🚀 flyLAT The upcoming v08 release

Let's blow the lid off of the silence and finally bring you your next update! 

As always, I'm you're host Simmy.

Well then, it's been a hot minute and if you've read that title thinking that looks like a big update, you would indeed be right. I think we'll start there. If you're familiar with how I do releases, you'll know I usually do 1 big update followed but a series of smaller updates, like 0.7.1, 0.7.2 and so on. For all intensive purposes, this was the original plan. Let's get into it shall we?

Xp Talk

For many users flying on x-plane, they will have been hit around the chops with a 'un-tracked' flight. Typically this was caused by our data reader not understanding the state of on ground vs off ground. You would hope or even expect that to be something of a bullet proof system and yet the software we've used for xp11 and xp12, sometimes, doesn't understand it. An age old state of 'it worked for me' is usually what I end up finding too as it would genuinely work on my machine. That being after hours of testing too. Despite our best efforts over a series of updates, we couldn't seem to stabilise the old software so we had no choice but to move away from it. 

That's where XP Talk comes in. This is now our own software that requires a little bit of setup from you. We now use what's called a UDP client and for the sake of simplicity, it's a data transmission that never leaves your PC. It talks to itself like an internal mail by moving post from one slot to another. Using Xp Talk (our internal name for it), we now read data transmitted rather than relying on a 3rd party. So should any issues arise in the future, we have a lot more control. 

From our BETA teams, we've seen quite the stability in these improvements so alass, we're ready to release this new x-plane connection software our to you.

As shown in the image, upon starting ACARS without proper connection from X-Plane, these are the instruction you see to aid you in setup.

Bug fixes

Next on my list of things to cover is the bug fixing. Aside from the afore mentioned life changing bug fix, we've also included a number of bug fixes in this update, in the change logs we only usually note the most obvious ones as if I listed everything I did, it'd take me 2 days just to write the bloody thing. More notable bug fixes are: 

- Employee Ai Permissions not showing the ai menu

- Fleet management list view allowed employees to attempt to sell aircraft without permission given

- Maintenance C-Checks not resetting A-Checks

- Maintenance D-Checks not resetting C-Checks & A-Checks

- Trader app - Cancel contracts button not working (server bitching)

Obviously this isn't the full comprehensive list that's user friendly but you know, for the sake of the progress, these were some pretty annoying bugs.

Fleet Management Updates

oohhh boy, you folks loved it when I revealed this in discord but here we go again! So with fleet being such a big part of your airline history and life blood, the time finally came to implement a few features that I've been dodging. The need for retirements has come around as many of our older and established airlines from the early days, well their fleets are looking a little old, even with one airline I can think of I have to reset the lifespan of their aircraft purely because it kept breaking the system. So when in Rome, we fix these things and instead of just making do with what is essentially a delete button, I REALLY upset Luke and decided to go full tilt and give you 3 for the price of 1. 

Introducing the lifeline trio, retirements, overhauls and conversions. Retirements are exactly what they say on the tin. Retirements. This fundamentally means the aircraft will no longer exist in your fleet and will head to the boneyard. I say boneyard for a reason and that reason is in a update that will no doubt come after v1.0. For now  though, once you retire an aircraft using my nice big red button, it's gone. No take-sy-back-sies. You get nothing for it and you just simply don't have to deal with it anymore. You pay nothing, we pay nothing and that's the end of it. Bare in mind that aircraft average age and things like that will play a factor into your airline reputations and such in the future. 

If retirement isn't your thing and you're like me, a little more sentimental, then can I interest you in a second life program? For applicable aircraft, providing we have the data, you can convert your aircraft from PAX to Freighters and live another life. You get to see your aircraft go be free and kick ass once again. After a lengthy downtime and a sizeable donation of course. It wouldn't be a Simmy feature if there wasn't a flip side to it. You'll need to transfer your old dog to a listed facility where they will in fact teach it new tricks, if that new trick is being a freighter. Likewise, I couldn't forget the already made freighters and the non-convertable pax alike now could I so that's where the final in the trio comes in: overhaul. 

You might be thinking, but we have D-Checks? Yes, yes you do. In fact D-Checks now restore a little bit of health as well. Not enough to withstand the brutal weapon of time though. Not to mention how cost in-efficient that would be. By request over the years you all wanted a feature that would do nothing else but re-store health to your aircraft, similar to a conversion but without the conversion. Well, here we are. Overhauls work the exact same way as conversions. You transfer them to a listed facility and wait the D-Check time and pay the D-Check cost + overhaul fee and bob is in fact, your uncle. Oh and then you'll need to transfer it back home. Obviously.

In all cases, if your pilots should wish to fly your aircraft to the facilities, they can as ferry flights are allowed on mx conditions and overhaul conditions. 

Oh and last thing, I think a few have requested this overtime but since the boys over at Brussel airlines so kindly asked right as I was coding all of this, could we introduce aircraft names. So bonus last minute feature is of course, aircraft naming. A secondary name to your aircraft registration. Think Virgin, they have G-XXXX reg but then have aircraft names like 'Lady Miss Red with a Cherry on top'. You too can do that. Obviously I'm joking, it's an exaggerated example.

Summary

I don't think it needs stating but I will say it, this isn't everything, more of a 'hey look at the new shiny stuff'. This stuff also isn't exclusively what we've been working on either, as always we've got a lot happening behind the scenes, a lot that the BETA team are going to be involved with in the near future. I have also previously talked about the Factory 2 project where aircraft loans will be a thing. That was actually cut out of this release due to a few things needing improvements so that will follow up in another release this year. With us half way through November, we'll be bringing out a update just in time for December 1st (UK time) where all the old Christmas modes will be kicked into action. 

As for a release date, I don't have date, we're quite literally waiting on the tutorials being wrapped up and then it'll be all systems go for v0.8. 

So, until next time,
I've been your host Simmy