Friends,

The hiatus is finally over. Way, way too much time has passed where VATRadar has not been getting any significant updates whatsoever, and it’s more than time for that to change.

To that end, I am very, very excited to say that both the app and server components of this platform have received highly substantial updates recently, resulting in no less than 9 TestFlight releases over the course of last month, ranging from small bug fixes to major new features being added.

What’s new

The following new features and enhancements have been added to VATRadar:

  • Updated the app to comply with design changes required by Apple in iOS 26
  • Fully integrated VATRadar with VATSIM’s authentication system, enabling users to create VATRadar accounts that are linked to their VATSIM identity
  • Completely overhauled Events tab, allowing for events to be searched, filtered and favorited, with favorited events now showing up right at the very top of the list
  • Support for push notifications, and a new event reminder feature that will notify you when your favorited events are about to begin (needs to be enabled first via the new settings screen accessible from the Profile tab)
  • Added ability to view airport METARs from within the app, can be accessed via the new Weather tab that’s been added to the top tab bar of the airport details screen
  • Lots of fixes and improvements when searching for airports, controllers, etc., resulting in a much better user experience
  • Various performance improvements, architectural changes and cleanup to make the app more performant and responsive overall

Looking at that list, I think it is finally safe for me to say that VATRadar is back with a vengeance.

Next milestone, VATSIM contact me notifications

One of the very first ideas I had in mind when starting work on VATRadar all the way back in 2022 was to add a feature which, while you were flying on VATSIM, would send a notification to your phone when entering controlled airspace, or, even better, immediately after receiving a contact me message from a controller. This is something I’ve been talking about with a lot of you in the community, and it was very clear that this is something lots of you would love to have. So back then, I lightheartedly promised that yup absolutely, this very feature will be coming to VATRadar in the near future. That sadly did not go so well given how much time has passed, and I do want to take a moment and apologize for having promised something which, at the time, I did not quite fully understand the complexity of. Being promised something that then never shows up is very sadly all too common in the flight simming community, and I never intended to go down that same road when I said that this would be coming soon®. With this out of the way, I do want to make very clear that I am still absolutely, 100% committed to delivering on this promise and pulling this off, not least because I personally really, really want this as well. The great news is that, while there’s still lots to do to make it happen, the foundation has very much been laid down with the integration of VATSIM identity accounts and push notification support. In fact, the new event reminder system, while very useful in itself, is something that I mostly built for the purpose of testing the push notification infrastructure, making sure that there are no unexpected issues or edge cases. At this point, planning for contact me notifications is very well underway and I have a pretty firm understanding of what remains to be done in order for this to work well and, most importantly, reliably. Once a first version of this is implemented, it will require significant testing efforts to identify and iron out any weak spots that may come up. If everything goes to plan, however, I am very much hoping to get this out the door by early to mid March.

With all of this being said, I’d like to whole-heartedly thank each and everyone of you for supporting the project with all your wonderful feedback, constructive ideas, improvement suggestions and, most of all, your patience. VATRadar is a free personal project, which unfortunately does mean life can get in the way sometimes or priorities might change, resulting in VATRadar being put on the back burner. Thanks to all of you for being so understanding of this, it is super, super deeply appreciated. Please do keep the feedback coming, and stay tuned for more updates over the coming weeks. Happy testing!

Cheers, Rob