What is CityEngine Web Viewer?

CityEngine Web Viewer is a web application for viewing 3D city scenes and other 3D scenes in a browser. It is based on WebGL technology which allows you to view 3D content in web browsers without installing additional plug-ins. It displays CityEngine Web Scenes created in Esri CityEngine 2012. To explore some examples, visit the CityEngine Web Scene group.

What can you do with CityEngine Web Viewer?

With CityEngine Web Viewer, you can interact with 3D city scenes and other 3D scenes in a browser to:

• Navigate the scene by panning and zooming and changing perspective.
• Choose specific layers to view.
• Swipe the scene to reveal different proposals and scenarios.
• Search scene content for features, attributes, and metadata.

For more details on how you can interact with 3D scenes, see Using CityEngine Web Viewer.

What are the requirements for using CityEngine Web Viewer?

You can use CityEngine Web Viewer in desktop web browsers that support WebGL, a web technology standard for rendering 3D graphics. In addition, your hardware must have a graphics card installed that supports WebGL. For the best performance, make sure your graphics card has the latest drivers installed and has at least 512 MB of video memory. CityEngine Web Viewer is not supported on mobile devices.

Browser requirements

Because CityEngine Web Viewer is a web application for interacting with 3D images, you need to use a web browser that supports WebGL.

The list below outlines the specific browser requirements for different operating systems.

Windows

• Mozilla Firefox 16 and higher.
• Google Chrome 20 and higher.
• Internet Explorer with Google Chrome Frame. Google Chrome Frame is supported on Windows 7/Vista/XP SP2 and higher.

Mac OS

• Mozilla Firefox 16 and higher.
• Google Chrome 20 and higher.
• Safari 5 or higher with WebGL enabled.

Linux

• Mozilla Firefox 16 or higher.
• Google Chrome 20 or higher.

Hardware requirements

Your computer hardware needs to have a minimum of 2 GB system memory and a video graphics card that supports WebGL.

For the best performance, your hardware should have a nonmobile graphics card with at least 512 MB of video memory. If your graphics card has less than 512 MB memory, you may experience poor performance, especially on larger or more memory-intensive scenes. Nonmobile versions of graphics cards typically have better performance than mobile graphics cards (denoted with m or mobile).

Graphics cards

• Graphics card needs to have support for OpenGL 3.0 (Shader Model 4.0).
• AMD/ATI: Radeon 3xxx or higher.
• NVIDIA: GeForce 8xxx or higher or GeForce 2xx or higher.
• NVIDIA: Quadro with support for OpenGL 3.0 or higher.
• Intel: HD 3000 or higher.

Mobile devices

CityEngine Web Viewer is currently not supported on mobile platforms.

How can I create and author Web Scenes for CityEngine Web Viewer?

Web Scenes can be created with Esri CityEngine. Esri CityEngine is a software package that allows you to efficiently create 3D urban landscapes using your existing GIS data, as well as do conceptual geodesign in 3D. Once the landscape has been authored, the 3D scene can be uploaded directly to ArcGIS Online. Users can then use the ArcGIS system to share those visualizations to others through a web browser using CityEngine Web Viewer without installing any software.

Where can I learn more about CityEngine?

The Esri CityEngine website is your main resource for finding out more about Esri CityEngine and its features. You can also visit the CityEngine community on the ArcGIS Resources website to find additional information about CityEngine. The community has samples, blog posts, forum threads, videos, and documentation related to CityEngine and CityEngine Web Viewer.