Where infrared.city fits
3,204,804 simulations run on Infrared Core (as of 29 Oct 2026).
infrared.city runs 12 models from one engine, Infrared Core, among them wind, wind comfort, sun, daylight, radiant heat and felt heat (UTCI). It works on real 3D building and terrain meshes, in a browser app, through an API and SDK, and in plugins for Grasshopper, QGIS and ArcGIS. Felt heat for 1 km² takes about 5 s once the geometry is uploaded, and 400 km² took 44 s as four 100 km² runs in parallel. Run times are not like for like across tools: area, grid, simulated hours and physics differ. Sun, sky and radiant heat come from ray tracing. Wind comes from an AI model trained on CFD results, not from a CFD run for each request. The live layer runs a whole city every hour on a forecast, and the same city also runs a typical year or 2050 weather.
- You need the heat a person feels at street level, which surface temperature alone does not give.
- You need results for hours without a satellite pass, an hourly forecast, or 2050 weather.
- You must test trees, shade and materials before they are built.
Use both
Thermal images show which surfaces are hot today. Use them to choose the areas to study. Then simulate felt heat and test measures there with infrared.city.
Facts side by side
| infrared.city | Satellite Vu | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Simulated felt heat (UTCI), radiant heat, wind, sun and shade at street level | Thermal infrared images of surfaces |
| Measured or simulated | Simulation, for the city as it is and for design options | Measured by satellite |
| Resolution | 1 m grid | Up to 3.5 m |
| Time | Hourly forecast (live layer), typical year, 2050 weather | Images at each satellite pass; the company states "10-20 revisits per day" for its constellation |
The infrared.city values repeat the full comparison. Each value for Satellite Vu comes from the sources below.
Sources
- Satellite Vu home page , accessed 30 Oct 2026.