After the Flight Sim Labs development team had been criticized several times in recent months for highly questionable copy protection practices, caused a PR scandal and became the victim of a hacker attack, copy protection is now completely abolished. With the next update for the A320-X, the software will only ask for a serial number for installation – no other types of license validation will be required. This was announced today by owner Lefteris Kalamaras in the FSLabs Forum.

Copy protection causes problems for customers

“We have decided to place our complete trust in you [the customers, editor’s note],” continues the development update. The product no longer requires regular validation and can be copied much more easily by software pirates, says Lefteris Kalamaras. However, eSellerate’s 32-bit copy protection, which Flight Sim Labs has adapted for its 64-bit products, has recently caused customers more and more problems. For this reason, more and more time had to be spent on eliminating installation problems from verified customers. “This is counterproductive for us because we don’t focus on the updates and new features we’ve been planning for a long time,” writes the FSLabs owner.

Beyond that one hears with this decision on the own customers, who the copy protection causes increasingly problems. Commercial software piracy is a great burden for a company like Flight Sim Labs. However, as long as there is no effective copy protection that works in a 64-bit environment and does not cause validation problems for verified customers, they want to go down the new path “so that we can fully concentrate on innovation and new simulation functions again”.

More news from Flight Sim Labs

Lefteris Kalamaras also gives an outlook on what will be released by FSLabs in the near future. The tool “FSLSpotlights” will be available as freeware in the future. This allows other development teams to use the dynamic lights in the cockpit of their aircraft. The release of the A319-X for Prepar3D v4 is also approaching. In the course of this, part of the design team is focusing on the A321-X. This was already more advanced than many had suspected. “We are pleased to introduce this aircraft with some new features,” writes Lefteris Kalamaras. Finally, the Concorde for Prepar3D v4 is also making good progress. The supersonic jet will also include an innovative 3D sound engine originally developed for the A320-X.

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