Every Christmas Eve, Track Santa's Progress Around the Globe with Cesium and NORAD Tracks Santa®

Ever wonder how NORAD is able to track Santa Claus’s progress around the globe on Christmas Eve?

Since 2012, Analytical Graphics, Inc. has used CesiumJS and Bing Maps to power the Santa tracker for NORAD Tracks Santa ®. Today, the popular website attracts more than 20 million visitors wanting to keep tabs on Santa during his magical Christmas Eve journey.

CesiumJS plays an important role in bringing NORAD Tracks Santa to children and parents around the world. Its innovative mapping technology is used to show Santa’s current position on a 3D globe with realistic global terrain, oceans, and imagery. Billboards are used to indicate locations that Santa has already visited, and camera flights smoothly transition the view when users click on a location to view videos of Santa in flight or Wikipedia articles about the areas he’s visited.

Learn about the tech

Also see:

• 93.3 WMMR Radio Interview with Hannah on the Preston & Steve show
• Tracking Santa in The Philadelphia Inquirer
• Where’s Santa? How GPUs Power the NORAD Santa Tracker on the NVIDIA blog
• NORAD Tracks Santa on Mozilla Hacks
• Building a WebGL Santa with Cesium and glTF and NORAD Tracks Santa Tech Preview on the Cesium blog