Image Decoding. options.image.decodeHTML: true - ImageLoader now ensures HTML images are completely decoded and ready to be used when the image is returned (by calling Image.decode()).
  • Parsed Image API Since the type of images returned by the ImageLoader depends on the {image: {type: ...}} option, a set of functions are provided to work portably with loaded images: isImage(), getImageType(), getImageData(), ...
  • Binary Image API Separate API to work with unparsed images in binary data form: isBinaryImage(), getBinaryImageType(), getBinaryImageSize(), ...
  • "Texture" Loading API New methods loadImages and loadImageCube can signficantly simplify loading of arrays of arrays of (mipmapped) images that are often used in 3D applications. These methods allow an entire complex of images (e.g. 6 cube faces with 10 mip images each) to be loaded using a single async call.
  • Improved Node.js support More image test cases are now run in both browser and Node.js and a couple of important Node.js issues were uncovered and fixed.

v1.3​

Release Date: Sep 13, 2019

The 1.3 release is focused on production quality 3D tiles support, maturing the v2 glTF parser, and provides some improvements to the core API.

Tiles3DLoader

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles

  • Tile3DLayer moved to deck.gl

    • The Tile3DLayer can now be imported from @deck.gl/geo-layers, and no longer needs to be copied from the loaders.gl 3d-tiles example

  • Batched 3D Model Tile Support

    • b3dm tiles can now be loaded and displayed by the Tile3DLayer (in addition to pnts tiles).

  • Performance Tracking

    • Tileset3D now contain a stats object which tracks the loading process to help profile big tilesets.
    • Easily displayed in your UI via the @probe.gl/stats-widget module (see 3d-tiles example).

  • Request Scheduling

    • The Tileset3D class now cancels loads for not-yet loaded tiles that are no longer in view).
    • Scheduling dramatically improves loading performance when panning/zooming through large tilesets.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • Version 2 Improvements
    • Select the new glTF parser by passing options.gltf.parserVersion: 2 to the GLTFLoader.
    • Many improvements to the v2 glTF parser.

@loaders.gl/core

  • Loader Selection Improvements

    • The loader selection mechanism is now exposed to apps through the new selectLoader API.
    • Loaders can now examine the first bytes of a file
    • This complements the existing URL extension based auto detection mechanisms.

  • Worker Thread Pool

    • Now reuses worker threads. Performance gains by avoiding worker startup overhead.
    • Worker threads are named, easy to track while debugging
    • Worker based loaders can now call parse recursively to delegate parsing of embedded data (e.g. glTF, Draco) to other loaders

v1.2​

The 1.2 release is a smaller release that resolves various issues encountered while using 1.1.

Release Date: Aug 8, 2019

  • @loaders.gl/core: File Type Auto Detection now supports binary files
  • @loaders.gl/polyfills: Fixed TextEncoder warnings
  • @loaders.gl/arrow: Improved Node 8 support
  • @loaders.gl/images: Image file extensions now added to loader object
  • @loaders.gl/gltf: Generate default sampler parameters if none provided in gltf file

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles (EXPERIMENTAL)

  • Support for dynamic traversal of 3D tilesets (automatically loads and unloads tiles based on viewer position and view frustum).
  • Support for loading tilesets from Cesium ION servers.
  • Asynchronous tileset loading
  • Auto centering of view based on tileset bounding volumes
  • deck.gl Tile3DLayer class provided in examples.

v1.1​

The 1.1 release addresses a number of gaps in original loaders.gl release, introduces the GLTFLoader, and initiates work on 3DTiles support.

Release Date: May 30, 2019

GLTFLoader

@loaders.gl/core

  • fetchFile function - Can now read browser File objects (from drag and drop or file selection dialogs).
  • isImage(arrayBuffer [, mimeType]) function - can now accept a MIME type as second argument.

@loaders.gl/images

  • getImageMIMEType(arrayBuffer) function ( EW) - returns the MIME type of the image in the supplied ArrayBuffer.
  • isImage(arrayBuffer [, mimeType]) function - can now accept a MIME type as second argument.

@loaders.gl/gltf

  • The glTF module has been refactored with the aim of simplifying the loaded data and orthogonalizing the API.

  • "Embedded' GLB data (GLBs inside other binary formats) can now be parsed (e.g. the glTF parser can now extract embedded glTF inside 3D tile files).

  • New classes/functions:

    • GLTFScenegraph class NEW - A helper class that provides methods for structured access to and modification/creation of glTF data.
    • postProcessGLTF function ( EW) - Function that performs a set of transformations on loaded glTF data that simplify application processing.
    • GLBLoader/[GLBWriter]NEW - loader/writer pair that enables loading/saving custom (non-glTF) data in the binary GLB format.
    • GLTFLoader, letting application separately handle post-processing.

@loaders.gl/3d-tiles (NEW MODULE)

  • Support for the 3D tiles format is being developed in the new @loaders.gl/3d-tiles module.
  • Loading of individual point cloud tiles, including support for Draco compression and compact color formats such as RGB565 is supported.

@loaders.gl/polyfills (NEW MODULE)

Node support now requires importing @loaders.gl/polyfills before use. This reduces the number of dependencies, bundle size and potential build complications when using other loaders.gl modules when not using Node.js support.

@loaders.gl/loader-utils (NEW MODULE)

Helper functions for loaders have been broken out from @loaders.gl/core. Individual loaders no longer depend on@loaders.gl/core but only on @loaders.gl/loader-utils.

v1.0​

Release Date: April 2019

First Official Release