News in virtual air traffic circles has been fast-moving over the last few days, firstly with the release of the hugely anticipated Audio for VATSIM codec upgrade, then, from the other corner, a new flight planning tool from IVAO - and now, the earlier previewed xPilot VATSIM client entering a public beta stage.

xPilot burst onto the scene back in August, bringing competition to the already in-development Swift client, which had then received criticism for what some describe as a poorly designed user interface.

Announced on the VATSIM website earlier today, the network's leaders gave a shout-out to Justin Shannon, lead developer, for his work in designing what they label as the 'first pilot client designed exclusively for Audio for VATSIM'.

The link leads to a webpage where you can download the latest beta of the client, in addition to documentation on how to work the brand new software, which bears large resemblence to the ESP-platform's vPilot.

'The next generation of X-Plane pilot client' is still on version 1.1.0.1, though updates are expected now that a larger user base is testing the software. There's currently no way of reporting bugs to the developer, though.

You can download xPilot for yourself from the official website here.

Thanks to Dan. and PresentMonkey for letting us know about xPilot via the Threshold Discord server!