Procedural Blog

Welcome to the Procedural Inc. tech-corner where our labs and developers talk. You're certainly waiting until you can download CityEngine. What is the status quo? The CityEngine works well (ancient Rome is currently growing with CityEngine for SIGGRAPH 20008) but we don't want our users just to “work” with the CityEngine. CityEngine should deliver a great user experience too.

That's why we invest a lot of time into usability and added cool features like very convenient city-scale editing functionalities. As soon as the usability team show smiling faces 24/7 we will release CityEngine. Another point is memory management which is also related to usability.

Remember the times when you “felt” an application is hitting its limits? Frame rate was going down due to high a polygon count and the system began swapping due to low physical memory. With current systems, this is no longer the case. High-end graphic cards handle tremendously large geometries and often there is more physical memory than address space (on 32-bit systems). Thanks to its highly optimized algorithms and data structures, CityEngine runs fast - until it runs out of address space. And then things get nasty. There is a simple solution: 64-bit. And that's also why we have a 64-bit version of CityEngine running in the labs.But until everyone has a 64-bit system, we will handle 32-bit system as well.

Again, it's all about how you will experience the CityEngine and we work hard to make sure that you will enjoy it. So far, stay tuned, Simon (CTO, Procedural Inc.)

We are on the home stretch for the CityEngine finalization and are battling out heavy fights with Vista's memory management. Due to these unpredictable circumstances, we are slightly behind schedule. But we are confident to win the battle with Mr. Gates' OS. However, we apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience.

To shorten your waiting time, we present a CityEngine preview video showing how you can create an urban environment in minutes and introducing the shape grammar modeling environment:

CityEngine's Preview Video

So, we believe that we have created some very special 3D app here with the CityEngine and are looking forward to the final release. Until then our mantra is “gring ache und seckle” (it's a Swiss saying which means “stay focused and run!”)! We will provide the final version (and trial of course) as fast as we can and Burn (the Red Bull clone), cans of coffee and daily pizzas are our steady companions

For the Procedural team, Pascal (CEO)

Wow, we had a fantastic time in Stuttgart at the FMX last week. We demoed the CityEngine for the first time in public and got valuable feedback from potential clients. Here are our highlights from the FMX:

1. The people! We just met high-quality or interesting visitors at our booth! We were quite impressed about the diversity and internationality of the fairgoers. Hope they liked Stuttgart as much as we did.
2. The FMX-crew! They whole crew did an outstanding job to make FMX happen and even under pressure they never stopped smiling! Thank you very much for your support.
3. Our workshop! We demoed the CityEngine for the first time in public. The room was crowed with over 50 people (remember: it started at 10am, which is quite early for a cg-audience) and up to 30 online viewer on our Procedural TV channel.
4. Bob Bennett's blog post (http://www.luxology.com/community/blog/entry.aspx?id=63)! He's the VP of Marketing from our friends of Modo. In his recent blog post he called the CityEngine “the coolest thing he saw at FMX”. We are flattered and honoured - thanks for that Bob!
5. The Procedural energy drink! As a gift for our visitors we produced a Procedural energy drink. It gives wings like the CityEngine does and it was highly sought after at the FMX.

Below you find the best pictures of the FMX! See you next year on FMX/09 in lovely Stuttgart!

PS: We recorded our workshop in six parts on our TV-channel (just browse through the shows):
http://www.procedural.com/cms/company/procedural-tv.html

We had a great start @ the FMX exhibition in Stuttgart. We started really early in Zurich (by really early, we mean 4:00am) and arrived also quite early in Stuttgart.

During the whole day we get great feedback and inputs from potential customers all over the world. FMX is a great place to be in our industry.

Tomorrow we will demo the CityEngine for the first time in public (Tuesday, May 6th, 10.00am - 11.00am CET, List-Saal: Turm B)! Don't worry if you can't make it to Stuttgart, we are broadcasting the session on our Procedural TV channel:

http://www.procedural.com/cms/company/procedural-tv.html

Greetings from Stuttgart!

Christian Engler is one of Europe's finest sales coaches (Motorola, GM, Pfizer, etc.) with a special flair for the needs of startups. Yesterday we had the pleasure to welcome him in our garage for a special workshop.

The purpose of the workshop was an exhibition training for the FMX. It was amazing what we learned during the session and it was big fun to work with such an energetic and smart guy like Christian.

Preparation is everything and visit us at the FMX (Steinbeis-Foyer / Artek):

http://www.fmx.de/E.2451.html

In addition to the booth, we would love to see you at our Workshop Procedural Urban Modelling with the CityEngine on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 @ List-Saal: Turm B (10:00am - 11:00am). Drop us an e-mail (dominik.tarolli[at]procedural.com) if you plan to come to the FMX! We would appreciate to see you there!