Beacon Newsletter #4: 17FEB2024

This week we have:

Progress on controller retrofits
News on ARES 0.3.1
The retirement of the CX/Supervisor controller
A few suggestions made by our glorious sim janitor, g4latea!

Progress Aplenty!

Main Controller Retrofit Progress & ARES 0.3.1

Well, the new year has come and gone, and our wonderful corporate overlords have been hard at work getting ARES more and more functional and available to us masses!

So far, we've seen retrofits for the following main controllers:

DAX/2
DAX/2 Mini
DAX/3
DAX/3 Mini
Mesta
Hephaestus
Scout
Relic
DAX/T
iKitten
SXDjr
Aide
XSU
Artifact
Arecibo

We're more than halfway through the list! Soon all shall be able to partake in the glory of the future with ARES! Speaking of, some news regarding some more improvements coming in the upcoming 0.3.1 update include:

A fix to the AX issues with downloading/installing packages sporadically failing due to a race condition with permissions
Kernel optimizations for even less crashes!
More bugfixes!

Future ARES function to-dos!

Additionally, information was shared about some upcoming future functionality updates for ARES, including:

Implementing of various policies, including two new ones: auto-consent and bedtime!

Auto-consent will allow avatars either in the same active group as the unit, or on the unit's friends-list, to bypass the normal consent request process and be automatically granted consent to operate the unit as a user. Now your friends can be your users!
Bedtime is a supplement/sequel to the familiar "curfew" policy. Curfew simply enforces that a unit stays within a particular region during a particular period of time, Bedtime will enforce that the unit stays seated on a specific object during a specific period! Great when used together to ensure your unit(s) are set in their charging stations at the end of a long and stressful day of use!

CX/Supervisor Leaving Availability

Since, as mentioned, we're more than halfway through the list of the existing main controllers being retrofitted for ARES, the day has come for the sunsetting of sale for the CX/Supervisor.

The decision has been made that the Supervisor will be no longer available for sale as of 11PM SLT on 18FEB2024. Group notices should go out informing everybody of this final deadline to show your dedication to ARES testing and be part of the cool kids' club! Grab one before they're gone!

Feature Proposals

Finally, we have notes on a few feature enhancements that were proposed by g4latea, our most lovely sim janitor/overseer/secretary. To wit:

Suggestion to allow cycling through AO animations for stands/sits.

This functionality (at least part of it) already exists in NanAO v9.0.2 with the "cycle now" button.

Suggestion to allow customization of startup/shutdown/idle/etc.

This functionality will be coming in a future update of NanAO where they will be treated like AO states.

2 months ago by Armelthelae

last updated: 2024-02-18 18:53:28 · link