Over on their forums, Lefteris Kalamaris of FSLabs has given a big update regarding some transitions and ongoing project statuses. In the post, he talks about the future of purchasing and activating add-ons with the shutdown of eSellerate, the highly anticipated A321-X and the just as highly anticipated Concorde-X, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and more.
eSellerate
As announced a while back, Digital River is shutting down eSellerate. This would start with shutting down the option to sell products, and later on the activation/deactivation services as well. As FSLabs has always been relying on eSellerate to sell their product, that meant the team had to find something new. Luckily, they did, with FastSpring. FastSpring will take over what eSellerate used to do for FSLabs, and there will be a short transition process in between. Lefteris goes into depth about the transition process, and what it means for customers.
For Prepar3D v4 (64-bit) products (A319-X, A320-X, upcoming A321-X), the transition is fairly simple. Products will remain purchasable until the eSellerate sales service shutdown, on June 30th. Existing installers will remain working until this date, too. On or after June 30th, you can obtain new installers using a free license transfer process through the FSLabs website. This way you will also obtain new activation keys required by these new installers. It is expected that the upcoming A320-X update will be part of the transition.
That’s good news for all 64-bit products, but unfortunately there is some bad news for 32-bit products for Prepar3D v3 (Concorde-X, A320-X). These products will be removed from sale following the shutdown of eSellerate. That means that until June 30th you’ll be able to purchase these products, but not longer afterwards. Product activation for these products will work until September 30th through eSellerate. After that, FSLabs will provide updated installers that circumvent the eSellerate activation service. Not all news is bad, however, as support for these products will continue for at least a year until June 30th, 2020.
As for the other 32 bit platform, that being Flight Simulator X, the news is pretty much the same as for that of Prepar3D v3. After June 30th, no 32-bit products will be available for purchase anymore. New installers will be made available, and support will be given for at least a year. But FSLabs has decided that their 32-bit products, the A320-X and Concorde-X, have reached end-of-life status.
As for the 64-bit products, customers will receive an e-mail as the transition period is nearing with more details on how to transfer their licenses from eSellerate to FastSpring.
A321-X
Moving on, a brief statement on the progress of the A321-X. It’s been a while since we last saw this product in action, at Cosford’s Flight Sim Show just last year. Lefteris didn’t go too much into the status of this plane, but did say that it is ‘shaping up to be our finest product yet‘, with unique characteristics and high detail modelling and PBR textures for liveries. There should be some previews coming in the following months, along with some new surprises in the cockpit.
Concorde-X
It’s already been over a year ago when FSLabs asked the community about its interest for a Concorde-X 64-bit. The community responded and slowly but surely it seemed FSLabs was doing some work to bring over this beloved fan favourite to our new platform. However, it seems that FSLabs has now officially paused development on this product. As a reason, Lefteris states that the company needs to align its business model with significant development news that was received from Microsoft. They ‘prefer to evaluate further choices once there are more details on the new platform‘. It is a bit of a guess for us, for now, what this means exactly. Presumably, Lefteris is talking about Microsoft’s newly announced Flight Simulator 2020, but since no news has yet been released about third party support, we’re left guessing for now.
A3XX-X
Is in early stages of development. That’s all he had to say about that.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
Last but not least, Lefteris commented on Microsoft’s newly announced flight simulator. He says that the team is very excited to see how Microsoft will bring new technologies to bring the world of simulation to a new level of immersion. However, he cannot provide any details or answer any questions about MSFS 2020 at the time, given that they have seen the same things we all have and are just as excited as all of us.
With that, he wraps up the update. It seems the FSLabs team will be plenty busy in coming weeks with successfully bringing everyone over to the new sales-platform, which unfortunately meant the demise for fan favourite Concorde-X. After the transition, we can hopefully see some more previews and news regarding the A321-X and an A320-X update. You can read Lefteris’ full post over on the FSLabs forums.
