Frequently asked questions

For the Unity route you need the Unity Editor – a Personal or Pro licence from Unity Technologies is enough (see the Unity Industry question below). realvirtual Unity works as a plugin for Unity projects on Windows, macOS and Linux. For the browser platform you need nothing but a browser.

Releases are based on the current Unity Long Term Support release – realvirtual Unity 6.3 targets Unity 6000.3 LTS. Within a Unity LTS line you can always safely update to the latest patch version.

Usually yes, but only the current LTS release is tested and guaranteed. However, if there is no urgent reason for a higher version, we recommend using the corresponding LTS version.

For the browser: any current browser on desktop, tablet or phone – nothing to install, and the 3D rendering runs on the device itself, so there is no GPU farm and no streaming infrastructure. For engineering in the Unity Editor we recommend a PC with at least 16GB of RAM, 6 or more cores, and a current gaming graphics card.

Unity Personal or Pro is sufficient. Unity Industry is only needed if you want to import native CAD formats such as SolidWorks, CATIA or NX via the Unity Asset Transformer (PiXYZ, included in the Unity Industry license) – CADLink in realvirtual Unity imports STEP, 3MF and JT without it, and the browser platform imports STEP, JT, USD and FBX on its own.

Everyone who works with the Unity Editor – i.e., develops digital twins in it – also needs a realvirtual Unity license. In the browser, viewing is always free; a realvirtual Commercial seat is needed per developer while you actively develop. realvirtual Commercial includes the realvirtual Unity Starter and Professional plugins as downloads — an option, not a prerequisite: the digital twin is authored in the browser, so Unity is not required. realvirtual Unity Professional is also available separately, without realvirtual Commercial. The Unity Editor licence is not included and must be obtained separately from Unity Technologies.

A Unity build you compile with realvirtual Unity can be shared freely and without licence costs – as a compiled build, not as an editable project. For the browser platform the rule is different: exactly one deployment fee applies per delivery (from €300 one-time), except for watermarked showroom and demo deployments.

Starter is free; realvirtual Unity Professional is €1,250 net, one-time and perpetual. There is an annual, significantly reduced upgrade package for existing customers. The browser platform is licensed differently: realvirtual Commercial is €1,920 per developer per year, but with no subscription lock-in – after 12 paid months the licence becomes perpetual for the last version received. realvirtual Commercial includes the realvirtual Unity Starter and Professional plugins as downloads — an option, not a prerequisite: the digital twin is authored in the browser, so Unity is not required. realvirtual Unity Professional is also available separately, without realvirtual Commercial. The Unity Editor licence is not included and must be obtained separately from Unity Technologies.

realvirtual Unity: yes, but only on one computer at a time, not on several simultaneously. realvirtual Commercial in the browser is licensed per developer, not per machine – the same person may work on as many machines as they like. Viewing what you delivered never needs a licence at all.

Both are realvirtual: one component model, one open digital twin format (GLB with rv_extras), read and written in both directions. You choose by what you are doing, not by tier. Take realvirtual Unity when you are building an application – C#, the Unity ecosystem, PhysX, XR and standalone runtimes for desktop, mobile and headsets, with 25+ controller and robot drivers in-process. Take realvirtual in the browser when the twin has to travel – a link is enough, no installation and no account, with the editor, CAD import, simulation and virtual commissioning all in the browser. Both author and edit the model, and both do virtual commissioning. Discrete event simulation (beta) and the machine information system exist only in the browser; standalone builds, PhysX and the Unity asset ecosystem only in Unity. realvirtual Commercial includes realvirtual Unity Starter and Professional as a download – the Unity Editor licence itself comes from Unity Technologies. realvirtual Unity Professional is also available separately, without realvirtual Commercial. realvirtual Commercial itself does not require Unity — the twin is authored in the browser.

realvirtual builds on proven engines – Unity for the engineering side, Three.js in the browser – instead of developing everything from scratch. Direct sales via the internet reduce costs.

Starter is free – ideal for getting started and for demos. It ships with the Siemens S7 TCP/IP and SIMIT Shared Memory interfaces and igus Rebel. Missing in Starter are CADLink and all other PLC and robot interfaces.

No, both are included in Professional. These are products for customers who only need individual features.

It provides ready-made parametric simulation components for material flow simulation – ideal for system integrators and material handling technology.

