Swift Progress?

[Robert Bressert]

I haven't heard anything about the Swift Pilot Client's progress since August last year. Anyone hear anything?

[Camden Bruno]

Negative.

[Johnny Coughlan]

Last status update(from their website) nearly a year ago(April 2017), I commented on it with a query about using it with a tower view function.

 

Never got a response.

 

Comment section on it now closed.

 

So yeah, I'd say it moving quite swift....ly

[Robert Bressert]

I'm hoping they are just busy. V-pilot is a wonderful client for FSX and P3D but X-plane desperately needs this.

[Randy Tyndall 1087023]

X-plane desperately needs this

 

...and FS2004.

 

Randy

[Robert Bressert]

Oops, sorry all you FS9 pilots.

[Richard Walsh]

The silence is deafening

[Andreas Fuchs]

It's NOT dead.

[Robert Bressert]

I got on their website and did some digging. It's definitely NOT dead. Lots of activity. They must be busy, though it would be nice to get a small update.

[Alex Beavil 1302142]

Things have definitely been happening; There's been significant bug-fixing related to X-Plane and P3D v4 recently

[Robert Bressert]

Alex, are you speaking for Swift in an official capacity? I believe it is in "Alpha" stage development. "Beta" soon?

[Alex Beavil 1302142]

"Officially", not really, this is according to the Alpha bug-report and chat system, as well as the slack

[Eric Fisher]

With vPilot and the upcoming BVAI program http://forums.bvartcc.com/index.php?topic=14258.0 I am in zero hurry for Swift.

[Christopher Liu]

vPilot would be fine IF it presented a chat window within FSX/P3D. I have to alt-tab out the sim to send text messages on unicom, we can't all afford multiple monitors.

[MICHAEL KATSANIS 1284260]

Well?? Any news??

[Camden Bruno]

Well?? Any news??

I think that if there was news, a post would've been made. You can probably [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ume that if there's no posted update, there's no news

[Richard McDonald Woods]

I expect that it is just pining for the fjords

[Mark Richards]

Team

 

As you will all be aware, the Board of Governors have been recruiting for several new BoG members.

 

We are hopeful that a new VP Technical Development will be appointed in the coming week or so and one of the priorities for the successful applicant will be setting up liaison with not only the Swift developers but also other developers who are working away quietly in the background, as well as establishing relationships with our existing developers.

 

Once there are appropriate updates, formal communications will be released.

 

Mark

[Bradley Grafelman]

So, in addition to the scattered inquiries on these forums (and perhaps elsewhere), the devs will have yet another entity nagging... er, I mean, liaising... for communication.

 

Gee, I bet they're just thrilled for that position to get filled.

[Mark Richards]

So, in addition to the scattered inquiries on these forums (and perhaps elsewhere), the devs will have yet another entity nagging... er, I mean, liaising... for communication.

 

Gee, I bet they're just thrilled for that position to get filled.

No Bradley, the VP Technical Development has responsibility for overseeing the delivery of development to the Network. This role has, unfortunately, not be filled for a number of years, therefore this is just restoring things to where they need to be.

 

It will also allow the developers to develop and the BoG to be a in a better position to report on progress.

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Bradley,

I am surprised at your cheeky attitude. How dare you

[Magnus Meese]

Mocking the emperor's new clothes? For shame!

[Luke Kolin]

To Bradley, the VP Technical Development has responsibility for overseeing the delivery of development to the Network. This role has, unfortunately, not be filled for a number of years, therefore this is just restoring things to where they need to be. It will also allow the developers to develop and the BoG to be a in a better position to report on progress.

 

If that's what you intend the role to be, then you're not going to be adding any value. The problem isn't that the Swift developers aren't able to send status reports to the BoG. They're perfectly able to do that today, VATGOV5 or not. The problem is that the Swift team has set a WAY too aggressive goal (lots of platforms! lots of sims!) and they're not in a position to be shipping working code, after lord knows how many years. And if they were open source like they promised to be way back when (look for the thread on the "Open Source Pilot Client") then other people could contribute code and help out when the effort became too great or other priorities interfered.

 

You don't need status reports. You need working code.

 

I'm too lazy to look it up, but I said a few years back that VATSIM has the worst of all possible software development methodologies - you're closed source and rely on third parties. If you want to do the former, you in-house your development like IVAO did. If you do the latter, you ensure it's all open source. Right now you have neither and things take ages to complete.

 

I'm glad you're seeking to finally fill your vacant BoG positions. It's pretty amazing to have a tech organization not have any technical leadership and to have these roles vacant for years (has it been a decade for VATGOV5?) says a great deal about VATSIM leadership, especially about the Founders. But if you think you're going to fill the roles, carry on as before and expect different results I think you will be very disappointed.

 

Technology has changed dramatically. Capabilities have changed dramatically. And for VATSIM to run on a software stack and development mindset reminiscent of a 1999 CS term project makes no sense. If I was the BoG, I'd do the following:

 

1) Designate a CTO. This person is going to oversee the three tech VPs and ensure that they are working together to build a new VATSIM technology stack and development paradigm. This isn't a lot of work, and either you or Gunnar could do it if you have a clear idea of your goals.

