A lighter Leica TruView alternative

Leica TruView sits inside the Cyclone family, and for shops that live in that ecosystem it is a proven way to publish terrestrial scan data. It is also a bigger commitment than many firms need just to hand a deliverable to a client. Licensing typically runs through sales or a dealer, publishing runs through Cyclone products, and the workflow is built around Leica formats and Leica hardware first.

We built ViewerFX, so treat this comparison as our point of view. TruView is capable software from a company that knows scanning better than almost anyone. The question is not whether it works. It is whether your sharing problem is the size of an enterprise platform or the size of a link.

What TruView does

TruView renders published scan data, panoramic scan positions and measurements, and it integrates tightly with Cyclone ENTERPRISE and the wider Leica pipeline. If your firm runs Leica scanners, registers in Cyclone and needs multi-user project workflows with positions, markups and enterprise administration, it is a natural fit, and the deep panorama-based navigation from scan positions is genuinely good for indoor and plant work.

The tradeoffs are the flip side of the integration. Expect per-seat or server-style licensing arranged through a dealer rather than a credit card checkout, publishing steps that assume the Leica pipeline, and formats that favor the ecosystem. Verify current products and licensing with Leica, the lineup changes and we are not going to guess at their pricing here.

What ViewerFX does differently

ViewerFX skips the ecosystem entirely. It takes the two formats nearly every scanner and every processing package can export, LAS and LAZ, and turns them into a streaming browser link. There is nothing to install on either end, no server to stand up, no seats to count and no sales call.

• Free tier: 2GB and two stored files with every feature, so you can put a real deliverable in a client's hands today. Free shares carry a small ViewerFX badge.
• Paid from $29 a month, self-serve through Stripe, sized by storage only. Every plan has measurement, annotations, password links and unlimited free viewers.
• Scanner agnostic: Leica, FARO, Trimble, Riegl, drone photogrammetry exports, anything that writes LAS or LAZ.

Side by side

Who each one is for

Stay in the Leica lane if your firm already runs Cyclone ENTERPRISE, needs scan-position navigation, markup workflows across a team, and IT-managed projects. At that scale the platform earns its complexity, and switching a working pipeline to save on sharing would be a bad trade.

Pick ViewerFX if the actual problem is smaller: a client, an engineer or an attorney needs to see the cloud, measure a couple of things and move on. That is most deliverables for most small and mid-size firms. You export LAZ like you already do, upload, and send a link that opens instantly and keeps opening years later.

How to decide

Take one finished job, export a LAZ, and open it in the free browser viewer with no account. If the experience is what your client needs, a free account gets you a real share link today, and paid plans start at $29 when you need the room. If your client needs scan-position panoramas and your shop is Leica end to end, TruView is the honest answer.