Wow! Three blog post updates in one month – Things are moving really fast, now!
So, we’ve continued to be extremely busy this month, and I wanted to share several new updates with you and bring you up to speed on the plans for the upcoming week (hey, I made some promises this month, after all!)
Pilots’ For Hire App v1.2.0 was released!
Now out of beta and ready for “prime time”,… we released the Pilots for Hire app (v1.2.0) this week, which included a ton of updates and “some polish” ahead of our 1st of September release to all users!
Whilst you would have already received the “Update available” notification if you were previously running v1.1.1 of the app and had a link to download the latest version, for those who want to grab the release directly, this can be downloaded from here.
The list of changes (based on your feedback) can be seen in the Changelog that appears when you open the app for the first time, so I’ll spare you a couple of extra minutes (now) whilst reading this update post and let you look at those at a more convenient time!
Aeroconomy Domestic Properties and Interest Payments (still) going live next week!
I mentioned in the August take-two platform updates post that I was working hard to release both the “Domestic Properties” and “Bank account interest payments” for the 1st of September – I wanted to inform you that this is still very much the plan!
Both of these features will be going live next week and again, will be early-access for premium users, but hey, “standard users” will have a new toy to play with too (the PFH app), so it’ll be fine!
I discussed more about the Domestic Properties features in my last blog post, too, why they’re important and how they directly affect the economy, stock markets and other such “game” mechanics, so be sure to read that article too, if this sounds interesting! – I genuinely cannot wait to see where (in the world) people “start building” and how creative they get 😉
We have a new (and super-awesome) community forum!
I opened a can of worms this past week – data cleansing 11 years’ worth of user account data (~26,000 user accounts) to make it “compatible” with our new forum platform, but hey, it was worth it! – I learned a few lessons, and additional validation of the new user account (data) has been deployed this week, too! – Read more on this below!
As some of you may recall, we “had a stab” at hosting a community forum before – we used a free product called “MyBB” and I set about making heavy backend customisations to it, to integrate it with our Fshub platform. Unfortunately that product wasn’t well-suited to mobile devices.
I have spent far too long this week, migrating user accounts, “automating all the things” and integrating it with FsHub (and Aeroconomy) to provide an as-seemless-experenice for everyone as possible without modifying the core of the product itself (which means easier to maintain and upgrade over time).
Why have I used recent donations to pay for this software?
I know that with the upcoming features being released for Aeroconomy that a more suitable place (than Discord) is urgently needed – things in Discord easily get lost (IMO), and being able to search and reference previous posts that I have already responded to, for the 10th time, probably will be a huge time-saver for the team and me. I’d really appreciate it if Aeroconomy users would take this into account (be mindful of) and use the new forums, in the first instance.
Updates are coming thick and fast again now too (now that I have finished what has felt like a huge feat of strength the last 18 months, building out Aeroconomy) and me banging updates to Discord every week(?) might get annoying and so, you’ll find me posting smaller feature releases and information about those specifically, more frequently to the The Briefing Room (Official Annoucements) forum… it’ll also save me a ton of time not having to write these long blog posts too (as yes, they really do take a ton of time!)
You may have already noticed a new icon on the FsHub website (the bell). This will now inform you of any updates to either:-
- Replies to your forum posts that you have created.
- Notifications of new posts in any of your “watched” forums.
This should make the experience feel a lot more seamless/integrated. The mailbox icon has also been re-coded to “watch for unread mails” too…
If, once you have a look around, you feel that you’d like to be notified of new (community) content/forum posts, you can use the “watch” feature at the top-right of the desired forum to be automatically notified (the bell icon) of new posts as shown here:-
The new forums also make it easier for me to further integrate FsHub – such as the ability for virtual airlines to provision their own private forums and permissions (set throught the FsHub RBAC system) can automatically propogate to the new community forums to providing virtual airlines with their own private forums, should they wish – this will be (an optional feature) that will be coming soon!
Side note: The new Direct Messages feature in the new forum software can be used for group conversions too (you can add multiple people into a conversation), and the conversation then appears as a private thread – perfect, maybe for smaller airlines or flying groups that want to communicate privately and ahead of the “airline forums” feature that I mentioned above!
In summary, the new community forums (features and future plans) are, well, just awesome! – We even have Giphy support over there, too 😆!
I would highly encourage you all to check out the new community/forums when you get a chance! – Don’t be shy either, maybe post a photo of your simulator setup or advertise your VA… I’m really hoping that we can make these new forums a huge success!
Still need access to the older forums? No problem, they’ll hang about for a good while yet (as we plan to, eventually migrate some of the older posts too), you can access them (assuming you previously had access) using this SSO link or using the “Login to legacy forums” link that has been added to your FsHub settings this week. – Ideally, though, this should only be used to access older DMs!
