3D GIS to Provide Instant Visual Feedback in City Planning

SAN DIEGO, July 11, 2011 — (PRNewswire) — Esri has acquired Procedural, one of the world's leading software companies for creating stunning 3D urban environments from typical 2D data. Urban planners, architects, video game developers, and movie studios around the world use Procedural's CityEngine product to create 3D cities at any resolution. 

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Esri will integrate CityEngine into ArcGIS, allowing ArcGIS users to create and design 3D urban environments leveraging their existing GIS data, such as parcels and street centerlines. CityEngine's rule-driven approach will allow users to undertake large-scale civic planning efforts and will provide immediate visual feedback on the impact of planning decisions, such as setbacks and floor-specific zoning changes. Users will also be able to interactively design and analyze urban growth with intuitive sketching tools.

"Many GIS problems can only be solved in 3D, particularly in the area of urban development," said Jack Dangermond, Esri president, making the announcement at Esri's 2011 International User Conference. "Procedural's unique capabilities for generating high-quality 3D data, using the same GIS data our users already have, makes them a perfect match for Esri."

CityEngine will continue to evolve and expand as a stand-alone product.  The founders and employees of Procedural will be employed by Esri, and Procedural's offices in Zurich will be extended to a leading-edge R&D center in the field of urban design and 3D content creation. Procedural will continue to meet the needs of its large community of CityEngine users in the simulation and entertainment industries.

"We are very excited to join forces with Esri," said Dr. Pascal Mueller, CEO of Procedural Inc.  "Many of our existing clients already use ArcGIS and a closer integration between our complementary technologies presents obvious benefits.  We're looking forward to fully leveraging our R&D capabilities, growing the CityEngine business and bringing many of the innovations we've developed at Procedural to the leading GIS solution of ArcGIS."

For more information, please visit esri.com/cityengine.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

About Procedural

Procedural Inc. was founded in 2007 as a spin-off of the ETH Zurich and is located in Zurich, Switzerland. With CityEngine, Procedural Inc.'s graphics experts have developed a radically different 3D application that allows professional users in GIS, urban planning, architecture, and entertainment to efficiently create 3D cities. Customers include companies such as Foster+Partners, Zaha Hadid, Pixar, Dreamworks, Weta Digital, Blizzard, Boeing, Thales, Raytheon or Dassault. Visit their website at http:/www.procedural.com.

Esri, the Esri globe logo, GIS by Esri, ArcGIS, esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of Esri in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

SOURCE Esri

Contact:

Esri Procedural Inc. Matthew DeMeritt of Esri Phone: +1-909-793-2853, extension 1-2930 Email Contact Web: http://www.esri.com