3D adds a powerful dimension to how organizations understand and communicate their geospatial data. Scene Viewer brings that dimension to decision‑makers, analysts, and field teams through interactive, web‑based scenes, making 3D easier to use as part of everyday work.

The June 2026 update builds on that by bringing more of those workflows directly into web scenes. From lighting up streetlights and flight paths to measuring sites without being there, explore updates you can apply to your own workflows.

Light up your scenes with glow effects

In complex or low-light scenes, it can be difficult to quickly spot important features when everything blends together. New Glow effects make supported symbology appear illuminated and visually prominent in your scenes, adding a more realistic look and feel.

Street lights look like they’re actually on. A flight path is easier to pick out when there are thousands on screen. Areas of activity stand out instead of blending into everything around them.

To make your 3D symbols stand out, adjust the emission slider inside the symbol color settings and see how even a small adjustment can make a noticeable difference in the clarity of key features. Additionally, adjust the glow effect of the overall scene in the daylight.

And, because glow is part of your scene styling, it carries through wherever the scene is shared, whether it’s opened by link, embedded in an app, or presented to others.

See from above and on the ground with oriented imagery

It’s not always easy to connect what you’re seeing from above with what’s actually happening on the ground. Seeing both perspectives at the same time helps teams better understand a site and quickly verify what’s there.

Oriented imagery helps you validate, inspect, and understand assets with real-world visual context. With the new Location tool, you can get an on-the-ground view alongside the scene, connecting a bird’s-eye perspective with real-world conditions in the same place.

A single click gives you oriented imagery, coordinates, elevation, and address details, plus flexible coordinate formats that you can quickly copy and use. For teams that rely on situational awareness, having both perspectives in one place can make it easier to verify site conditions and share accurate context. Learn more about oriented imagery and the new Location tool.

To easily access over 3 billion global street view images from Mapillary via an oriented imagery layer in Scene Viewer, we introduce this new Mapillary street-level imagery layer (beta), now available in ArcGIS Living Atlas. For more information, see Introducing the new Mapillary street view imagery layer (beta).

Calculate terrain and excavation volumes

Accurate volume calculations have traditionally required specialized desktop GIS workflows. The new interactive Measure volume tool (beta) brings these calculations directly into Scene Viewer, giving teams client-side analysis for exploring spatial relationships, understanding site context, and informing early decisions before moving into production-grade analysis.

Whether construction teams are leveling a site or measuring stockpiles, the Measure volume tool (beta) helps them quickly understand how much material needs to be removed, added, or moved, for a clearer picture of what’s on the ground.

To access the Measure volume tool (beta), you must be signed in to your ArcGIS Online account. The tool is available to all authenticated Scene Viewer users of an ArcGIS Online organization that has beta features enabled.

Explore Gaussian splats with analysis tools

Last Scene Viewer release introduced Gaussian splats, bringing photorealistic reality capture directly into web scenes. This release builds on that with familiar analysis tools: Slice, Line of Sight, and Elevation profile.

For teams working with Gaussian splats, this makes it possible to go beyond visualization to analysis within the browser. Slice through Gaussian splats with the slice tool, evaluate visibility with the line of sight tool, and extract elevation profiles to better understand elevation change over distance.

Improve legibility with icon visibility

Control how layers appear in 3D scenes by making important features visible, even when they’re obscured by other objects’ geometry. This helps you stay oriented and quickly locate important features in complex scenes.

 With new icon visibility settings, you can control how features remain visible in a scene with hidden, always visible, and adaptive visibility options. 

Google Photorealistic 3D basemaps (preview)

The Google Photorealistic 3D basemaps, Photorealistic and Photorealistic Hybrid, are now out of beta and in preview. When enabled in the organization, the basemaps appear in the Scene Viewer basemap gallery. Using these basemaps, organizations can explore buildings and environments from multiple angles with accuracy and realism and create immersive, photorealistic 3D web scenes for use within the organization. Fore more details and information, see Google Photorealistic 3D Basemap (preview) in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro and the Google Photorealistic 3D basemap help documentation.

Begin your 3D workflow in Scene Viewer

Whether you’re new to Scene Viewer or have years of experience, the updated welcome experience makes it easy to get started. All users, signed in or not, now see a refreshed welcome screen with options to create a new scene or open an existing one, explore a selection of industry examples related to urban planning, flood simulation, and digital twins, and access learning resources to build confidence with 3D workflows, all without leaving Scene Viewer.

Check it out (no account required).

Scene Viewer at the 2026 Esri User Conference

The 2026 Esri User Conference is around the corner. Check out these resources for in-person and online attendees.

• The Esri Events mobile app for iOS and Android 
• A curated agenda to quickly add recommended Scene Viewer and 3D sessions to your schedule
• The official Esri User Conference Event Map where you can find the Scene Viewer team at the 3D Visualization kiosk at in the magery & 3D area

See you there!

See what’s new in ArcGIS Online

We hope this release brings you exciting new ways to explore and share your 3D GIS. For more information on this release, see the Release notes and let us know if you have any feedback or questions. More updates are also available in the ArcGIS Online June 2026 release blog.