OrdinalPoet32 (Alex) officially joins the FsHub support team!
In my last blog post, you may recall that I offered or “put the feelers out” to see if anyone from the community would have liked to join the FsHub team (on a voluntary basis) to assist with what we expect to be an increase in support workload with the upcoming Aeroconomy feature releases!
Whilst I’ve been pulled from pillar-to-post this past week (working on the technical stuff), Alex has officially joined the team and, over the next few days, will receive all of his “staff” accesses!
Welcome to the team, Alex!
Our Community Content Creators have been working hard to add more PFH job templates…
I’d like to mention that I’ve been building out our PFH Content Creators portal this week (was released/deployed yesterday) and have made it possible for our “Community Content Creator” team to add and modify NPC businesses and job templates for the “Pilots for Hire” app.
You’ve probably noticed a ton of new jobs in various other parts of the globe now, too.
More jobs will continue to be added over the next week and into the future too – keeping you “busy” and able to earn that all-important money that you might need for the much anticipated “Commercial virtual airline” features, smaller “FBO operations”, and of course, the “GA Personal flights”.
I know I’ve mentioned it a ton of times, in various places, but the PFH system is just “the tip of the iceberg”, and you’ll be amazed, with all the other features available, very soon!
The Aeroconomy World Event: Spain and Portugal Wildfires weekend!
Another raging success (pun intended) – It seemed that you all really enjoyed our second “World Event” and had a bucket load of fun (pun intended, again!)
The World Relief Fund managed to sustain for approximately 38 hours before the 7.5 million was depleted (paid out to those brave pilots!)
Those who participated in the event managed to evacuate 84,593 citizens and delivered (or staged) 13,855 tonnes of cargo/supplies. A total of 364 awesomely flown flights were completed before the fund ran dry!
The testing went flawlessly, again, and despite a minor code change to the WRF website, I now know that this feature is ready for future use.
Remember that the Aeroconomy “World Events” are based on real-world humanitarian efforts, and whilst the team and I may not know what’s always happening around the world, you’re always free to give us a nudge if there is something of significance happening where you are… Only one caveat – I don’t do political, and some things need to be treated with a little more delicacy and so, if we “turn down” your suggestion, please don’t take it personally!
A big shout-out to Sean Galbraith of Southern Charter (VA) for live-streaming the tower (JoinFS traffic) at both Athens and Lisbon for these past events, too – Thank you, kind sir!
New Personal Achievements
You may have noticed a few other personal achievements recently, too – Helicopter and Aeroconomy related ones have been released..
We have a handful of other FsHub-specific (flying) ones coming soon, too, including (but not limited to) flying advanced helicopters and obscure/complex aircraft.
Several new “Personal Achievements” for participating in community discussions (on the new forums) in addition to other Aeroconomy-specific ones (including badges for having taken part in both of the recent “World Events” will be released next month too – so keep your eyes peeled for those!
A new Flight Achievement
Some of the eagle-eyed among you have probably already seen and completed the new Tribute to James Lovell flight achievement, but for those of you who haven’t seen it… Now you know, and possibly something that will provide you with an hour or so of flying, possibly this weekend? – Check it out! Thanks to JimG for putting that one together!
Have you noticed your FsHub username change (gained a number at the end of it?)
If so, this was a result of the data cleanse activities this week.
The TL;DR on this is simply that either you registered two accounts in the past (with the same “name” – yes, originally, FsHub didn’t care about your “name” as it was only your PilotID that was unique, but times changed and “name” has effectively become your “username”).
In order to “fix” this, simply open up a support ticket with us, and we’ll rename your previous account (freeing up your desired username) to ensure that you can then “Edit” your FsHub profile and correct your original name.
Thank you for the recent donations!
I just wanted to take a second to thank our recent and newly boarded Premium members or for those heroes that gifted premium donations for others – this goes a long way to helping with the hosting costs and was making a lot of what I do (and develop) possible and so a quick “thank you” from me, personally and the rest of the community for making and keeping all of this possible!
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A big shout-out to Clorix for his continued work on the PFH desktop app this past week, too – he’s been the guy who has delivered these updates directly to your desktop!
Whilst I’ve probably forgotten a ton of other updates/changes that have gone live in the past week too (it’s been “a blur” for me 😝)… I’m gonna get outta here and let you all enjoy your weekend, and hopefully, you’re getting excited for the new features that are going live next week!
See you over in the new community forums soon, I hope 😉
Have a wonderful weekend!
Bobby and the FsHub team!