Skip to main content

Q-Free unveils futuristic Q-City virtual reality experience

Q-Free broke the mould when it unveiled Q-City at 2014’s Intertraffic. A computerised rendering of a modern urban area, Q-City allows users to look at how the company’s large suite of ITS products work with each other to make roads safer, cleaner and less congested. At this year’s show, Q-Free and Q-City have gone a step further and visitors can enjoy a fully immersive virtual reality tour.
April 4, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Jenny Simonsen of Q-Free
108 Q-Free broke the mould when it unveiled Q-City at 2014’s Intertraffic. A computerised rendering of a modern urban area, Q-City allows users to look at how the company’s large suite of ITS products work with each other to make roads safer, cleaner and less congested. At this year’s show, Q-Free and Q-City have gone a step further and visitors can enjoy a fully immersive virtual reality tour.


Q-City brings the process of understanding ITS into the 21st Century. Starting from a bird’s-eye view, it makes it possible to zoom in and out to explore application areas such as tolling, traffic management, parking and infomobility and to see how these previously discrete sectors have moved together to become more holistic and connected. The new virtual reality experience enables users to stand at street level and gain an even more ‘hands-on’ perspective.

“We’re a technology innovator, so it makes sense to use technology to demonstrate what we do,” says Jenny Simonsen, Q-Free’s Global Director Marketing & Communication. “It’s more than just a gimmick. By being able to move quickly around a cityscape, either alone or in the company of our technology experts, it’s possible to gain a real feel for what ITS can do far more quickly than might otherwise be the case.

“The virtual reality tours aren’t the only way in which Q-City has evolved. Q-Free has spent a lot of time since the last Intertraffic expanding and fine-tuning its portfolio. We’ve needed to reflect the new additions and the finessing which has occurred,” says Simonsen. “This latest version of Q-City is right up to date and features all of our products and services.”

Q-City also forms the centrepiece of a group experience here at Intertraffic. Each day at 3pm, the company’s Chief Technologist, Knut Evensen, will use it to give a guided tour of the company’s ITS capabilities, followed by drinks and networking opportunities.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Multi-modal’s long road into the transportation mainstream
    June 4, 2015
    Andrew Bardin Williams looks at 20 years of multimodal transport in the Sun Belt and beyond and the key requirement for user engagement. Phoenix residents will head to the polls in August to decide whether to implement a three-tenths of a cent sales tax to fund the city’s new multimodal transportation plan. It will be the second transportation-related sales tax hike in the past 15 years yet city officials and advocates expect the resolution to easily pass—despite the strong anti-tax environment that has dom
  • Cubic promotes the power of partnerships
    August 22, 2016
    Cubic’s Andy Taylor considers the growing need for partnerships in the transportation sector. At the end of June, The Guardian newspaper in the UK broke a game-changing transport story – Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is working on a project that aims to radically overhaul parking and transportation in American cities.
  • UK project demonstrates vehicle remote operation and autonomy for disabled drivers
    January 4, 2017
    The UK’s first demonstration of a remotely-operated autonomous vehicle service for people with reduced mobility has been successfully completed as part of the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), led by TRL. Taking place at the InterContinental Hotel in the Royal Borough of Greenwich and completed using an autonomous-enabled Toyota Prius, the demonstration marked the end of a fortnight of testing in which GATEway partners Gobotix and O2 were able to successfully demonstrate remote
  • Confusing funding and financing can be costly
    September 23, 2014
    Tolling may be the way forward for paying for the roads of the future - but where will concessionaires find the money and do they need funding or financing? Increasingly, governments around the world are concluding that they can no longer pay for new roads and are turning to the private sector for help.