 

2) VATGOV3 will be tasked with for creating a global VATSIM-owned and -operated AWS infrastructure. There's no reason whatsoever to rely upon third-party infrastructure of dubious capabilities and security; you should be able to create a network of 4-6 global FSD servers and a web server or two that can host the major sites. As well, the entire infrastructure needs to be load-balanced with location-aware DNS so that people aren't bothering to determine what is the "closest" server. fsd.vatsim.net. Done.

 

3) VATGOV5 is responsible for the creation of a modern protocol for all pilot clients and rewriting FSD to be multi-threaded and higher performance. There's no excuse for a poor colon-delimited format that breaks in weird ways and cannot handle character escaping. If everyone is so bloody concerned about bandwidth ('every byte is sacred!') then GZIP the TCP stream, knock your size down by 60% and ST*U. Everything going forward is open-source with VATSIM receiving a perpetual license going forward or ideally just GPL'd so that the original authors can benefit from future developments. Put it in GitHub if you don't want to host your own repo.

 

4) VATGOV6 continues the VATSIM site development, as well as providing server infrastructure for Divisions, Regions and other VATSIM entities. This business of starting over each time a webmaster leaves or shutting down sites for weeks at a time for maintenance makes no sense. Build a common framework for all the Divisions and FIRs, then run it. The groups are not special snowflakes.

 

5) All three are tasked with ensuring that FSD has a 1Hz refresh, the data servers and servinfo have a 5s refresh and we have some good APIs for all of VATSIM partners, not just the ATC side of the house. ATOs and Virtual Airlines are key VATSIM partners and should be treated as such.

 

6) VATGOV5 needs to decide on a sane voice codec, ideally something not developed internally and then rebuild voice with proper range awareness (it's not hard) and FSD integration.

 

7) VATGOV1 and VATGOV2 are responsible for locking the remaining Founders in a room with a qualified therapist so they can point out on the doll where the bad checkbook touched them. It's been almost two decades, and literally thousands of groups have the maturity to do a kickstarter or some other crowd-funding effort to pay for their infrastructure. Heck, my VA has been doing it for over a decade, we've funneled well into five figures worth of cash through it without issues.

 

My 32-year-old self would have been interested in one of these roles. If you don't do anything different when they're filled, in another ten years when I retire and have some free time I may offer to do it all (since nothing will have changed here). What's amazing is that since I joined VATSIM over 15 years ago, we've seen the largest shift in computing and literally billions of people have gotten on the internet. Yet VATSIM remains the same, both in tech and in size.

 

I've said much of the same things here since 2004. You've not changed and most of what I predicted then has come to p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]. At what point do you want to move forward?

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

[Anthony Lawrence]

1) Designate a CTO. This person is going to oversee the three tech VPs and ensure that they are working together to build a new VATSIM technology stack and development paradigm. This isn't a lot of work, and either you or Gunnar could do it if you have a clear idea of your goals.

 

4) VATGOV6 continues the VATSIM site development, as well as providing server infrastructure for Divisions, Regions and other VATSIM entities. This business of starting over each time a webmaster leaves or shutting down sites for weeks at a time for maintenance makes no sense. Build a common framework for all the Divisions and FIRs, then run it. The groups are not special snowflakes.

 

I'd argue that this is probably the biggest element holding back the technology side of VATSIM. There doesn't seem to be any roadmap or plan for the global technology stack (from how divisions/regions are supported, to network infrastructure). I remember having a conversation in 2006 about how the BoG were interested in using the UK's training/mentoring web system on a global scale - it's been 12 years since anyone discussed that, but I'd agree it needs to happen across the board so that there's a standard within which divisions/regions can work.

 

Everything going forward is open-source with VATSIM receiving a perpetual license going forward or ideally just GPL'd so that the original authors can benefit from future developments. Put it in GitHub if you don't want to host your own repo.

 

Remember though Luke, the biggest concern is people stealing the code... I can't believe that so many people go open-source, as others might take your work! [/sarcasm]

 

I followed the thread in which you discussed this previously, with interest. I remember the point you made that your VA's code base was OSS yet you could push out features/improvements quicker than other VAs that were using your product.

 

In the UK, we open sourced both the web infrastructure and the creation of the sector file. Granted, the sector file repository has had far better up-take, because it's easier for everyone to get involved, but it has meant that the project never died/faltered even when the people originally keeping that project close to their chest, were buried with other work.

 

I'd vote 10 times over for a set of open sourced code, that we can all contribute to/support as required (just consider 21 pull requests at Christmas - especially if there was a similar push for VATSIM code bases). Sadly though, the closed infrastructure currently is what's holding the network back, m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ively (oh and the NDA).

 

have some good APIs for all of VATSIM partners, not just the ATC side of the house. ATOs and Virtual Airlines are key VATSIM partners and should be treated as such

 

If we considered the amount of duplicate code being written around the globe, for a wide range of things (such as hosting better APIs for pulling status feeds), then I think we'd be shocked at what wasted efforts there are. We need a good set of APIs (and I've previously volunteered to write something/docomeent what would be beneficial - sadly though, with it being a closed source project, it'd probably not get much traction when we lose the VPs of tech again). I always found it absurd as a division that we had CSV downloads, that were limited to x over 24 hours, when actually a half decent API (or hell, even the ability to register a webhook to receive user details when they're added/updated) would probably save a good amount of bandwidth over the years!

[Don Desfosse]

I nominate Luke for CTO.