Yes, two – and the browser one needs nothing at all: open the live demo at web.realvirtual.io/demo, no installation, no account. For the Unity route, realvirtual Unity Starter is free on the Unity Asset Store and includes a complete demo scene with drives, sensors, transport, and a Siemens S7 interface. Professional has no time-limited trial – instead there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

For the browser platform you can order realvirtual Commercial online at published prices, or request a quote. realvirtual Unity Professional is available directly from realvirtual GmbH with a quote and bank transfer, or via the Unity Asset Store with a credit card. realvirtual Commercial includes the realvirtual Unity Starter and Professional plugins as downloads — an option, not a prerequisite: the digital twin is authored in the browser, so Unity is not required. realvirtual Unity Professional is also available separately, without realvirtual Commercial. The Unity Editor licence is not included and must be obtained separately from Unity Technologies.

Options: start free in the browser with realvirtual, download realvirtual Unity Starter free from the Unity Asset Store and learn on your own, attend training sessions, or "training on the job" – individual support via Teams.

Yes. We train teams on realvirtual (browser and Unity), build a running digital twin from your CAD and machine data in a one-day pilot, support AI transformation in engineering, and develop interfaces or features on your behalf. All offerings are on the services page; contact us via the contact form.

realvirtual is the browser platform for industrial digital twins, built on Three.js and TypeScript and dual-licensed: the viewer, 3D HMI, simulation and WebXR are open source under AGPL-3.0, the editor and CAD import come with the commercial licence. It imports CAD and builds kinematics in the editor, simulates drives, sensors and material flow, connects to real PLCs via WebSocket or realvirtual CONNECT, and displays live machine states in 3D – drive positions, sensor readings, alarms and KPIs – as a 3D HMI and machine information system. Share a link, and your digital twin runs on any device.

No. There are three ways in. Import CAD directly in the browser: STEP, JT, USD, FBX or an asset from the Unity Asset Manager – converted locally on your own machine, without an upload (part of the commercial license). Export an enriched GLB from realvirtual Unity Professional with all metadata and signal bindings. Or load any standard GLB/glTF file, for example from Blender. Signal bindings come from the open rv_extras schema, custom behavior from TypeScript plugins – no Unity license required.

realvirtual Unity Professional is the Unity-based framework for engineering digital twins: native CAD importers, behavior simulation, full virtual commissioning with real PLCs and robots, and native builds for every platform. realvirtual is the browser platform for the whole lifecycle: import CAD, build kinematics in the editor, simulate, commission virtually through realvirtual CONNECT, and hand the same GLB over as a 3D HMI and machine information system – no installation, no Unity required. They share one component model and one GLB format, so a twin travels in either direction. And you do not have to choose twice: realvirtual Commercial includes realvirtual Unity Starter and Professional as a download – only the Unity Editor licence itself comes from Unity Technologies. Or use realvirtual standalone with any GLB model. realvirtual Unity Professional is also available separately, without realvirtual Commercial.

Dual-licensed. AGPL: free and open source, without support – realvirtual runs in the browser, so every visitor you serve receives a copy of the program and is entitled to the corresponding source of what you served them, including the components, plugins and logic you built into it, licensed as a whole. If you modified it and people reach it over a network, that covers your own staff on an internal network too. The duty is to offer that source to those users, not to publish it to the world. Commercial: €1,920 net per developer per year – a development license with support included, and it includes realvirtual Unity Starter and Professional as a download; the Unity Editor licence itself comes from Unity Technologies and is not part of it. Needed only while you actively develop; stop developing, stop paying. Per deployment, exactly one deployment fee applies (for overlapping use cases, the highest applicable one): €300 one-time per delivered machine or per simulation/planning study delivered to your customer (perpetual – keeps running without a subscription; €600 one-time with live connection to the PLC, incl. the realvirtual CONNECT runtime), €3,000/year per internal site (incl. the CONNECT runtime: all protocols, unlimited signals and internal users), or €4,900/year per public internet application. Exception: watermarked showroom and demo deployments (purely presentational, no live machine data, no charge – no paid access, not part of a paid delivery scope, no commercial offering built on it) carry no deployment fee. Want to license realvirtual as part of your own software product? Ask us about our OEM model. realvirtual Unity Professional is also available separately, without realvirtual Commercial. realvirtual Commercial itself does not require Unity — the twin is authored in the browser.

realvirtual itself speaks one protocol: rv WebSocket Realtime v2 – openly documented, bidirectional, real-time. Everything else goes through realvirtual CONNECT, the native gateway with drivers for Siemens S7, Beckhoff TwinCAT ADS, OPC UA, MQTT, Modbus TCP, EtherNet/IP, Bosch Rexroth ctrlX, Keba, Festo AX, FANUC, Denso, ABB RobotStudio and SIMIT – including signal history in InfluxDB. Any third-party system that speaks the open WebSocket protocol can feed the scene directly.

