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Update on The End of Life for Flash-based Simulations

Last year we shared with our customers a roadmap for the end of life of our Flash-based simulations, specifically those developed with our older platform Forio Simulate.

We are discontinuing support for these simulations due to the fact that all mainstream browsers are phasing out support for Flash. For example, in July 2019 Flash will be disabled by default in Chrome, and in mid-2020 Flash support in browsers will be removed entirely.

It’s time to give some specific dates about Forio’s plans for End of Life.

Forio will discontinue operation of all Forio Simulate simulations which use Flash on June 1, 2019.

What does this mean? Specifically, starting June 1:

  • Users who go to existing simulations will be directed to a page telling them the simulation is not available
  • Authors will not be able to access or edit their simulations
  • Simulation users and data will be removed

In addition (starting immediately) simulation authors will not be able to create new author accounts or new simulations on the Forio Simulate platform.

All of the above applies only to the simulations developed with Forio’s “Interface Designer” on Forio Simulation, which uses Flash. Simulations developed with HTML will continue to operate as always.

If you have developed a simulation with Forio Simulate, what are your options?

First, we encourage you to look at our newest platform, Forio Epicenter. You can create an account and get started here. Note that while you can reuse your model from Simulate you will need to develop a new interface.

Forio Epicenter has some great features. With Epicenter you can:

  • Use a variety of modeling languages, including Simulate-supported languages like SimLang and Vensim, but also Excel, Python, R and Julia.
  • Develop interfaces in HTML5 with responsive web designs that look great on a laptop or on mobile devices.
  • Use the template-based interface builder to quickly create turn-by-turn or run-comparison style simulations.
  • Customize the look and feel in the simulation by editing HTML directly using tools such as Flow.js.

On a more practical note, please be sure to download any data, screenshots, or other information you need from the simulations that will be discontinued before June 1. While we will keep backups for a limited time, simulations will not be recoverable (and as noted above, not even runnable once Flash is removed from the browsers).

If you’d like to learn more about the issues discussed above, we have some resources to help you.

On behalf of all of us at Forio, we thank all of our Forio Simulate authors and end users for their enthusiasm using this platform over the last 11 years. We look forward to working with you via Forio Epicenter.