Hello everyone, apologies for the delayed Q1 Update. But there were a number of things that had to be dealt with in this rather bizarre turn of a year. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.
COVID-19
We are pleased to say that we are not currently affected by COVID-19, although we have had some minor disruptions for some team members at the beginning. Nevertheless, we all hope you are keeping yourselves safe and treating respective lock-downs with the utmost importance.
X-Plane 11.50
As I’m sure most of you have already sunk your teeth into, the 11.50 beta was released to the public.
The good news, we’ve already overhauled the 732 and 727 to SASL 3 in anticipation for Vulkan compatibility. The first reports we’ve had from members seem to suggest that this has paid off, with a mostly trouble free experience.
The slightly bad news is, 3D drawing related plugins will not work in Vulkan. Items like librain will cease to work in Vulkan, and you will need to run X-Plane in OpenGL mode to utilize this feature. It is our hope that we can revisit this issue post-beta.
We will continue to monitor the functionality of both aircraft in the upcoming weeks.
Shared Flight
“Is Shared Flight dead?” No it is not, but we don’t blame you for asking. So what has happened to it? A few things…
We’re continuously refining features for Shared Flight which has delayed the start of our private beta, such as a polished central server, refining the ui etc. Luckily we’ve completed most of these tasks, and anticipate a shorter private beta run.
We’re pleased to announce that Shared Flight has moved into internal alpha testing, and we are starting to receive feedback from our testers (which are very encouraging). It’s our hope that we will quickly move onto more large-scale beta testing soon. If you signed up to the notification form on our website, we have not forgotten about you!
Q4XP
Systems are well underway on the Q4XP, although ironically, there’s not too much we can actually reveal right now. One of the most common questions we get, involves the depth of the simulation. That is a difficult question to answer, and the age old saying of “Show, don’t tell” comes to mind. So there will be a time and place for when we talk about those sweet systems. We’re onboard to make this aircraft the most in-depth simulation we’ve ever made.
In the meantime, we do enjoy the previews of the cockpit provided. We have a group of Q400 informants involving pilots and professionals who are a constant source of information of all the little quirks of the aircraft displays. From rolling tickers for altitude and speed, colors, screen refresh rate, fonts and more.
We’re also taking the time to listen to your user feedback. All displays are available as pop-outs (useful for off screen information or cockpit builders). The EFB will be designed as a replacement for menus in our previous aircraft, and will be made accessible enough for use in VR, with an intuitive and manipulative design. In addition, for the purists, the EFB is hide-able.
In case you want some stay-at-home content, you can catch a sneak glimpse of development work on our discord (https://discord.gg/Ds7hBP2) or via twitch (twitch.tv/flyingjackal).
Will FlyJSim do... (Insert X product or XX sim)?
Our plans have not changed. Our only active developments are the Q4XP and Shared Flight for X-Plane.
Thank you very much for reading this update. Please do keep yourselves safe, and we can all get through this difficult time together.