Functionality
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 Use CityEngine Web Viewer. Also, see scene viewer and CityEngine Web Viewer differences to learn about what are the purposes and function for each viewer.
Browser requirements
The CityEngine Web Viewer requires a desktop web browser that supports WebGL, a web technology standard for rendering 3D graphics. The latest versions of the most common desktop browsers have WebGL built in. To test if your browser has WebGL enabled, open get.webgl.org. To troubleshoot WebGL-related issues, visit WebGL Troubleshooting. Make sure you keep your browser up-to-date as WebGL is an evolving technology and each browser version brings improvements that the CityEngine Web Viewer relies on for optimal performance. The CityEngine Web Viewer is not supported on mobile devices at this time.
The CityEngine Web Viewer supports the following web browsers:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Internet Explorer 11*
- Edge*
- Safari 9 and later*
*The WebGL implementation of this browser is not optimized for memory-intensive applications and it might not work reliably when opening certain scenes.
Internet Explorer 11
Internet Explorer (IE) 11 has an experimental WebGL implementation that currently does not support all of the CityEngine Web Viewer functionality. Earlier versions of IE do not have WebGL support and do not work with the CityEngine Web Viewer. Depending on the update version of IE 11, the following functionality is either not working correctly or is missing entirely:
- IE 11 with WebGL 0.91—Not supported.
- IE 11 with WebGL 0.92—No shadows, no antialiasing, and some flickering due to z-buffer precision issues.
- IE 11 with WebGL 0.93—No diffuse shadows and some flickering due to z-buffer precision issues.
- IE 11 with WebGL 0.94—No diffuse shadows and some flickering due to z-buffer precision issues.
Note:
There is a known memory issue with IE 11 in the CityEngine Web Viewer. If you experience performance issues, close your browser and reopen. Reloading the page or opening a new tab will not clear the memory. You must close and reopen your browser.
Hardware requirements
Your computer hardware needs to have a minimum of 2 GB system memory and a video graphics card that supports WebGL. It is recommended that you have at least 4 GB of system memory.
Your hardware should have a nonmobile graphics card with at least 512 MB of video memory. For the best performance, it is recommended that you have a graphics card with at least 1 GB of video memory, especially for working with larger or more memory-intensive scenes. Non-mobile versions of graphics cards typically have better performance than mobile graphics cards (denoted with m or mobile). To get more detailed information about WebGL requirements, visit WebGL Troubleshooting.
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.
Note:
Some systems can automatically switch between integrated graphics and dedicated graphics cards to render 3D graphics. The CityEngine Web Viewer works best with a dedicated graphics card; therefore, in your graphics card driver settings, make sure the per-application settings for your web browser are set to the dedicated graphics card. If this is not set, some point symbols and labels may not display correctly.
Create Web Scenes for CityEngine Web Viewer
Web Scenes can be created with Esri CityEngine or with Export To 3D Web Scene geoprocessing tool.
- 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 Portal for ArcGIS. 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.
- Export To 3D Web Scene exports ArcScene documents to CityEngine Web Scene format (available since ArcGIS 10.2).
Learn more about Esri 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 to find additional information about CityEngine. The community has samples, blog posts, forum threads, videos, and documentation related to CityEngine and CityEngine Web Viewer.