Communication between Unity and other software on the same machine

The company I work for manufactures large construction machinery, I work in the department that develops the controls. I need to create a fairy simple visualizer and I'm wondering if Unity 3D would be a good way to do this. I'm asking in networking because I already know the graphics, physics and animation are up to the task, I just want to find out about ways that Unity can use data from other software on the same machine. In this example the real control software (LabView, C++, ect) would generate commands to the motors or hydraulics, and unity would make an model of the machine mimic the movements commanded. Engineering simulation level dynamics are not required, just acceleration and collision, but I'm not sure how the programs would communicate.

If anyone can tell me about a good way to do this, even just to suggest the topic I need to read about, it would be appreciated,

Thanks

 

After a little more searching I realized this may be a redundant question, I'm currently reading about sockets here:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/10649/An-Introduction-to-Socket-Programming-in-NET-using

But it looks like using a remote server or some of the community built tools are also an option.

 

Have you been successful in integrating LabView with Unity? I am looking for options to assist in doing this as well as integrating with MatLab. I would really like to find a nice solution to do this.