Yes. realvirtual is a standard Vite production build – a static file server is sufficient for serving the application. For live PLC connectivity, add realvirtual CONNECT: the native gateway streams signals into the browser and includes signal history in InfluxDB. Deploy on your own infrastructure with full control – no cloud dependency, no login required.

Yes. Via WebXR, realvirtual runs on all AR and XR devices out of the box – Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro, HTC Vive, Android/iOS AR. No native builds, no app store submissions. One URL works everywhere.

The EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 applies in full from 20 January 2027 and explicitly allows digital instructions, including instructions embedded in the machine software – provided they can be printed, downloaded and stored offline and stay available for at least ten years. realvirtual is ready: link PDFs, technical drawings, and spare part lists directly to 3D components and failure messages. Version control via Gitea ensures traceability and 10+ year availability. Technicians open a link, click on a component, and see the relevant documentation in 3D context.

Nothing beyond the development work: watermarked showroom and demo deployments carry no deployment fee – even self-hosted on your own infrastructure and publicly reachable, with your models staying proprietary under the Commercial license. Three conditions: the realvirtual watermark stays visible, the content is purely presentational (no live connection to real machines), and no money changes hands – no paid access, the showroom is not part of a paid delivery scope, and no commercial offering is built on it. Only the developer license (€1,920/year) is needed during active development. As soon as one of these three conditions falls away, a deployment fee applies: for a public application under your own brand, or with paid access for end users, that is €4,900 per year. Keeping the watermark is not enough on its own once end users pay.

Yes, under AGPL-3.0, and you may charge your own customers for it. The AGPL does not restrict commercial use, it restricts secrecy. If you take this path, the complete product you deliver is AGPL-3.0. realvirtual runs in the browser, so every visitor you serve receives a copy and is entitled to its corresponding source: your own application code, the configuration, and any behaviour your GLB carries — rv_extras logic the program executes travels with the work. The same applies if you modified it and people reach it over a network, including your own staff on an internal network. Plain geometry is data and stays yours. The duty is to offer that source to those users, not to publish it to the world. The realvirtual watermark stays visible and there is no commercial support. Most companies choose the commercial license instead, because their machine geometry and their application would otherwise have to be offered to everyone who opens the link. Open source is the condition of the free path, being free of charge is not.

Three steps. Publish everything you build under AGPL-3.0, including your 3D models: €0. Keep your models, code and configuration private, with the watermark visible, the application free of charge for end users and no live machine connection: €1,920 per developer and year, no deployment fee. Run it under your own brand or let end users pay: €1,920 plus the internet application fee of €4,900 per year, so €6,820 per year for one developer. Embedding always means working on the source, our TypeScript layer and the build, so the developer license applies to every variant that stays proprietary.

No. Commercial is a single tier: the full engine with all modules as code in your own deployment, priced per developer plus exactly one deployment fee. There is no module-based pricing, no per-user pricing and no asset-only package. The example scenes that ship with it, such as the campus demo and the logistics models with conveyors, transfers and turntables, are part of the delivery and not a separate asset pack. The lever for a lighter entry is the deployment situation (watermark visible, free of charge, no live data), not a smaller feature subset.

A native gateway shipped as a self-contained application for Windows and Linux: it speaks Siemens S7, Beckhoff TwinCAT ADS, OPC UA, MQTT, Modbus TCP, EtherNet/IP, Bosch ctrlX and Keba on both platforms – plus Festo AX, FANUC, Denso, ABB RobotStudio and SIMIT on Windows – and streams the signals live into realvirtual in the browser. The complete realvirtual is embedded, demo scene included – plus signal mirroring, signal history in InfluxDB and the AI diagnosis backend.

Free for up to 20 signals (community registration, node-locked). Unlimited signals: Annual €1,250/year net or Lifetime €3,900 net one-time. For production use with realvirtual, CONNECT is already bundled: the internal site fee includes the CONNECT runtime, and machine-companion delivery with a live 3D HMI is €600 one-time per machine (platform + CONNECT, perpetual). Full details on the CONNECT product page.

Neither. Internet is only needed for activation and deactivation – at runtime CONNECT validates its license purely locally, even air-gapped; offline activation is available for networks without internet. And Unity is not required: CONNECT is the standalone and browser leg of the platform – inside Unity, the realvirtual interfaces talk to controllers directly.