An agent that understands the world
Ask in plain words. It flies the camera, sets the sun, opens panels and draws the data, then reports what it did: “Flew to Pershing Square.” Up to 8 conversations at once.
2.0 BetaAURA ENGINE
From parcel to planet, you design the future.
- GISthe planet
- +BIMthe built world
- +AIreasoning
- =One live worldReal-time · Photoreal
Powered by Unreal Engine
New AURA ENGINE 2.0 Beta
Ask. See it on the map.
Test it on the real site.
One AI assistant now lives inside the 3D world. It finds the data, draws the answer, and tells you exactly what it did.
Questions become layers
Every answer is a real map layer, draped on the terrain. Click a feature for its card, restyle it, or ask about it. Bring your own CSV, Excel, KML or shapefile.
Massing on the real parcel
Building Gen v2: click a lot, set the brief, get 5 to 12 options in seconds, and save one into your scene with the city cut away beneath it.
Sun, shadow and sun hours
Sun Path at any date and time in the site’s own time zone, with a sun-hours heatmap painted on the real city.
Live traffic, anywhere
Simulated traffic on real roads, with signals, queues and real vehicle models. Switch it on wherever you are.
AI-powered rendering engine
Turn a scene into a finished, photoreal image of the place, with light, planting and people. Coming soon to AURA.
2.0Beta release
279Curated layers
8Chat tabs
10→72FPS, downtown LA
Renders from AURA ENGINE · Imagery © Google
New in AURA ENGINE 2.0
BUILDING GEN V2
Pick a real parcel, set the brief, and get 5, 8 or 12 massing options in seconds. Click one and it is built on the site, with the photoreal city cut away beneath it.
- Real parcelsPick a lot and it draws in under a second, with its area and APN.
- A briefFAR, storeys, coverage and programme, or let the zoning decide.
- 5, 8 or 12 optionsEach card names its trait. Regenerate until one fits.
- Save to sceneKeep a design in your workspace at any size, with site forces around it.
Claude connect
Drive your AURA scene
with Claude
Let Claude Desktop or Claude Code drive AURA on your own machine. Ask in plain words, and Claude flies the camera, sets the sun, reads the scene and takes screenshots.
- A one-click Claude Desktop extension comes with the download.
- Local only. It refuses deletes and stays off until you switch it on.
Fly to Pershing Square, set the sun to 5 pm on June 21, and take a screenshot.
- Flying to Pershing Square, Los Angeles
- Setting the sun to 21 June, 17:00
- Taking a screenshot once the map has loaded
Done. Here’s Pershing Square at 5 pm on the longest day, with the long shadows falling east.
Visions : Real in-engine screenshots from our users.
Platform
Maps that think with you
Most platforms just collect data. AURA turns it into a living simulation you can question, explore, and act on — test a design, watch its consequences unfold, and change course before anything is built.
01
Ask in plain language
Ask about any place the way you'd ask a colleague. AURA works out what you mean, finds the data, and answers on the map.
02
Zoning answers, instantly
Check what a site allows in real time — AURA weighs your design against local rules and suggests changes that fit.
03
Documents, onto the map
Drop in plans and policy documents. AURA reads them and pins what matters — places, rules, and projects — right where they belong.
04
Meaning in every pixel
AI reads heat, slope, and solar imagery for you — turning raw pixels into site-specific insight and clear recommendations.
05
Connections across layers
Put zoning, environment, and demographics side by side — and surface the patterns that shape policy, equity, and land use.
How AURA works
From raw data to shared insight
Every source — 3D models, GIS layers, files, and live services — flows through one pipeline: brought in, organized, fused into a single world, reasoned over, and shared anywhere.
1 · Bring it in
3D models
Buildings, sites, and model collections
GIS layers
Maps, basemaps, and legends
Geospatial files
Shapefiles, CSV, and JSON
Your workspace
Projects and scene assets
→
2 · Organize it
Fetch & stream
Pull data in efficiently
Read & decode
Parse every file type
Standardize
Map formats to one schema
Catalog & save
Index and persist your work
→
3 · Fuse it
Build the scene
Assemble the live 3D world
Place on the map
Search layers and features
Translate formats
Every source, one spatial language
Add context
Enrich with research and places
→
4 · Reason about it
Spatial analysis
Query and classify in context
Reports
Generate summaries and PDFs
Quality checks
Track status and validate
Insights
Cross-layer metrics for decisions
→
5 · Share it
Interactive UI
Widgets and blueprint controls
Live digital twin
Real-time runtime scene
Exports
Sheets, files, and APIs
Stream & collaborate
Share anywhere, together
The experience
A real-time engine,
not a map viewer
GIS gives AURA the planet — terrain, parcels, climate, every feature layer. BIM gives it the built world — your models, placed on their real sites. AI reasons across both. And Unreal Engine fuses all three into one photoreal, living world you can fly through in real time.
Ask the planet questions
Type "show me all the schools" — and watch the answer draw itself onto the world in front of you.
Drop your designs into reality
Bring your own models straight into real-world context — see your building on its actual site, in actual sunlight.
See the connections
Your documents, data, and locations woven into a living 3D web of relationships you can fly through.
Research that maps itself
Point AURA at a topic and it gathers the knowledge — then places it on the globe where it belongs.
Real conditions, always
True sun angles, terrain, and live urban data — every scenario grounded in the world as it actually is.
Your work, everywhere
Workspaces follow you across devices. Close the tab in the studio, reopen it on site.
AURA Engine — the real-time core
City-scale worlds,
at game-engine speed
AURA Engine is the real-time 3D environment at the heart of the platform — built in the world's leading game engine. It fuses photoreal terrain, imported BIM models, and live GIS feature layers into one navigable world that runs smoothly at metropolitan scale.
