DIGINEXT's Simulation and Virtual Reality Division, created in 1995 from CS’ Imagery and Geomatics Department and spun off in January 2010, regroups today 60 PhDs and engineers specialised in interactive 3D. It is among the world’s top ranking expertise centre in the field with internationally acknowledged experts, and project results published in the most prestigious journals and conferences. This division coordinates the V-City project and will specify, design and, in collaboration with end-user partners, develop the V-City Framework. In addition, DIGINEXT will be in charge of the commercial exploitation of the project outcomes at the end of the project. [Official Site]

The Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione (I.S.T.I) is located in Pisa in the new Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Research Area. Most of its scientific activity is performed within the framework of national and international research projects. I.S.T.I is also responsible for teaching and professional training activities. Several formal collaborations are currently under way with both Italian and foreign industrial partners in projects financed by the EU and other sources.
The Visual Computing Lab, one of the research departments of I.S.T.I, has been active on visualisation and computer graphics since 1984. Research in graphics algorithms currently focuses on the design of algorithms, data structures and prototypal systems for Scientific Visualisation (with particular emphasis on volume datasets), 3D Surface-based Graphics, 3D Range Scanning and 3D Web Applications. This group will be in charge of the data compression and optimisation modules that will be required to store and handle in real-time, and on a standard PC platform, the huge amount of data that compose the urban database. [Official Site]

The Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia (CRS4) is an interdisciplinary applied research center based in Pula, Italy. The center develops and applies innovative solutions across a broad range of important areas by leveraging its key strengths in several scientific and technological disciplines. These areas encompass large-scale computational problems that require application of advanced simulation techniques supported by High Performance Computing and the timely integration of newly emerging Information and Communications Technology.
The Visual Computing Group isdedicated to developing powerful interactive 3D tools for scientific visualization and visual simulation. The main expertise is in multi-resolution data representation, time-critical graphics, external memory algorithms, and applications of virtual reality technology to visual simulation. It will be in charge of the time-critical 3D rendering aspects for massive urban databases in the frame of VCity. [Official Site]

Established in 1425, the K.U.Leuven is by far the largest and most complete university in Belgium with more than 25 000 students. It has more than 3.300 professors and scientific staff and more than one in three of Leuven's inhabitants are connected with the University.
Within KUL the VISICS (VISion for Industry, Communications, and Services) group is specialised in computer vision and its applications, and focuses on the subdomains of 3D acquisition and modelling, as well as on object and object class recognition. The team has received several prizes for its work, including a David Marr award, two TechArt prizes, an EITC Technology Award, and a Henri Ford prize. It has founded multiple spin off companies: ICOS (chip inspection), Eyetronics (3D acquisition technology for the games and movie industry mainly), and recently GeoAutomation (mobile mapping, ie. 3D measurements in cities from a moving van). At the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition it has received the best video award for its work on the combination of 3D reconstruction and object (car) recognition in urban environments. It will be in charge of the aerial or satellite image analysis, urban topology and semantic extraction within the VCity project. [Official Site]

Procedural Inc is a high-tech startup company located in Zurich, Switzerland. The company develops and sells the CityEngine product, a software for the efficient creation of 3D buildings and cities. With this flagship product, 3D buildings can be created 5-10 times more efficiently than with existing solutions and 3D cities can be stored at unprecedented high compression rates. The underlying technology is based on a revolutionary and unique shape grammar i.e. a language to program and edit buildings on a semantic level. The targeted markets include, but are not limited to, interactive and filmed entertainment, navigation, simulation, architecture, archaeology and the 3D internet. Key players from the entertainment, architecture and mapping industry (Navteq, Microsoft, Rockstar North, Foster+Partners etc.) are customers of Procedural Inc.
The company starts with a leading edge team of internationally acknowledged experts in the field of computer graphics, computer vision, software engineering, marketing and business development. All members boast a long track record of successful projects and publications (including several SIGGRAPH papers) in their respective fields. As official ETH Spin-Off, a close collaboration with the ETH Zurich, one of Europe’s leading technical universities, is ensured. Strong connections to several institutes guarantee successful recruiting and access to the latest research results. [Official Site]

Funded in 1994, Immersion SAS is an SME that is currently the French leader in the development and distribution of multi-sensorial peripherals for visualisation and interaction. Based on these many years of experience in the field and an active RTD department, Immersion invents and distributes innovative input devices and visualisation systems for long time clients such as EADS, THALES, DASSAULT, EUROCOPTER, CEA, CS-SI, DCN, ESSILOR, FIAT, ORANGE R&D, RENAULT, PSA PEUGEOT CITROEN, LABRI, IRIT, CNRS,… Applications most praised by such organisations include virtual prototyping as well as both the navigation and interaction within very large environments such as geographic maps or simulation results. Proper equipment, both desktop sized and larger scale immersive ones, enables people to be brought into the virtual 3D prototype and to perform complex operations. More specifically, immersive platforms enable one or several users to visualize and interact with 3D mock-ups of their project, or working environment, as if they were inside the real one.
Starting from a marginal orientation of the company a few years ago, the young RTD department has shown a constant growth in the last years. It is now one of the major activities of IMMERSION supporting the impressive growth of the company and employing a team of 7 hardware experts. The many abilities exhibited by this department are providing the company with the capacity to develop advanced hardware devices and to bring research ideas into new products. In the frame of the VCity project, Immersion will implement a tactil multi-point table suitable for both 2D and 3D maps. [Official Site]

Blom CGR S.p.A. is the Italian branch of the BLOM European group expert in the acquisition, processing and selling of high quality geospatial digital libraries. Blom’s ambition is to build the digital library of Europe’s cities. For instance, BLOM will have acquired, by the end of 2008, every European city with a population of 50,000 inhabitants or more with its revolutionary oblique picture technology. This will be the most comprehensive and detailed aerial imagery database available, with the ultimate intention of becoming available on-line to all customer groups. More than 5 millions oblique images already compose this digital geospatial library and represent 20 terabytes of data. These figures do not account for other digital data produced by BLOM such as more traditional orthoimages, LIDAR point clouds, DEMs…

Within VCIty will BLOM be in charge of the user requirements definition and the project result validation for both the rapid reconstruction and interactive visualisation of urban environments. [Official Site]