🚀 flyLAT BFU Phase 1 Update

Good evening all, 

It's a true manic Monday here at idiot HQ with Luke in FULL rampage mode getting flyLAT|mobile as far along as possible and myself, finally back in the swings of things after yet another break. Hey look on the brightside, this break wasn't me going mach. 7 into the pavement this time. It was just a loss of livelihood. I would call that progress. 

ahh, you've got to laugh right? 

Anyway, moving on. The BFU. Big f****** updates are back on after our quality of life updates in more recent times. Nope this isn't me being like "oh look what we think we want to do". Nope, I'm fully here to tell you "here's what we've just released to the BETA team". You are right, you did read that right. It's out in the wild with the BETA team to break. I suppose that begs the question. What exactly is in this so called update? 

Shall we go through it? 

Image 1: Banking


Before you grab your pitchforks, let's just focus on the fact that we have transaction types that support maintenance which in the long run (once I get around to it), we can do reports for aircraft costs and overall spending on aircraft as a whole. Also let's just cover that the D-check you're staring at is in fact a D-Check, the most intense form of maintenance on an aircraft. This one in particular is the 380. We're talking 280 days of flying time before this needs to happen, or 6,500 flight hours. For context, the likely hood is that the 380 can earn around 360 million in that time. I'm likely grossly under estimating that too. Oh right, yeah there's going to be that one ceo who wants flight counts. Well the average flight time for a 380 is 11 hours which puts you in the ball park of 600 flights before a d-check. Not exactly unfair. Anyway shall we move on?


Image 2: Fleet Management


Okay so what are we looking at here? A few things actually so let's break that down. First of all. The health bar has disappeared. It will likely return in some form but that bar no longer means how long until your aircraft needs "repairing". That's what our new Mx system is. Shown in blue, you can see the next check in x hours. Now if saw what I said earlier, let me extend. Mx is made up of 4 checks. A through D Checks. A being the smallest and most frequent while D is largest and happens very few times in an aircrafts life. Don't want to manage which check is needed and when? No problem, I got you. Just simply look at the "next check" and in the next screenshot you will click one button and it'll do everything for you. Though I won't get into the thick of it, I'll do a "how to" progress update closer to release solely for the new MX system. What else are we looking at in this image? Ah yes, "no mx data available". So with this, as soon as you use the aircraft, it'll automatically register it and that message will go away. I'd kill the database if I try to update everyone's aircraft all at once, it has some serious calculations behind the scenes so yeah, Luke will kill me. Anyway, you'll be fine. Like I say, use the aircraft and that will go away. 


Image 3: Cabins Soft Launch


Here's a screenshot you've all seen before. Regardless, here it is again and yes you saw the caption right. With 0.7 coming up, it's required for me to introduce a part of the cabins module. That's actually because behind the scenes cabins works. In fact on another progress update, I'll go back over some images I've shown before showing that I've been flying aircraft with a configuration. Why not in v0.7? Well, there's many reasons but let's just chalk it down to that really will need an update solely dedicated to that. Much to do. 

What is this F,J,S,Y business? They're the codes used in the class configurations. For those who wish to speak in code terms, well we have the codes while those that don't and want to call them by their title, you have the labels for them too. I suppose there's not a lot more to say on this subject. It can wait for a future update. 


Image 4: Pre-Flight & Fuel


I apologise for cutting this short, while writing this I've spotted a few things I don't want to show 'just' yet so you're missing a couple more things but I'll leave them for a surprise. Last but certainly not least. it's here, fuel. It's finally here. I know. I didn't think we'd ever see the day. Now again, before the pitchforks come out, let me explain. Fuel in flyLAT is simulated worldwide. You might recall an update Luke brought into the portal sometime ago, showing fuel prices are airports. Well alass it's here. We're finally tapping into the market, along with a base line fuel burn dataset we have on 95% of the aircraft we have weighing in at "mostly accurate" data. Don't worry, we'll update it if you provide us with source material. Okay so what are we looking at then? 

So why so many defaulted? Well, fuel burn minimum isn't realistic. Around the world there are different regulations on flight lengths, ETOPS ratings and much more which frankly is a pain in the backside and highly complicated to implement. So instead we create our own. So the Latlyf Aviation Authority (flylat backwards) dictates that all flights must contain this fuel. Until a date where by the companies can control it themselves. 

Let's see how long that lasts. 

The big question then, will it actually charge me? Yes. As of v0.7 we are implementing fuel charges and the fuel price will change often, country to country. Makes for an exciting change if you ask me but hey I'm weird. The next big question, will it charge Ai? If I can get Luke to update ai before he officially becomes Papa Luke, then yes. If he genuinely doesn't get chance to add it, then I won't stop the update just for that. 


Closing thoughts

Well speaking of Papa Luke, I've known our infamous creator for over 3 years now, working with him for just under that time and it's so weird to think that this very progress update will in fact be the last update I write before his little one arrives. If you happen to be in Discord, keep an eye out for announcement as I will get #PapaLuke trending once the time comes. Shhh don't tell him though, it'll be fun for him to see once he finally gets chance to look over at discord. 

Luke aside, there's plenty I haven't said and there's plenty of things in the works, including permission support. What you need to understand about permissions is we have to update all the api's to achieve that. So we're working on it. There's some other features that we've not talked about for a while now officially in development too so I'll see you for Autumn this year for progress updates on that. 

The BETA team will have this v0.7 update for a while, this is to test the balance of income and profits, make sure they don't need adjusting before we release to you lovely lot. 

So until the next update, 
Simmy