Aircraft Overview, Feedback, and Pre-Alpha 0.4.0 Plus a call for XPlane plugin developers! This edition of the FSCharter newsletter gives you a sneak peek at the functionality that I've been implementing and testing throughout March. My time has been split evenly between developing a tool for me to use internally to be able to generate realistic flights for testing and working on designing and implementing the aircraft/flight overview screens (more on that next). Response to the pre-alpha has been overall positive with many of you providing valuable feedback that I've worked into the roadmap, so thanks to those of you who have contributed! Aircraft Overview Screens One of the biggest differences between the previous beta (0.3.0) and the upcoming beta (0.4.0) is the addition of the My Aircraft page. This page shows all of the aircraft accessible to you (in either list or map form), in addition to key stats about each one. The list is fully searchable and filterable and allows you to navigate to a screen to show more information about a specific aircraft. I'm still working out the best way to show if an aircraft is owned, financed or whether you've just been granted access to it, but will most likely be a colour-coded tag of some kind like in the Aircraft Overview page. Thoughts, suggestions and feedback on this or any other feature are always are welcome! Contact me via Reddit or Twitter. Clicking on the More Details button on the search results takes you to a page that gives you a more detailed overview of the aircraft. If the aircraft is on a flight (like in the first image above) then a map showing the current location, altitude, heading and speed is shown first. Below this, or if the aircraft is not on a flight, the logbook is displayed alongside information like fuel, home airport and total miles travelled. Once implemented, this is where you'll be able to manage the permissions of the aircraft to be able to share access to it with other players. Alpha Feedback and Suggestions I'd like to say a quick thanks to all who have reported feedback or suggestions on the current beta release. I've read each and every one of them and added the appropriate ones to the backlog. If you have any suggestions, improvements or feedback, get in contact via Reddit or Twitter! Thanks for helping make FSCharter awesome! Pre-Alpha 0.4.0 For those of you with access, the next release to the pre-alpha branch will hopefully drop at some point in April. In addition to the changes documented in this newsletter, the following features will be implemented in 0.4.0: All-new, filterable showroom list

Granting aircraft access to other players

Global aircraft search

Aircraft financing

Bug fixes Until then, sit tight! Join the community on r/fscharter As FSCharter is a one-man-band, developing the platform is my number one priority. I've set up a subreddit that will give users a place to communicate and help each other out, rather than relying solely on support from me. I will monitor the subreddit, but I will also be on the lookout for moderators in the coming months, so hit me up if you're interested in joining the team! I'm on Twitter! Give me a follow to stay in the loop between newsletters! It's where I'll post updates, polls and screenshots of new features and it's the best way to get hold of me if you have any questions! <Bits For Nerds/> This is the section of the newsletter where I go into the nuts and bolts of developing FSCharter. Here I’ll cover everything from automated pipeline deployments, software testing, server infrastructure, and other behind the scenes activities required to develop, deploy and maintain a modern SaaS application. Flight Generator A large proportion of my time developing the platform this month was dedicated to designing a tool that I can use to quickly populate the database with realistic flights. It's invoked by a simple call to the Laravel Artisan command line, supplying the registration number of the aircraft and the user ID of the pilot. If no destination airport is defined, the aircraft flies from its current airport to an airport within its current range, taking into account climb/descent profiles, speed, aircraft ceiling (and even the curvature of the earth!). Although at first, it seemed almost counter-intuitive to spend so long developing a tool that won't be used in the final product, it'll hopefully save me some time in the long run when it comes to testing! Bonus image of a flight plotted in an A350-900 with this below! Calling All C++ Developers FSCharter is a huge undertaking, especially for one developer. Not only is the web platform required to be developed from the ground up, but I need to write multiple plugins for each of the supported simulators. I plan on supporting XPlane at launch and rolling out to FSX and P3D at a later date. If there are any C++ developers out there looking to pitch in on the plugin side of things to move things along, please get in touch with me via Twitter! That's it for this edition!



Until next time,



Alex.



Donations If you'd like to support the development efforts of FSCharter, feel free to buy me a beer to keep me sane!



Donate Here