What VRGS Sends Online
VRGS is a desktop application and does its work on your own machine. Your project, meshes, point clouds and photographs stay on your disk unless you use a feature whose purpose is to send them somewhere. This page lists every feature that connects to the internet, so that you can plan a firewall allow-list, answer a security review, or run VRGS on an isolated network.
Most of these connections happen only when you use the feature. VRGS does not
check for updates and has no usage telemetry. The only automatic connections are
licence activation, crash reporting and coordinate-grid downloads, and the
NOCLOUD restriction turns off the last two.
Connections at a glance
| Feature | When it connects | What it sends | Where to | Turned off by NOCLOUD? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licence activation (node-locked and cloud-floating) | At start-up, and on activate/deactivate | The licence key and a machine fingerprint | LicenseSpring (licensespring.com) | No. Use offline activation or an on-premises server. |
| On-premises licence server | At start-up and close | A licence checkout request | Your own RLM server, on your network | No (it never leaves your network) |
| Crash reporting | Only when VRGS crashes | A crash report: stack trace, VRGS version, Windows version | Sentry (sentry.io) | Yes |
| Coordinate grids (PROJ) | When a transformation needs a datum grid you do not have | The name of the grid file | cdn.proj.org | Yes — see Coordinate Systems |
| Athos, hosted models | When you send a question | Your question, the conversation, relevant project context and, if you ask about the view, a screenshot | VRGeoscience's Athos server, then the model provider (OpenAI or Anthropic) | No. Use a local Ollama model to keep prompts on your network. |
| Athos, your own API key | When you send a question | As above | api.openai.com or api.anthropic.com directly | No |
| Athos, Ollama | When you send a question | As above | Your own Ollama server (by default localhost:11434) | No (local) |
| GeoTour sign-in | When you sign in. Athos needs it with every provider, Ollama included | Your GeoTour credentials, through the sign-in page | VRGeoscience's sign-in service (Auth0) | No |
| AI model downloads | The first time you use a tool that needs an ONNX model (fracture detection, segmentation) | The name of the model | VRGeoscience's model server | No. Copy the models in by hand — see AI & Machine Learning Requirements. |
| Map tiles and terrain | When you show a basemap, satellite imagery or online elevation | The map area being viewed | Tile and elevation providers (OpenStreetMap, Google, Cesium, national elevation services, OpenTopography, NASA) | No |
| Multiuser and virtual field trips | When you host or join a session | Camera positions, pointers and shared annotations | tour1.vrgeoscience.com | No |
| Interpretation version control | When you sync a version-controlled project | Variants, scenarios and their geometry | Your configured sync server (the Athos server) — see Interpretation Version Control | No |
| Outcrop.io | When you browse, upload or sign in | The model package you upload | The Outcrop.io service | No |
| GitHub field-guide sharing | When you sign in, get or share changes | Field-guide pages and images | github.com, api.github.com — see Field Guide Sharing | No |
| Sketchfab | When you sign in, upload or browse | The model or scene you upload | api.sketchfab.com | No |
| StraboSpot | When you import from or export to StraboSpot | The spots and data you exchange | strabospot.org | No |
| Web panel | When the web panel is shown | An ordinary page request | vrgeoscience.com | No |
Hosts for VRGeoscience's own services (the Athos server, model downloads and field-trip fallback) can change between releases; contact us for the current list if your firewall needs exact host names.
The NOCLOUD restriction
NOCLOUD is a licence code, not a command-line switch, environment variable
or setting. It is written into your licence when it is issued (for an
on-premises server, in the options field of the licence file — see
On Premises Server Setup), and
License Status shows it.
When NOCLOUD is present, VRGS turns off:
- Crash reporting. No crash report is ever sent.
- Network coordinate grids. PROJ uses only the grids installed on the machine, and VRGS does not fetch the British national grid file it otherwise downloads in advance.
Everything else in the table above still works if the machine can reach it.
NOCLOUD does not block Athos, map tiles, field trips, Outcrop.io, GitHub or
the other features you start yourself. On a site that must not use them, block
them at the firewall, and do not issue those modules (CHAT, RC, INTEG) on
the licence.
If an on-premises licence server cannot be reached, or has no free seats, VRGS
behaves as if NOCLOUD were set until it is restarted: it cannot read the licence
to find out what it allows, so it keeps the two automatic connections off.
Running on an isolated network
A machine with no internet access can run VRGS fully with:
- Licensing from an on-premises RLM server, or a node-locked licence activated offline.
- Coordinate grids installed locally — see Coordinate Systems.
- AI models copied into place — see AI & Machine Learning Requirements.
- Athos not used. An Ollama server keeps your prompts on your own network, but Athos still asks for a GeoTour sign-in before it opens, so it needs that one connection.
Basemaps, online elevation, field trips, Outcrop.io, GitHub sharing and version control sync need their servers and are unavailable offline. The rest of VRGS is unaffected.