Post.ScriptumArticles ⟶ Post
ICAR – game engine for visualization of architectural projects
Designer, owner P.S
Tell me, what can be more brilliant than using game engines for professional purposes? After all, they have everything: graphics of any level of quality, interactive objects, the exchange of online data, multi-user interaction and much more.

Same thoughts visited ICAR service developers, who have been working in the visualization industry for more than 10 years. Taking the Unreal Engine as a basis, the project team created its own interface for the architectural and engineering direction.
Most readers are hardly familiar with software products like Lumion or Archicad BIMx, but I've heard more about 3D's Max and After Effects. The amount of time spent on the production of a minute video of good quality is insanely great. This is the main pain that ICAR cures, while providing full interactivity and flexibility in future development without the need for any rendering and downtime of your facilities.

An interesting part of the implementation is the ability to visualize a landscape based on the real world, so that the presented projects will not only look realistic, but also be realistically placed. This is important for projects like stadiums or industrial complexes.

At first, ICAR was a private solution for its own customers. As many readers know, you can be fed up with a single work for customers, but you will not disclose all the potential. Therefore, Danila Solovyev and Andrey Anatolev, the founders of ICAR, turned to indicators of industry and found:
$107,61
billion

global demand on architectural services
15,45
%

forecasted CAGR
$391,97
billion

forecasted global demand
5% or
$19,6 billion

forecasted market of architectural visualizations
Impressive, isn't it? Danila and Andrey decided not only to calculate the imaginary figures of the market in 2025, but also to evaluate their share in the most pessimistic colors: $568 million. Details can be found in the document (pages 13-14):
The vigilant reader could notice in the document such words as "pre-sale", "token", "crowd sale" and understand that ICAR decided to enter the online services market and attract investments for the development of their idea.

Game engines are able to give an excellent picture with interactive in real-time, but when working locally on a laptop or computer they require a powerful hardware. For general availability, guys want to release a web service, where all the basic computings will be conducted on their servers.

Immediately appears skepticism: and how will it be displayed in the browser if you need powerful computers? And then for our joy comes the technology WebGL. There is no sense to describe in detail, but examples show us:
Parametric
organism
Some race
online
Great project by BioDigital
Just hypnotizing
pasta
If you spend a little time on Google, you will find a lot of projects (even Google has a whole branch of experiments). And skepticism dissipates at the click of your fingers, technically this is more than possible. It remains only to wait for the moment when your personal architect will give you a link to a web page where you can fly around your country cottage overlooking the lake, go into the bedroom door, push the curtains, close your eyes and realize that in your life you have reached an oasis...
It is impossible to choose between the ICAR service and the usual programs for visualization.
It's like: to play a computer game and go through it, or just see the photos and a video about it.

Let's dilute our material with interview-block with the founders of ICAR, firsthand:
  • Oleg
    The main audience of users consists of architects and design studios. But, most likely, people who would like to participate in ICO and fund-raising for pre-sale (which is extremely important for further movement) will be not from the professional field. How to convince people of participation? What will they get besides the experience itself?
  • Danila
    In fact, the audience of ICAR users does not limited to designers. Construction and investment companies, companies selling real estate and even government agencies will also receive profits and unquestionable benefits from working with the service. As a result, architects and other engineers will use our service, mostly, because of the requirements of their customers. After all, colorful visualization of the project is not so important for engineers themselves, It is important for presentation to the customer and further for the marketing purposes of the customer. Thus, private and state organizations, whose specific work includes regular coordination of architectural projects and subsequent work with them in other instances - will be seriously interested in using such a service.
  • Andrei
    Yes! and this additional audience can make a significant contribution to all potential users of the ICAR service. And if we talk about the percentage of purchased tokens, it could well outweigh! Nevertheless, we are perfectly aware that our ICO will also be considered as a possible way of investing crypto currency. Experienced crypto investors always see new promising projects and evaluate them in terms of attractiveness for investments. For this part of our audience, we want to note that our token will be the only internal currency of the ICAR service. Fiat funds and other crypto-currencies will not be accepted as payment for the period of using the service. The cost by which we will accept a token for payment will not be less than $ 1. The scope of services provided by our service will not be limited. We will increase the presence in the world, build additional servers in new regions, scale them with increasing load. This will give unlimited demand for a token, while the number of free tokens will be limited. In addition, we will conduct a procedure for the regular redemption of tokens from the exchange with the aim of burning them. To this we will allocate part of the profit received. Thus, the number of free tokens will gradually decrease, and the volume of tokens claimed on the service will gradually grow. All this will not let the token fail in price, but, on the contrary, will stimulate its growth.
  • Oleg
    Bought tokens will be used only as an internal currency for payments? Or something else is supposed?
  • Danila
    In general, the hypothetical functionality of the ICAREUM token inside the ICAR service is very large. It can become not just a unit of payment for using the service, but also a tool for voting within the service, as well as an access key, an electronic signature, possibly a priority identifier for access to certain services. Much will open up in the process of developing the service. That is why before starting the service, tokens sold during the ICO will be replaced with a new version, which will contain all the functionality necessary for using the service.
  • Oleg
    After pre-sale, what steps will be taken to attract potential users to the service? How many users are there at all? Can you reveal some chips on the strategy?
  • Andrei
    We specially allocated a small number of tokens at the pre-sale and offer them at the lowest price. We feel a great responsibility for the work that we decided to do and for all the investments that we will be able to attract. Therefore, we want to raise the first funds from this small closed presale and show the world that we are only set to move ahead. Having passed the presale, we will immediately finish the legal design of our ICO and our service. We plan to participate in the next major crypto conferences, we will arrange the promotion of the project in the Internet community of architects and crypto investors. And, most importantly, we will configure, buy and run our first test server and release an alpha version of the ICAR service. And we invite a group of about 50 users from among those who took part in the pre-sale and the architects, whose opinion is authoritative in the professional world and whose participation in the development of the alpha test will be very important to us. After that, we will start the next phase of the ICO. All news about the first server and alpha testing we will publish on our website, in social networks and professional communities. Thus, by the time of starting the main token-sale the world will see launched alpha testing and the first reviews of industry experts. And it's not a secret, we openly declare these plans in the road map of our project.
  • Oleg
    Let's say that this material is being read by the developer who wants to have access to your API. Is this supposed? And if yes, then what opportunities will open for developer?
  • Danila
    For today, we do not need deep implementation of third-party developers in the development of our service. There are a lot of ready-made software solutions that will suit us for equipping the service with all the opportunities inherent in it and for realizing the work of the service platform itself. All we need is time to finalize all these solutions to compatibility with our tasks. At the same time execution of each separate task does not require full code and developers interface to be given to executor. Therefore, even if we need the services of additional developers - access to the API most likely will not be provided.
  • Oleg
    Are you searching for staff for your team? If yes, which ones and what they should be able to do? Maybe suddenly someone will want to take an active part!
  • Danila
    In the near future, we will need quite a few design artists who, , will be able to render in specialized programs a huge amount of textures of various materials for our service. They will be necessary for us to replenish the catalogs and improve the beauty and realism of visualization. And of course, we invite to cooperation all those who are ready to participate in the development of the project in one way or another and help in the passage of the ICO.