Vatsim is definitely playing up to the name Velocity this year with the announcement that they will soon announce the rollout date for the much anticipated position updating technology. Shortly after a quick weather update on the 4th of January this year, the network has posted a banner featuring the release date in large letters, blurred out, let us know if you can decipher it. The post signals that Velocity is at a stage which the release date is closing in, with a date to be announced at 22h00z on the 29th of January 2022, along with a video for us to explore.

In case you’re out of the loop on what the hype is all about yet, Vatsim’s Velocity dramatically decreases latency on users position updates, in which position data is updated five times per second as opposed to the current once every five seconds. This essentially eliminates all sorts of inaccurate aircraft movement and aircraft movements on the server will appear smooth and natural, opening new doors to different flying experiences such as enabling a user to finally fly in formation with other users. 

Some downtime can be expected from this in order to roll out Velocity, Vatsim will require the servers to go offline for what they reassure us will be a very short period of time. Users will also have to play their part in order to take advantage of this, and will be required to update their clients. This is only applicable to pilot clients, as Air Traffic Control clients will remain unchanged. 

For more information tune in at 22h00z on the 29th of this month! Threshold will keep you in the loop.