Viewer Update: Real Surroundings, Rendered Faster

A few weeks ago we showed a demo of what open data can do for housing visualization: real surroundings, built from public Dutch datasets, instead of a generic backdrop. Today that idea graduates from demo to product. The Alpha viewer now streams 3DBAG data — the open dataset that models every building in the Netherlands in 3D — directly into the design view.

Flip on the 3D BAG overlay and the neighbourhood appears around your project: the actual buildings, at their actual heights, on their actual footprints. Combine it with the satellite base layer, cadastral parcels, and the vegetation overlay that places the real trees, and a design no longer floats in empty space. It stands on its street, between its neighbours, exactly where it will be built.

That matters at every stage of a project. During land exploration you see immediately how a massing study relates to the existing block. During design you check sightlines and shadows against real volumes instead of guesses. And when a buyer eventually looks at their home, the context is the real one — which is a big part of what makes a choice feel trustworthy.

The second half of this update is invisible, which is exactly the point: performance. Streaming an entire city into a browser is demanding, and textures are usually the first thing to strain. We've reworked how the viewer handles streamed geometry and textures, so tiles load in smoothly, materials render more efficiently, and the viewer stays responsive while a whole skyline streams in behind your project.

The result is a viewer that does more and costs less to run — smoother on powerful desktops, and a much better experience on the ordinary laptops and tablets where sales conversations actually happen.

And because 3DBAG is open data, this scales the way we like: every project, every plot, every session gets real surroundings without a per-view bill attached. Open data in, faster rendering out — the viewer keeps getting closer to the real world, in real time.