The LuciadRIA 2026.0 release introduces several major changes that may impact your existing applications. The most significant change is that all maps are now hardware-accelerated through WebGPU. This article outlines these changes and provides guidance on how to adapt your applications accordingly.

All maps are now hardware-accelerated with WebGPU

Starting with LuciadRIA 2026.0, you can no longer create maps that use non-hardware-accelerated rendering from new Map(), nor can you create maps that use WebGL from new WebGLMap(). If you instantiate a map, it will always be a RIAMap, a hardware-accelerated map based on WebGPU. For backward compatibility, the Map and WebGLMap classes are still available as aliases for RIAMap, but they’re deprecated. You can use RIAMap instead.

Secure context is now a requirement for LuciadRIA

Because of the move to WebGPU, LuciadRIA now requires a secure context (HTTPS or localhost) to function. See the Set up a secure context for LuciadRIA article for more information.

Migrating usages of WebGLMap.webGLContext

If your application was using WebGLMap.webGLContext to access the WebGL rendering context, you should start using RIAMap.webGPUDevice or RIAMap.webGPUContext to access the WebGPU device instead. Here are some common usages of WebGLMap.webGLContext, and their WebGPU alternatives:

  • WebGL context loss events are now WebGPU device loss events. See the Dealing with WebGPU device losses article for more information.

  • To render additional 3D content with other libraries, such as three.js, you should now use the WebGPU device and context. You should also render the additional content with WebGPU instead of WebGL. See the Integrating three.js with LuciadRIA article for more information.

Minor differences in color and lighting

In LuciadRIA 2026.0, some color operations and lighting calculations have been updated to use linear color space instead of sRGB space. This change improves color accuracy and consistency across different devices and displays, but may result in small differences between 2025.0 and 2026.0 rendering outputs. If your application relies on precise color matching, you may need to adjust your color values or lighting settings accordingly. For more information, read the 2026.0 release notes.

WebGPU browser support

The WebGPU setup guide helps you set up WebGPU on your machine.

Border rendering moved from the API to the LuciadRIA Toolbox

Border rendering for maps has been removed from the LuciadRIA API. If your application uses border rendering features, you can turn to the new @luciad/ria-toolbox/map-borders package. This package provides tools to render borders around the map view using by combining several LuciadRIA maps. The package offers superior functionality, because you can now make full use of all styling features, even in borders.

See the How to draw a map with borders article for more information.

Synchronous pick methods no longer report 3D Tiles layers

The standard pick methods of RIAmap no longer pick up OGC 3D Tiles data. To get 3D Tiles data when you’re picking, you must use the corresponding asynchronous pick methods. See Picking on 3D Tiles for more information.