So much has happened in the last couple of months, this may be a bit of a longer briefing!

I’ll do my best to re-cap.

📰 NOTAMS

Here are some critical posts / product updates you may have missed...

📢 Shout Outs

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and greatest fault. This quote perfectly summarizes the polar ends of the Flight Sim News/Media landscape. For years some of the most editorial-style flight sim media sites have been offline, sites that often covered every significant product update for every dev equally. In this new day of MSFS2020, we’re left with sites that do a good job walking a line of covering news that interests the masses while often staying out of the news that may bring them heat. And then there’s FSNEWS.EU …

When I spoke publicly about the pain points we experience in the MSFS Marketplace, they noticed and sprung into action. This piece is excellent journalism; if you want to get the full 411 on how things work behind the scenes for devs, READ IT.

If we never spoke up, we may have never seen change. While we still fear retaliation for being outspoken, there’s no regret. Thanks, FSNEWS.EU , and happy 4-year anniversary!

Read Article

🏆 Achievements

All work and no play is a terrible way to live life. At Parallel 42, we celebrate hard work with equal play. Last month Keven took off to Cuba for a week where he enjoyed having drinks on the beach and buying cigars that I promise did not cross the border. In that time, I knocked out a few business deals and released a wave of product updates.

We’re a small team, and we do a few things differently to keep a healthy work/life balance, like taking our time developing something until it’s completely built to our high standards. This means strong, clean releases generally leave our ticketing system empty. So when we need to run at half power and just cruise, we can. I’d call that an achievement any day!

🎙️ Hype

Celebrating his 6th year on Twitch, twotonemurphy has become a true celebrity in the flight sim category.

His upbeat attitude is infectious, and the chaos that surrounds his flying circus makes flying alongside him feel welcoming to everyone, from noobs to seasoned aviators. We were lucky to get Murphy a release copy of our Fox2 aircraft and are happy to report his reaction was overly positive. Have a peek at the clip below, and follow!

“This thing in VR, is something very very special. It’s absolutely incredible in VR…It’s absolutely brilliant!”

- TwoToneMurphy discussing //42 Fox2

Watch Clip

🙏 Asks

Anyone out there familiar with Firebase at a high to expert level? If so, shoot us a ping; we’d love to chat about…stuff. NDA required!

ping @parallel42.com

🖥 Products

We’ve been testing route generation in the cloud for The Skypark. We’re also pursuing opportunities to add a team member specifically to this product.

I understand the excitement around our rebuilding of SkyOS which is the core UI for The Skypark, but please realize that it’s a MASSIVE undertaking. Emerging technologies have also opened up new concepts that we couldn’t have dreamed of 6mo ago. Does that grow the scope? Yep. Does that add time? Yep. Is it worth it? YEP.

Until then, please continue to enjoy the current and very stable Skypark experience. If you want to take a break, that’s fine too; your data will import perfectly into the future update; we’ll make sure of it. It doesn’t hurt our feelings because we know how great the future is for The Skypark.

Flow Pro has a few cool new widgets that have moved from the development phase into testing. Microsoft ingestion for Essentials to hit Xbox has still not begun. Unfortunately, the build has been there since late January without movement. =\

Campout recently received the Winter Pack which was immediately available for Orbx customers. The updates for dogs and winter packs remain pending at Microsoft, sorry Marketplace users!

What about Xbox? A build got close to release a few weeks back, but at the last second we found a way to CTD MSFS, so we blocked it. Yesterday we submitted a build that may resolve the issue and hope that we’ll clear it for release in the coming weeks.

42HV High Voltage is complete and is now in media production! This phase takes a few weeks, involving photoshoots, video production, and product page creation. I can say it’s now COMING SOON.

42MG Mr. Goodbar has been out via Orbx for some time. BUT, it’s now passed final checks and should appear in the marketplace SOON. This one has been in Microsoft's hands since the first week of December of last year. I truly hope our friends on the MS/Xbox platform enjoy this incredibly dangerous sandbar!

FreedomFox code is frozen and stable. Our Fox2 is currently in the shop. For the last update that brought GTN support, we used a sawzall; for this next update, we’ll need hole saws…

Project Polestar is currently in development. No further comment at this time.

Prepar3D New development remains frozen, and the number of active users continues to drop.

🎯 Strategy

We focus our efforts and prioritize projects based on what will provide the most value to our customers while ensuring the decision is smart for the business too.

I believe that when you receive what you paid for, it’s important to recognize and appreciate the value of your purchase. While having high expectations is understandable, it’s unreasonable to expect extra features or enhancements just because it would be cool. Development time is an expensive and limited resource; it may be that we’re saturated, or it may just come down to raw numbers. The return on investment may not be as high compared to other tasks we’re working on. Nonetheless, we always strive to deliver exceptional value AT RELEASE; our pricing and ratings prove that.

Also worth noting, even though we may not be actively working on a specific product right now, it is by no means abandoned. We strongly believe in the value of taking breaks to gain fresh perspectives, new learning to overcome any obstacles that might impede progress, and working slowly to ensure that each product receives the attention it truly deserves.

We’ll continue to respect our systematic approach and release new products and updates only when they are fully tested and ready for you to enjoy.

Thank you for trusting us to make these decisions and being part of our dream. Being able to call this a full-time job is truly a gift, one that we can directly thank you for.

🏋 Challenges

Our greatest challenge these past few months has been Xbox compliance with //42 Campout Utility; if we succeed, you’ll have it this week. If not, then you won’t see it yet, and we’re back at work trying to figure things out.

Remember when MSobo said the experience would be the same on both platforms? Yeeaaaaaa, NOPE.

📈 Stonks

Stonks continue to move in the right direction. Did you rate our products 5⭐ in the Microsoft Marketplace yet!? Thanks! It helps.

👋 Feedback?

If you have feedback on any of the above updates, please click the button below to drop your thoughts in our #dispatch-feedback channel at the official //42 Discord. Think of it like a suggestion box.

DISPATCH: May 11, 2023