The flight plan we have filed for our future

It has been a substantial period since we last wrote to you to discuss our long-term software, systems, and website development plans. We apologise for this and hope this can help you see the progressive direction IVAO wishes to take for the remainder of 2024 and beyond.

Talented, dedicated, and passionate volunteers fuel our organisation. Our timelines are governed by the free time our developers have available to continue to advance our systems in line with the planned roadmap, and, as with any volunteer organisation, it is challenging to fixate a date for when we expect a release to happen. We can give you a roadmap of our steps and enable you to track where we are headed with regular development updates.

With the teams now settled into the agreed paths we are taking for the foreseeable future, we are pleased to be able to update you on the overall and specific direction we are taking. The network continues to be proud of our internal development. By having our teams in-house, we can tailor our software to IVAO and IVAO only.

Our primary focuses for 2024 so far were the transition of Altitude and Aurora out of BETA, the removal of support for legacy clients such as IvAc and IvAp, the further expansion of our voice servers, and the implementation of a new protocol that improves how our software communicates with our servers and mitigates any refresh rate, delivering near-zero latency and smooth moving traffic. Our web systems focus is the upcoming commencement of the training philosophy and the associated systems, along with minor updates to existing web platforms.

👇 You can read more about each specific topic below.

✈️ Altitude: Pilot Client

With the latest release of Version 1.13, we saw a complete and comprehensive re-work of the network's Pilot Client codebase, enabling us to make significant progress with the advancement of features. In the 2023 network survey, the most prominent feature request was the ability to implement push-to-talk through a joystick to the client. We are pleased to confirm that with Version 1.14, this feature will become part of that, enabling pilots to talk to controllers without needing a keyboard input or third-party software.

Our Board of Governors is communicating with Asobo Studios and Microsoft to ensure compatibility from day zero with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

📻 Aurora: ATC Client

Our focus continues to be on enhancing Aurora to be the best possible controlling client for all members, adding new features, mitigating bugs, and bringing equality to all operating systems to ensure Aurora has the same capabilities on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

With the recent appointment of two new developers to our software team, their focus will be to bring Aurora for Unix up to the same feature standard as Aurora for Windows, after which our developers will continue to bring forward the realism-enhancing features that our community is recommending and supporting. This will be decided using a new platform mentioned below.

🛠️ Developers Portal

As already announced, we are pleased to release our new Developer's Portal. This is a fantastic opportunity for third-party organisations to use our data services to improve and integrate IVAO into an exciting array of products, from aircraft to software.

Please read the full press release about our Developer's Portal 🔗here.

📋 Features/ Radar Website

The voice of our community is the most critical view of all. Our IVAO family uses our web systems and software daily. Because of this, we are launching two new systems, one to handle feature requests and the other to keep track of issues. These new platforms allow the community to pile in the support for changes and implementations they want to see the most, while keeping track of known issues within our software and web systems and increasing transparency with our member base.

The features website is an opportunity for members to freely suggest new features and ideas for IVAO web and software systems, gain support from fellow members for their ideas, and enable others to add their tweaks to the suggestion(s). Moving from the current moderated process on the IVAO forums to one completely visible to the public. It will also be used to communicate updates with those who suggest changes, keeping them in the loop with the progress of their addition to the community. The website will require members to have an active IVAO account to make and comment on suggestions.

The newly announced radar website will allow members to keep track of progress and receive updates firsthand from our software developers on the status of known bugs and issues.

These new websites will be overseen by the User Support team of the Development Operations Department. They will observe feature suggestions and requests that gain traction from the community's support and liaise with our developers to discuss how the suggestion could be implemented alongside logging bugs and issues on behalf of members after the initial support phase has identified them as such.

🛩️ ️Multiplayer Traffic Library

For many years now, the IVAO family has relied on our dedicated Multiplayer Traffic Library (MTL) team to deliver a huge package of aircraft and liveries that helps augment the experience pilots enjoy when they connect to the network. The team currently manages over 14,500 different liveries associated with nearly 1,300 models spanning all simulators over the last 20 years.

With the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator in 2020, we were able to further complement the experience with an increase in livery quality to 2k and the addition of tons of new features. Our team is always working hard to strengthen our mission statement of delivering an "as real as it gets" experience. In our last major update, we looked at aspects seen in the air, but our next focus is what happens to MTL on the ground.

We are excited to announce that our MTL team is working on the visible aspects of aircraft parked on a stand, including stairs, baggage carts, refuelling, and other vehicles associated with the turn-around of an airliner, visually intensifying realism on the ground.

Our community relies heavily on our internal designers and amazing external aircraft and livery developers, who kindly donate their work for use on our network. To ensure our new immersive ground traffic is protected for use on IVAO, and to protect the wishes of those external partners who give us their blessing for their works to be used on IVAO, we are working closely internally, and with external partners to ensure the encryption of our MTL library is used exclusively on IVAO.

🎓 Training System

The oldest existing web system on IVAO is our Training System, one that has originated and been adapted since the organisation's opening in 1998. In 2022, the network announced the biggest shake-up to the training philosophy of our organisation, bringing exciting changes to how we deliver and structure ratings on the network tomorrow and long into the future.

