Pro, Lite and Riverology 3 — how they fit together

Three pieces of one puzzle

Each product is a piece. Oceanology Lite is the ocean piece: Gerstner waves, the lake system and simple shoreline waves. Riverology 3 is the river piece: rivers with flow, the lake system and the shallow-water simulation, which is also what produces waterfalls, with its hydraulics kit of springs, drains, currents and whirlpools. Oceanology Pro is the whole picture: everything in both, plus Spectral Gerstner waves, FFT waves and breaking waves. All three share the systems around the water: interactive water, buoyancy and swimming, underwater rendering and caustics, the Niagara water data interface and audio.

Nothing is exclusive to Lite or to Riverology 3: every feature in either one is also in Pro. On top of both, Pro adds Spectral Gerstner waves, FFT waves and breaking waves.

How the pieces fit

• Lite and Riverology 3 fit together.Lite brings the ocean; Riverology 3 brings the rivers and the shallow-water simulation. Put both in one scene and you have ocean, rivers and shallow water together.
• Pro is the complete picture.Pro contains every piece of Lite and Riverology 3, plus Spectral Gerstner, FFT and breaking waves. With Pro installed, you need neither Lite nor Riverology 3.
• One source keeps all three in sync.Lite and Riverology 3 are built directly from Oceanology Pro, so every Pro update reaches them. Nothing exists only in Lite or only in Riverology 3.

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 Gerstner ocean, with wave presets and wave baking
• The full lake system
• Simple shoreline waves
• Infinite interactive water — ripples, wakes and splashes
• Both buoyancy systems, plus the rebuilt swimming and underwater rendering
• The Niagara water data interface
• Synchronized updates — every Pro update reaches Lite

Lite leaves out rivers, the shallow-water simulation and its hydraulics kit, which come with Riverology 3, and Spectral Gerstner waves, FFT waves and breaking waves, which are in Pro.

Where Riverology 3 fits

Riverology 3 is a new product built directly from Oceanology Pro, the same way Lite is. It is the river piece: rivers with flow, the lake system, the shallow-water simulation and its hydraulics kit, with no ocean. It also carries the systems all three products share: interactive water, buoyancy and swimming, underwater rendering and caustics, the Niagara water data interface and audio. There is no separate waterfall generator: waterfalls come from the shallow-water simulation, so Pro has them too. Because Riverology 3 is built from Pro, every Pro update reaches it, and it releases immediately after Pro rather than months later. If you own Riverology 2, you receive Riverology 3 as a free update, with no re-purchase, the same way Legacy owners receive Lite and NextGen owners receive Pro.

"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.