The latest version of Virtual Worlds is available to download from the Virtual Worlds User Centre. New features in version 5.6 include:

Views tab: Now all of your saved views can be examined and selected from the views tab. Any settings for photorealism and other images can be “attached” to these views for ease of use and future reference.

Unit labels: Label a unit with your own description information and notes. This information can be shown on 2D plans, elevations and renders. This feature can be extensively applied to elevations containing One Touch Tiling.

External walls can now be given a specific thickness, visible in all 2D and 3D views.

Connection Points: With connection points, it’s possible to accurately and automatically position related items - units will “snap” together when dragged towards one-another, for example taps to basins, doors to cabinets, enclosures to shower trays, and so on. As new catalogues are released, they will make use of this feature.

Photorealistic Fly-through: Paths recorded using the camera tool can now be rendered in photorealistic mode, and saved out as an AVI video file.

Extended options for customisation of Virtual Worlds’ appearance.

License status information can easily be examined in the status bar.

The generic catalogue has been updated, and the new version is also available on the user centre. As well as some items making use of connection points (see above), the lighting catalogue has been rationalised and improved to make creation of photorealistic images simpler and more efficient. Note that these new lights are available in the new Lighting category – from now on, the Heating category and Lighting category will be separated (older versions of Virtual Worlds have one category, labelled Heating & Lighting), with all new catalogues installing to the appropriate category.

For more detailed information on the new features, check the What's new in Virtual Worlds 5.6 PDF file, available alongside the software installer on the Virtual Worlds User Centre.