ELEVATEX have shared a new development update on their forums alongside a Black Friday sale for ELEVATEX Premium. The development update covered ongoing work on Virtual Airlines integration and a redesign to the overall app after switching to a new codebase.
Rebuild of ELEVATEX
While they have been quiet for a while, behind the scenes they have been focused on rebuilding the application. When it launched in 2022, ELEVATEX was built on the AngularJS codebase, but it has become quite limiting when trying to implement new features.
With the upcoming mobile app, a change in this codebase was needed and the team have been rebuilding the app using React Native. This also avoids them needing to do a second rebuild later on next year. Since moving from AngularJS to React Native, there have been some substantial improvements according to ELEVATEX with memory usage as low as 280MB.
ELEVATEX VA Development Update
Development on Virtual Airlines within ELEVATEX has been progressing since the last development update. They now have a preliminary version of the website live and a new interface for Virtual Airline staff. Some previews were shared, but everything shown is still very much a work in progress.
The team is waiting on the app rebuild before integrating the features of Virtual Airlines into ELEVATEX. Their current goal is to get Virtual Airlines out by the end of December, but there is still a chance the release will slip into January. New England Virtual will also be an official partner with ELEVATEX when it launches.
Redesign and Refresh
As the team have now rebuilt the desktop app completely, lots of changes have been made. Three key changes were previewed in this update. The active flight panel widget has been redesigned and the “delayed” and “on time” indicators have been made much clearer and easier to see. ELEVATEX will also now predict if your flight will be delayed, and the overall widget will cover less space on the map.
For VATSIM users, ELEVATEX have completely refreshed the logic behind frequency switching with a faster way to change frequencies. If you need to change, you can just right-click on the map over the controlled area and switch to that frequency, whether it is Approach, Departure or Control. Right-clicking will instantly update your frequency in the simulator with ease.
An EFB feature was originally planned to release at a later date, however, the team decided to get to work on it sooner. The EFB is only available within the app, but it will come to tablets next year, allowing you to monitor your flight from anywhere. The final layout could look different to the preview shared as it is still in development.
ELEVATEX hopes to be able to push the new rebuild to QA in early December before releasing it to everyone. The Virtual Airlines update is planned for a late December launch or early January. For any future ELEVATEX updates and news, read here on FSNews.
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