Pro, Lite and Riverology — how they relate

One shared codebase, three products. This page explains the rename, what each edition includes, and what you receive if you already own something.

The rename

Legacy in software usually means "old" or "no longer developed" — which is not what our smaller edition is. NextGen implies the other product is last-gen, which is not accurate either. Lite and Pro state the relationship plainly: Lite is the focused edition, Pro is the complete one.

Both move to the same version number on purpose: they are built from one codebase, so a fix in the core reaches both at the same time. The rename happens when Pro releases — not before.

Lite is built from Pro

This is the part most easily misunderstood. Lite is not the old Legacy with a new name and a shorter feature list. Lite is rebuilt directly from the Pro codebase, so every Legacy owner inherits — at no cost:

• The rebuilt core rendering pipeline and all the performance work
• The full lake system
• The shallow water fluid simulation
• Infinite interactive water — ripples, wakes and splashes
• The hydraulics kit: springs, drains, currents and whirlpools
• Both buoyancy systems, plus the rebuilt swimming and underwater rendering
• The Niagara water data interface, wave presets and wave baking
• Synchronized updates — core fixes reach Lite and Pro together

Only three things stay exclusive to Pro:

Where Riverology fits

Riverology 3 is built on the same Pro core, but it is a separate product focused on inland water: rivers, streams and lakes, with no ocean. It also keeps features that will not ship in Pro — the waterfall system among them. Because all three share one codebase, Riverology 3 releases immediately after Pro rather than months later.

Riverology and Oceanology are designed to coexist in the same scene, so a project can run rivers flowing into an ocean using both together.

"A completely different product" — measured

We keep saying Pro is not an update to NextGen. Rather than ask you to take our word for it, we audited the three codebases:

One number goes the other way, deliberately: Pro ships 405 content assets (657 MB) against NextGen's 2,070 (12 GB). We removed the bundled demo environments — the product moved into the code and the shaders, not the sample maps. Demo content will be offered separately for anyone who wants it.

See what is coming for each product on the Roadmap, or the exact contents of each release in the Changelog.