It’s only been a week since I released LRM Client 4.2.1 for beta testing but I have some new and exciting news to announce…
Firstly, the FsHub team has gained it’s first team member – following an earlier blog post, Cody (Clorix) of whom previously headed up the support team for a similar service that closed a couple of years ago (some of you may remember “SimBuddy”?) answered the call for “Volunteer Support Staff” and has, this week officially started his role with FsHub.
Cody is now responsible for managing user support and the new support/community channels (the forums, Discord etc) in addition to helping manage platform data changes.
Cody has been a user of FsHub since SimBuddy closed and has racked up a ton of flights and is very well versed in the features and how FsHub works and is keen to help new and existing users, he has also contributed a ton of amazing screenshots too on his user profile too 🙂
So over the last few days, I have, between working on other features and my other work commitments, have been working with Cody to provide him access to the various administration systems and third-party services that we use at FsHub.
Cody will most likely be the first port of call for new airport requests, airport chart approvals and general help and support queries but will escalate any advanced support requests or issues to myself.
With Cody joining the team as the Head of Support this will free me up to concentrate more on the development and further improvements of FsHub and the LRM client.
I hope you can join me in officially offering a warm welcome to Cody, the very first member of the FsHub team other than myself 🙂
We added a new community/support forum and a public Discord server too!
Another requested change following the User Survey 2021 we have now added a new public Discord server and community forums that are open to all users of FsHub and the LRM Client.
Please feel free to join these platforms (links below) which I am sure will be a great way for new and existing users to ask questions, talk “all things simming”, share resource packs (such as custom LRM sound packs), seek other like-minded people, advertise your virtual airline as well as request new features or raise issues.
Join our public Discord server
The forums and Discord are a little sparse at the moment (they officially went live last night but we’re only now officially announcing them as open!)
…it would be great to see some of you guys there – even if it’s just to say “Hi!”.
The Search engine has been improved!
Previously, the search engine inside FsHub would allow users to search either airports or VA’s not only was this a limited scope but also rather annoying that you had to define what you were searching for.
In the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed that the search engine has been massively improved in terms of speed, scope and ease of use.
From a technical standpoint I have implemented a new search indexer and storage engine, this sits as a new separate micro-service and thus, as like the geospatial services I implemented and discussed in an earlier blog post (that made the new GPS and flight tracking features possible from a technical and stability standpoint by reducing the load on the main cluster) this is a massive improvement over the last version.
I’m pleased to announce that the search engine will now search Airports, Flights, Virtual Airlines and even pilot profiles from a single query in a much faster and more efficient manner.
The ability to search and filter on flight report tags too are 85% completed too and will be finalised in the next couple of weeks!
LRM Client 4.2.1 still in beta!
Although the feedback has been great so far, LRM Client 4.2.1 remains in BETA (we just want to be sure that there are no strange issues for various edge cases) but assuming all goes well, we are planning for an official release at the end of this month!
Are you enjoying the new features in LRM Client 4.2.1? Let us know on the forums 🙂
Various other site improvements
You may have also noticed that there has been even more improvements to the FsHub platform this week (mainly content page updates) but as I’ve been busy with Cody and getting the forums and Discord sorted no major new features to the platform have been added in the last few days.
What’s next?
Whilst LRM Client 4.2.1 remains in BETA and once Cody and I are happy that he has all the information/access required to assist users much faster I will return my attention back to the GPS tracker and complete/finalise the display of airports and correctly render the types of Nav aids (render the correct icons on the map) and then take these two features out of “beta” too.
Other than the list of other features that I’ve posted in recent blog posts (I won’t re-list them here), I plan to complete these before moving onto the V5 version of the LRM client – I am super excited to start work on LRM Client 5 as I have so many great features planned that I’m sure you’ll all love.
Anyway, this was a rather short and sweet update, I hope you’re all keeping well and I look forward to announcing more updates to you all very soon!