These invigorating changes bring the network's ratings more in line with the real-world structure and not only apply a focus to fixed-wing aviation but enable the ability for pilots who enjoy the whirring sounds of a helicopter rotor or the roar of the afterburner from a military fighter jet to be recognised for the disciplines they love.

Over the past few months, our web development team has been working tirelessly to make excellent ground on our new training system. One that delivers a seamless experience for members both new and old, on home computers or mobiles, the new platform enables an easy-to-use, visually appealing, and informative web system to encourage and promote the importance of training on our network.

🎙️ Voice Server/TeamSpeak2

For many network members, the implementation of Voice Unicom in November 2022 was a pleasant insight into what was to come. Next year, following the decommissioning of support for IvAc and IvAp planned for late 2024, we will see the departure of TeamSpeak2's usage on IVAO and the full integration of voice servers globally.

In June, we announced the release of two new servers, one in São Paulo and the other in Singapore. This was in response to feedback on a latency issue with our current voice system, which we are pleased to confirm has been resolved since these two new introductions. We can verify that these locations will also be served (alongside London) with the release of new voice servers.

The removal of TeamSpeak2 expands our opportunities to unimaginable levels. No longer will a controller be limited to a single channel but can broadcast on one or more frequencies, implement company frequencies for VAs at airports, and set aside dedicated frequencies for formation flying and air-to-air refuelling.

Voice servers will implement distance and terrain interference to offer one of the most realistic recreations of real-world radio effects.

🗺️ Webeye

Webeye is the most used tool in our community. It's the beating heart of IVAO and the first thing that most controllers and pilots will check daily. Our web developers continue to advance the popular platform by implementing new additions that will promote the activity of the network on a daily basis.

With the release of the new ATC scheduling system last year, members can now see upcoming ATC sessions, including planned exams and training, which are visible when clicking an airport dot on Webeye.

Alongside the implementation of ATC sessions, we also see the new addition of events on Webeye. In a separate section on the main left-hand pane, members can see upcoming events which the organisation and wider divisions have planned. Alongside this dedicated web page, a red dot on an airport highlights an upcoming event in the next 48 hours.

🌍 World Server

Since introducing the World Server in April 2022, it has been the network's saviour. Our network no longer requires multiple reboots daily with constant nursing that could not handle a large traffic scale. Last year, during the network's Silver Skies event celebrating the 25th anniversary of IVAO, we saw around four and a half thousand people connect to our network, with our infrastructure not missing a single beat.

The World Server has proven itself to be a platform we wish to continue developing, and alongside other changes to various software systems, we look to introduce significant changes in 2024.

The most significant issue with our World Server is our refresh rate. We acknowledge that bouncing and sporadically moving traffic can disturb the "as real as it gets" experience. With the removal of legacy clients from our network, we can finally implement a new protocol that handles the manner and speed at which traffic is observed. Our teams are working on a new project to eliminate traffic delays on MTL and enable a real-time refresh rate.

👣 So, what are the next steps?

Phase 1️⃣
Our User Support teams will shortly be contacting those final members who are utilising a form of legacy client (IvAc 1, IvAc2, IvAp, and X-IvAp). This is to advise them of the need to move to one of IVAO's latest software offerings, Altitude for Pilots and Aurora for Controllers. This form of contact will be through the email address registered on a member's profile.

Phase 2️⃣
A public announcement will be made about a transition period, a short period of around two weeks where members will be informed that legacy clients will reach the end of life and be switched off. Members who use legacy clients and have not ported to our new software will no longer be able to connect to the network.

Phase 3️⃣
A new network protocol will be released. This protocol is how our software speaks with our ever-reliable World Server and will only be compatible with Altitude and Aurora. Our new protocol has been designed to remove any form of latency that exists, mitigating the delay in flight and allowing the smoothest movement of aircraft in simulators, enabling a realistic environment, and allowing the enhancement of experiences in formation flying and air-to-air refuelling, including the jumping of MTL during the take-off and landing phases.

As our new network protocol is an in-house-developed product, we can also customise it to enable integration with external third-party organisations, opening IVAO up to current and potential new partners to seamlessly collaborate with our network.

Phase 4️⃣
The new voice servers will go live, and TeamSpeak2 will be switched off completely and ⚰️forever️. As mentioned before, this will increase the realism our members experience and open up a number of opportunities for our organisation. Controllers will be able to operate on multiple frequencies (in line with real-world procedures), dedicated frequencies for air-to-air refuelling, and formation flying alongside the capability to add company communication frequencies at hubs for our partnered virtual airlines.

✅ After this, we are all live, and the hard work of our developers will have been released. Naturally, we will continue to develop and enhance the experience for our cherished IVAO family and ensure we remain a reliant and realistic flight simulation organisation for all, now and long into the future.

🙏 Can I help as a member?

Absolutely you can! As a member there are currently two possible ways you can help the network:

💻 Software Testing Group
We are thrilled to announce the upcoming formation of a new ️software testing group. A team of members passionate for our organisation and willing to test early access versions of IVAO software both current and up and coming. Applications will open shortly and members should keep their eyes peeled on IVAO's social media for more information in the coming weeks.

👫 Join our team
We have a variety of exciting vacancies within the Development Operations Department and the wider-network. You can see all current vacancies advertised on the IVAO forum and view each vacancy for more information on how you can make a difference.