On July 11, 2011, Esri has announced the acquisition of Procedural Inc, Zurich.
Years after the nifty but discontinued attempts of the SketchUp 6 / ArcGIS 9.2 Plug-in, ESRI takes the gloves off and finally makes a true jump into 3D cities modeling, planning and design. And finally GIS meets Games Design and vice versa. The rule-based approach of CityEngine apparently tasted right to Esri.
Read the press release.
Here are FAQs for CityEngine customers. Personally, I like the Question “Who is Esri and Jack Dangermond” the most. FYI, Procedural customers: Jack is one of the most interesting personalities I have met and he has a memory for faces and names of several petabytes.
I find it very interesting how Esri’s GeoDesign strategy and the CityEngine technology will merge.
Addendum: Esri Adds 3D Design Tools with Procedural Acquisition by Matt Ball