Road projects are decided on cross sections, alignment plans and traffic counts. The people who live on the street rarely read any of that, so a redesign often arrives as a construction site instead of as an improvement. ViBeS closes that gap: it turns road planning data into a street you can drive through virtually, in realistic everyday traffic, while the plan can still be changed.
ViBeS is funded under the EFRE/JTF-Programm NRW 2021-2027 and co-financed by the European Union and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Background on the state funding for sustainable urban mobility is available at efre.nrw.
Why a virtual drive-through
Static visualizations answer what a street will look like. They do not answer the question residents actually have: how will it work when I use it. A new bike lane, a narrowed carriageway or a rebuilt intersection is judged from a driver seat, from a saddle or from the pavement, and it is judged in traffic.
ViBeS therefore combines the planned geometry with realistic traffic. Participants experience the current layout and the proposed one under comparable conditions, and give feedback out of that experience. Everyone who cannot come to a simulator gets the same scenarios as web video, together with a structured survey.
What Pelicad builds in the project
Pelicad coordinates the consortium and is responsible for everything between the planning file and the virtual world. The goal is an automated service, not a model rebuilt by hand for every project:
- Open input, open output. IFC models from the planning process are imported, cleaned and simplified into real-time geometry, then exported as GLTF.
- AI-assisted texturing. Position, component classification and material descriptions in the IFC model are matched against a material database for road infrastructure, so surfaces are textured automatically instead of manually.
- Real urban context. The planning model is georeferenced and merged with open city models from GEOportal.NRW. The affected area is replaced by the new design and handed to the simulation via FBX.
- System integration. The GLTF pipeline and the material database are connected to the Unity environment that renders the simulation.
That is the same problem we work on in city projects such as Lütticher Straße in Aachen, Ehrenstraße in Cologne and Vier Wälle in Krefeld. The difference here is the target format: not an AR view on a phone, but a drivable simulation.
Who is involved
- Pelicad - consortium coordination, analysis of digital planning data, creation of the virtual worlds, system interfaces.
- RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Highway Engineering (ISAC) - logical road model, traffic scenarios from real measurements, semi-automatic SUMO simulations rendered in Unity, the existing car simulator and a new bicycle simulator, plus the scientific evaluation.
- Kempen Krause Ingenieure - planning and participation process, BIM-based planning data, and the pilot planning project.
Stadt Aachen, the Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen (BASt), DTV-Verkehrsconsult and Gevas Humberg & Partner support the project as associated partners.