swift team announces open public beta

[Matthew Bartels]

 

 

swift team announces open public beta

VATSIM is pleased to share that after nearly 6 years of development, the swift Development Team have announced that their new pilot client has reached the phase of public beta.

 

What is swift?

 

swift is a brand new pilot client supported by VATSIM. It is compatible with all the major flight simulator platforms including Microsoft Flight Simulator, Lockheed Martin Prepar3D, X-Plane as well as FlightGear. swift can be used on Windows, MacOS and Linux. swift is the only approved VATSIM client to connect to all supported simulators on nearly all commonly used operating systems.

 

The user experience is common across all platforms and although the set-up and operation of the client requires a little reading of the instruction manual, the result is a very powerful client.

 

swift is not only a pilot client but is delivered together with an online database storing detailed information about all possible AI and flyable models, liveries, aircraft types and airports. With this information in the background, swift is able to optimize the model matching, but also help you to fill in the correct details using auto-completion in all UI widgets. No more wrong aircraft types or wrong airport identifiers on the network.

 

swift has developed a protocol extension - together with vPilot - to exchange the aircraft parts information between the pilot clients. This feature, already available in vPilot, allows to render aircraft properly taxiing on the ground and also synchronize lights, flaps and gear animation. With swift, this feature can now be used across all simulators.

 

swift is the first VATSIM client that is fully open source - apart from a small library necessary to keep the VATSIM authentication secure. Take a tour through https://dev.swift-project.org if you are interested and contribute bug fixes and features on your own. It is a reality of our hobby that people’s real life commitments prevent them from participating indefinitely. Other clients have suffered for this in the past. The swift team hope that opening their source code will mean that swift can live on long after they are gone, and be truly owned by our community.

 

 

What is the public beta?

 

Alpha testers have reported very positive experiences using swift, but some bugs, missing or incomplete features, and un-intuitive interfaces are still to be expected at this stage. The swift team are relying on feedback from the community to help them to fix the bugs and smooth out the user interface.

Is swift a replacement for other pilot clients?

 

swift is not intended to replace other pilot clients; it is simply an alternative option. vPilot and xSquawkbox continue to be actively developed and improved. It is up to each user to decide which client they prefer.

How do I try it?

 

Visit http://swift-project.org where docomeentation and download links are available.

I need help with getting started

 

There are a number of outlets for you to seek support, including at the VATSIM forums. Check out http://swift-project.org which has links to all these.