You can still use it to program real bricks, you just need to stop the Virtual Brick and connect a physical one. That means that you don’t need to tweak or hack your programming software in any way. You’ll even hear the standard “tudun” Windows sound you get when you plug in a physical device. When you start it up, it pretends to be a proper USB device, so as far as your programming software is concerned, there’s a real brick attached to the PC. It’s a piece of software that walks and talks like a real NXT/EV3 brick. The “Brick” part is because it now works with both LEGO bricks the NXT and EV3. They have re-engineered the Virtual NXT and added new functionality, new blocks, improved robot performance, as well as a new interface to make the Virtual Brick much easier to use with the EV3. Robomatter has released a new product called the Virtual Brick.