Good morning, good afternoon and good evening
I hope you're all doing just fine on this fine Wednesday (Thursday for those down under).
Well it's finally time to fire up the ol' progress updates and by that I'll start by saying thank you so much to all who joined us for the v0.5 preview stream. The interaction and questions you all submitted was quite rewarding for myself and Luke, especially now we fear we've kept you all waiting a bit longer than anticipated for your beloved cargo update.
Let's put cargo and v0.5 aside for a minute, it's all we've been able to lightly talk about since January.
Despite the silence from us, we are watching discord, answering tickets and reading what you all had to say. We also included a feedback form sometime ago which we're currently reviewing but I'm going to step back in time and say I did a silent feedback exercise with you all sometime ago. Combining that with things that I've seen in our Discord, I want to say that I actually have a good idea of what you guys want the most and here's the results:
- Ability to Promote other users to manage the airline on your behalf
- Ability to Manage your Airline while still in flight
- Landing Rate Detection Stability
- Financial Information
- Better Owner Management Controls
1. Managers
Managers is absolutely the top most requested feature, whether that be direct request, question of ability or indirectly mentioning in conversations. I've seen this time and time again and you'd be right in thinking that we had this planned from the early days. Now I won't delve into how it will work as that system hasn't event left the starting blocks but here's your official notice to say that it's on the way. We could have given you a simple system that just said "you're a manager now, good luck". Instead, I've droned on at Luke and we've now made a good breakthrough with a draft system that should allow a significant amount of control for Owners on how much control they give other users. This obviously means it's not as quick to complete but rest assured that it'll be more in depth and have far better quality right out of the gate.
2. Management During Flight
As seen on stream, we have a rather simple mobile app on the way. Along with the desktop compatibility, the app will allow basic management. While this feature is primarily focused on giving all users access while on the move, it does double up as a feature for in flight management in the interim.
While not an official announcement, we are letting you know that we're considering pulling back our previous stance on management during flight from within flylat itself. I haven't much to say on this but just know that it's under review and we're seriously weighing up options.
3. Landing Rate
The literal bane of my existence. Put short, our current method of using Asobo's landing rate detection is going. This is changing as of v0.5 and we're moving to our own calculation that should bring us in line with other known apps that I won't mention but the point stands. This is by no means a dig at the efforts from Asobo however the variable we currently use seems to be quite the black box and susceptible to change without prior warning. The sheer amount of tickets I've responded too over the landing rate system possibly makes up half of all tickets in our helpdesk.
Needless to say I've had enough.
4. Financial Information
Ah yes, the thing that makes the world go around. Money.
It's also the thing that keep Eugenie Banks happy (he's the head of flylatBANK within the flylat world, quite the character if you've messed with him on discord, though worth noting, he likes to fine companies if he's disturbed).
In all seriousness, it's not secret that temporary financial data we give you lacklustre and it was an intentional act for the most part while we let the system record what is now near a million transactions of monetary movements through all companies. From v0.6 and as seen on the stream, you will have a dedicated banking app built into flylat for nothing more than it's sheer awesomeness. Oh, and to actually do banking stuff but mainly because it is so cool. Over the coming updates, we will start to implement your loans, leasing, financial information, your rep based "credit score" and a whole bunch more transactional based information that will allow reporting. Yes I said reporting.
I've got a few tricks up my sleeve that even Luke doesn't know about. I've been having fun with it all so over time we will implement some heavy features. We will just need your patience on this one as like most new things, we will have to do it in stages to ensure reliability.
5. Better Management Controls
I figured I'd lump sum this category together as all of our Owner's (CEO's) have had a difference of opinion about what they find useful. So as a general rule of thumb, I've decided to put this together and primarily targeting the newer companies that haven't been around as long as some of our others.
Management searching, sorting and filtering
In the simplest form, this is an ongoing test to see what is more useful. We haven't had sorting to this date however I will be looking at it in the near future (post v0.6). It does seem like such a basic function but you need to understand that all controls in flylat are custom made now. We don't use "out of the box" functionality from the frameworks we use. Once I have more time to focus on small details like this, I will as it's quite the thing if it fails and I'd rather not introduce that and annoy the living hell out of our owners.
Searching and filtering
A function set that has been in the app for a while now but one that seems to keep moving. Guilty as charged. This will likely remain the case until I'm happy with the footprint of the searching panel, not using too much space on screens while also ensuring the ease of use.
Aircraft Management
Oh this is a juicy one.
We've had all kinds of requests on this front and we've not forgotten about it. We've not implemented anything to do with better aircraft management (like locking aircraft down, preventing certain users from flying, attaching to ranks, etc.) due to the fact that we're waiting to implement the next round of passenger based features after cargo. In the name of not putting something in that we know will be removed, we opted to wait.
The kind of features you're going to get will allow owners & managers alike a wider option on organizing the fleet. I won't say too much on this though as we're not quite ready to push the details out. It will be worth it in the long run so we can only thank you for your continued support and understand on this.
Route Management
Last but certainly not least, routes.
I believe I've covered this before but I'll touch upon it again. You've all been slowly asking for better route management, extended features and just something a little more. What we're finding is that some users are confusing route management for scheduling. This is something we're overly keen to change.
Route management is by no means a depiction of how you're operating your airline. All routes must have a round trip for the sake of not having to create 2 routes for the same. Create one 2 way trip and that's that. This doesn't mean that you HAVE to fly the return from there straight back. It's also a common mistake that users think they need a HUB at each airport they want a route to be created out of. This isn't the case either. You can create routes from an airport without a hub just fine, it's just parking the aircraft and operational fee (once implemented) are likely to be higher, among other things.
What if I don't ever want to do B to A on this route? Great, don't schedule it. As easy as that! I appreciate that there is no way of knowing otherwise for newer users though it does need to be said as it is often confused and I'd hate to think that users feel "limited" in the way they operate their company.
Moving on slightly, with the new company standards or IATA, ICAO and callsigns being implemented, we're going to update the routes so that you can re-number them, both outbound and inbound along with assigning their callsigns for ATC. Something that we will put on the new briefing window. From there there's a few other features we can implement but I'll discuss them another day but for those that are eagerly awaiting stopovers. I have an update on that soon.
Summary
Well that felt amazing, I don't know about you but this has just prevented me going from therapy now I can finally let it all out.
Chances are you actually need it now after such a read.
In either case, I hope this mass development blog gave you a further insight into what you've all been asking for and I hope some of you feel heard. A part of my job here at Heron Digital is the community out reach, and I do take more pride in making sure everyone has a say in this, being as we take a partly community driven development approach.
Well I suppose I should get back to the v0.5 updates now, so until the next therapy session,
Simmy
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