We are excited to share some news. While we briefly mentioned it in the ArchViz Explorer forum thread, we are now officially announcing that the development of AVE II, is well underway.
AVE II is being designed for developers who want to present construction projects, real estate, and urban developments in an interactive way. With AVE II, we’re putting all the knowledge and expertise we have accumulated over the years into creating something that sets a new standard.
We also partnered with Vagon Streams to ensure AVE II is optimized for high-performance cloud streaming. This collaboration is transforming what’s possible in architectural visualization, breaking down hardware barriers, and enabling seamless experiences across any device.
What’s New?
It’s challenging to innovate with the current version due to its rigid and outdated architecture. Therefore we are building the project from the ground up to deliver the best possible template.
Here’s what to expect:
New Framework: Modular and robust Blueprints designed to simplify the integration of new features.
Improved Controls: The camera now orbits naturally around the cursor or touch point, similar to the experience in Google Earth. This offers smoother navigation and a more intuitive feel.
Enhanced Input System: Optimized controls for keyboard, mouse, and touchscreens using Unreal’s new input system.
Improved UX/UI: Material-based UI elements redesigned with Common UI principles for a dynamic styling and responsive user experience.
Smart POI System: A completely reworked Point of Interest system featuring grouping and advanced filtering, powered by Unreal’s new Gameplay Tags framework.
Learning: Extensive documentation, including video tutorials, to help you easily learn and customize your projects.
Seamless Pixel Streaming with Vagon Streams: In partnership with Vagon Streams, AVE II features deep, built-in integration for no-code pixel streaming, delivering exceptional image quality and enhanced performance worldwide and across all devices.
What’s Next?
Until release, we will be sharing some technical insight and WIP screenshots. Our goal with AVE II is to shape its development around the feedback of fellow developers, making sure it aligns closely with real-world workflows and needs. We therefore encourage you to follow along, and share your thoughts and suggestions.
Here’s our first look at the development process of AVE II.
We started out by using the Lyra Starter Game as a reference, mainly for how it handles UI, communication, and project structure. It uses Common UI with material-based elements, the Enhanced Input System, and a clean, modular framework.
Even though most of the Blueprint logic is accessible, many of the base classes are written in C++, so we had to spend weeks digging through the project to understand how everything works. It took some effort, but it gave us a solid foundation to build upon.
One of the first features we tackled was improving camera navigation. Specifically, the ability to orbit around the mouse cursor, similar to Google Earth.
In ArchViz Explorer, orbiting was always locked to the center of the screen. This felt clunky, especially on touchscreens. So this was something we wanted to fix early on.
On interaction, the New Navigation System fires a ray trace to detect where the cursor is pointing in the world and sets that point as the new orbit/zoom target. From there, the camera updates its direction and distance to match the previous frame.
It sounds simple on paper, but getting it to work pushed the limits of what we knew in terms of Blueprint logic, math, and geometry. We spent weeks iterating before finally getting a version that was working properly.
Here is a short video demonstration of the Improved Navigation System:
Hey everyone!
Just wanted to share some exciting news. Huge thanks to @KarlDetroit for all the hard work and creativity behind AVEII!
We, as Vagon Streams, are now teaming up with Karl Detroit to make AVEII even more accessible. Thanks to our partnership, AVEII now comes with native Vagon Streams integration. That means you can run AVEII in 4K and 60 FPS on almost any device, straight from the cloud — no need to worry about hardware problems or complex setup.
TL;DR AVEII will be pixel-streaming ready with Vagon Streams from day one.
It’s super easy to use: install the plugin, click publish, and your project is ready to share or embed anywhere.
If you’re curious about using pixel streaming in your own work, feel free to message us or book a quick demo at vagon.io/streams.
Best,
Serdar
The following screenshots showcase various iterations we have made to the UX and UI, some dating back a few months.
It is designed with a touch screen as the primary target device, and we have gone through multiple revisions to ensure all elements are arranged accordingly.
All buttons are derived from a single button class that uses a Slot system to centralize logic and animations. This way the UI can be easily extended and modified without breaking.
Now what I am going to say is a my own take on the UI, but everyone has their own preferences.
I am not hating on the new UI but it looks quite cluttered or in simpler way to say would be that it is too distracting. Specially if you see on the 1st Image in the Unit Search menu, its taking too much of the screen for me to focus on the background image or in general case that would be the Archviz that the developer would want you to focus on. And if your focus was touchscreen now even though i am watching this on a monitor it looks cluttered imagine this on a tablet that a person like me who would like to focus more on what’s going on in the background rather than the UI.
Again this is just my personal take on just the UI, the performance is a different thing which would have obviously improved than the current AVE.
Now I am aware that we can modify the UI, but still changing it whole from the base makes it quite tedious, so my suggestion would be to also add a functionality to have the old UI to which the user or developer can switch to with the performance and functionality of the new improved one.
Thanks for the feedback! The screenshots show different iterations of the UI. The first image under the title is actually the oldest. I should have explained that more clearly. We moved the Unit Search and Surroundings panels from the bottom of the screen to the left side, which allows for more categories and longer lists.
I’m not sure yet if we will have the legacy UI as an option, but we will definitely include a detailed tutorial on UI customization.
Please keep the suggestions coming. They are much appreciated.
Hi , nice progress so far, looking promising, can you also incorporate interactive 3d floor plan Ui with unit search so that it touches all the right aspects.
@KarlDetroit it’s amazing to know that you guys are working on AVE-II. AVE-I has been the base for many projects i saw online. Which shows how amazing and useful your addon is. Amazing work .
It would be nice, if you can share the roadmap you guys are planning for AVE-II. Being an architect, I feel showcasing features like POI , 360 PANO, views from different floors on various building types like single homes plots, multistorey complex (like in AVE-I) & highrise skyscraper will best showcase AVE-II features & more.
I would be glad to help/assist you guys , in terms of architecture insights, planning if you guys need it. .
Agreed with @GurpalS
I saw many early adopters have advanced features. Would be great to have industry standard features like the others. I have a list that I can share.
Thank you for keeping the thread active. As promised, we are sharing our roadmap so you can see where we currently are and where the project is headed: Roadmap - KARL DETROIT
We originally built the roadmap in a third-party app, but found it difficult to share and embed across different platforms. Therefore we migrated everything to a custom page on our website to make it easier to access and follow.
We are still in the process of migrating some task descriptions and images, but the current version is hopefully sufficient to give you a rough overview.
We are aiming to launch AVE II in about a month or two. We are just really focused on making sure the project structure and all features are rock solid and well polished. This way we can avoid headaches with future updates.
We have implemented synchronized hover states between list items and POI labels.
Now, hovering over a list item highlights its corresponding label in the scene, and vice versa. The Game Instance is used as a mediator to keep everything in sync.