60 fps
on a 5 GB city
Minutes
to a board-ready scene
Dual-globe
photoreal 3D + data maps
1-click
parcel clipping
UE5 material system
Unreal-quality light, surfaces, and materials — visuals a boardroom grasps at a glance, no explanation needed.
Dual-globe system
Switch seamlessly between Google-Earth-style photoreal 3D and analytical data maps, without leaving the scene.
Detailed infrastructure modeling
Roads, interchanges, utilities, and buildings — modeled inside the live world at the detail real decisions demand.
Instant context for designers
Drop a design onto its real site and see it in true terrain, sun, and surrounding fabric — immediately.
One-click parcel clipping
Isolate any parcel or study area in a single action to focus analysis and presentation where it matters.
BIM ↔ GIS fidelity
Presentation-grade visuals layered over rigorous data — the built world and the living planet in one model.
Why it matters
Cities are living systems
Rivers act like arteries. Forests function like neural networks. Soil stores information. Light carries data. Energy moves through the planet the way signals move through the brain.
Once you see that, you can't design cities as isolated objects anymore. AURA models the built environment as it really is — one organism, sensing, learning, and adapting.
Harmonic patterns
- Watersheds regulating flow through wetlands
- Green corridors cooling urban microclimates
- Distributed renewables synced to landscape
Dysfunctional patterns
- Urban heat islands and lost canopy
- Channelized rivers, broken hydrology
- Sprawl fragmenting habitat and mobility
AURA makes the difference measurable — and designable.
Multi-scale modeling
From a single parcel
to the whole planet
SiteGreen roofs, permeable surfaces, stormwater retention, local heat
NeighborhoodTransit access, tree canopy, public space, equity and livability
RegionBiodiversity corridors, watershed flows, renewable siting, climate risk
PlanetMigratory systems, atmospheric currents, supply chain impacts
Applications
Built for what's coming
Climate resilience
Adapt infrastructure to rising seas, extreme heat, and storms — with scenarios stakeholders can stand inside.
Biodiversity restoration
Identify and protect ecological corridors before they fragment.
Energy transition
Design distributed renewable networks that work with the landscape, not against it.
Collaborative planning
Policymakers and residents step into the same simulation and see the same future — agreement comes faster when everyone is standing in it.
The vision
Build with nature's geometries, not against them
Ancient builders aligned their cities with the land. The industrial age built against it. AURA exists to bring design back into partnership with living systems — not through myth, but through rigorous data and immersive tools.
OUR VISION
A harmonious Earth — where the systems we build work in
concert with the systems that sustain life.
AURA makes that harmony something you can design — cities, infrastructure, and landscapes shaped to move with the planet's natural systems, not against them.
"The Earth is not a backdrop. It is an intelligent organism with flows, grids, feedback loops, and memory." — Jack Oliva-Rendler, Co-founder | CEO
Pricing
One plan.
Everything included.
$59
/ month
First month free
Your first month is free. You won’t be charged for 30 days, and you can cancel anytime before then. After that, your membership rolls into monthly billing.
- Full AURA Engine desktop client
- Photoreal digital twin of any city on Earth
- Live GIS layers, BIM import, and AI analytics
- Cloud workspaces that follow you across devices
- Every update shipped during your membership
AURA Studio
Let us build it for you
Beyond the platform, our studio takes on bespoke commissions — custom digital twins, simulations, and immersive environments, designed and delivered around your site, your data, and your vision.
Custom digital twins
Photoreal, data-driven twins of your site, city, or region — built on AURA and rendered in real time.
Simulation & analysis
Climate, hydrology, energy, and ecological modeling — turned into scenarios your stakeholders can walk through.
Immersive experiences
Bespoke XR walkthroughs and interactive simulations for design review, public engagement, and investment.
Team
The people behind AURA
Arthur Modine
Founder | CTO
Cofounder of Openended. Professor of Architecture. Arthur conceived AURA as his Master's Thesis project — a vision of a fully immersive, data-driven geospatial AI platform. Under his leadership, AURA has grown into a team of passionate developers, educators, and activists. Co-founder of LA-based 3D printing company Openended, featured in Glitch Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. He teaches architecture at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.
Jack Rendler
Co-founder | CEO
Author of Terrestrial Architecture. Futurly Master Class, PA Academy. Jack attended SCI-Arc — winning an Undergraduate Thesis Prize — and earned his Master's at Harvard GSD. He received a Mars City Design award for Urban Design in a competition judged by NASA and Dassault Systems. His work explores multi-scalar ecological solutions in digital 3D modeling, GIS, and algorithmic methods at planetary, bio-regional, and community scales.
Marcela Oliva
Knowledge Architect
Board of USGBC California, 2012 Educator of the Year. For a decade before joining AURA, Marcela served as Knowledge Architect for the $9 billion Building Program at the Los Angeles Community College District, spearheading the nation's largest Digital Twin/Virtualization BIM/GIS system. Professor of Architecture and Environmental Design at LATTC and founder of UCLA Extension Courses: Transforming Community and Design for Social Justice.
Kathleen Cohen
Immersive Technology Strategist
Founder of Collaboratorium, advisor to Holoride (Audi). A tech humanist and XR immersive strategist with 25+ years building user and guest experiences. Through The Collaboratorium she leads special computing, XR research, strategy & production — with clients from Megacity and Gigacity projects to Health & Wellness, Media & Entertainment. Background includes DreamWorks Interactive, IBM Centers for Innovation, and Walt Disney.
Rohan Singh
Lead Frontend Engineer
Unreal Engine community developer with multiple public workshop plugins. Rohan has built digital twins across HTC, HP, Microsoft HoloLens, and Meta Quest platforms, and leads the real-time 3D front end of AURA Engine.
From parcel to planet,
you design the future
Start building in AURA today.