Using 3D in Google Maps

Question

I would like to create a webapp where I can display my own geotiffs, with NDVI and other data layers, as well as 3D geometries, providing a seamless rendering of both 2D tiles and textured 3D shapes, exactly like maps.google.com achieves in switching from "map" to "earth" views.

After much research, the closest I came to a viable solution is to build the infrastructure from the ground up based on http://cesiumjs.org/, and while this seems doable, it is extremely low level, and will require an exotic cocktail of libraries and a buttload of man-hours.

Before going down that road, I want to make sure there isn't a cost effective alternative that takes all the heavy lifting out of my app's shoulders and gives me a friendly set of APIs to base my app on.

Mapbox comes close to perfection in this regard, but unfortunately, it only handles 2D.

On the other hand, on the Google side, amid Earth API and Maps Engine deprecation, it's hard to tell what exactly is currently possible and will remain available long term.

Bottom line, for a future-proof Google-centric solution built today, are there Google APIs in place that allow building a webapp that displays custom 2D and 3D data with a seamless rendering experience?

Answer 1

https://cesiumjs.org/ is a library very similar to google maps that provides support for 3d shapes on top of maps.