Microsoft is making headway with the deprecation process of older versions of Virtual Earth. According to Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth technical evangelist, come September 22, 2008, versions 3 and 4 of the platform will be permanently retired. At the same time, the Redmond giant is gearing up to serve automatic updates to Virtual Earth 6.1 to all VE v.5 customers also on September 22. While initially the auto-upgrade also involved version 6.0, Microsoft's plans have changed.

 

"We’d like to let you know that the planned automatic upgrade of version 6.0 to version 6.1 that was scheduled for August 28th, 2008 has been postponed to a later date. The revised date for the automatic upgrade of version 6.0 to version 6.1 is still being determined and we will let you know the revised date as soon as possible," Pendleton stated.

 

The software giant has warned that neither Virtual Earth 3 nor Virtual Earth 4 will continue to function past the September 22 end-of-life date. Microsoft is committed to completely pulling the plug on the two versions of VE and advised all customers to make the jump to version 6.1 in order to ensure the service's availability.

 

Pendleton revealed that, on September 22, "version 5 will be automatically upgraded to Virtual Earth version 6.1. Since Virtual Earth version 6.1 is backward compatible with version 5, no action should be required by you. However, we strongly encourage you to test your version 5 applications against version 6.1 prior to September 22, 2008 to ensure there are no unforeseen issues with your applications when version 5 is automatically upgraded to version 6.1."

 

Auto-upgrades from 6.0 to Virtual Earth 6.1 scheduled for August 28 have been postponed to a date yet to be announced. Version 6.1 is also backward compatible with VE 6.0, but customers are still advised to test their content with the new version.