“As soon as we opened the RDV model the level of hostility in the room dropped by 80%.”
3D visualization
Your design, built in Unreal Engine
We rebuild the project from your CAD files as a photoreal, geometrically accurate model, then stream it from cloud GPUs.
No CAD seat, no graphics card.
The path
From design files to a live model, in four steps
Everything after the first step is ours — you send the files you already have and get back a model your team and the people you invite can open in a browser.
Send the design
DGN, DWG, OpenRoads, InfraWorks, Civil 3D or SketchUp, with the survey, terrain and aerial imagery you already hold. No re-drawing, no special export.
We rebuild it in 3D
The engineered geometry becomes real geometry: pavement and markings, structures, barriers, signs, lighting, terrain and planting — at the level of detail the project calls for.
Unreal Engine lights it
Real-time lighting, materials, sky and weather, moving traffic and people. The same model at 8am in June and at dusk in December, because both are questions people ask.
The cloud runs it
An invited viewer signs in and a GPU session starts for them, streaming the model to their browser. Nothing to install, no workstation, no graphics card at the far end — and you can see who opened it.
Inside the model
Not a video of the design — the design itself, running
A rendering shows one viewpoint that someone chose. A real-time model answers the question being asked in the room, while it is being asked.
- Drive the alignment at the posted speed, walk the sidewalk, fly the corridor
- Change the time of day, the season and the weather
- Turn layers on and off: proposed against existing, or one construction phase
- Saved viewpoints, so a presenter jumps straight to the four views that matter
- A guided tour the people you invite follow at their own pace, in their own time
What comes out of it
One model, every deliverable the project needs
The model is the source. Everything a project has to hand out comes from it, so the video, the boards and the link never show three different designs.
- HD video and animations: drive-throughs, flyovers, phasing sequences
- Stills for display boards, slide decks and press
- A browser session for the reviewers and stakeholders you invite, on any device
- VR sessions for an open house, in a headset at the back of the room
- Updated in place when the design changes, so no one reviews last month's
Where it earns its place
What DOTs and firms use it for
Public hearings
Presented live in the room or in a headset at the back of it, residents see the road that will be built from their own street instead of reading a plan sheet. Objections come back about the design, not about what people imagine it to be.
Design review
Reviewers drive the alignment and look at the conflict everyone is arguing about, from the driver's seat, in the meeting.
Alternatives
Switch between alternatives in the same session and on the same terrain, so a preference is a choice between two things people have actually seen.
Construction staging
Walk each phase before the first cone goes out: detours, closures, temporary alignments and the sequence the public will live through.
Funding and partners
A model a commission, a city council or a funding partner can navigate themselves does more than a rendering does.
Safety, on the same model
The model feeds Road Safety Audit 3D, so the design can be audited for sight distance while it is still a design.
In their words
What it does to a public meeting
“This was such a great tool to let people see an actual representation of what the end product was going to look like from any viewpoint that they wanted. We also brought it into a VR headset for people to actually experience it at the open house in virtual reality, as well as having the Navigator projected on the screen while playing the animation, and stopping to jump to different views to answer specific questions.”
“The RDV models were the star of the show and made it possible for our team to share an extremely complex proposal with the public in a way that was easily understood.”
Our work
Recent visualization
Project
I-84 Hartford Corridor Replacement Study
RDV built a 3D visualization model of the I-84 Hartford corridor replacement, one of the highest-value transportation projects in the US.
See your project in Unreal Engine
Send a DGN, DWG, OpenRoads or Civil 3D file and get a link to your own model.