infrared.city vs VU.CITY

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. It is a climate layer: it brings the simulation results, not the twin itself.

• You need felt heat, wind comfort and sun for the buildings and streets in the twin.
• You need results for many design options.
• You want the results from an API and SDK, so they can go into other tools.

Use both

The twin shows the city and the proposed design. infrared.city adds what the design means for heat and wind at street level. Run the options in infrared.city and use the results next to the twin when you present the design.

Facts side by side

The infrared.city values repeat the full comparison. Each value for VU.CITY comes from the sources below.

Sources

1. VU.CITY home page ↗, accessed 30 Oct 2026.