Where on Earth is Navio? (Mission Log #001)

First of all, I want to welcome one and all to the first instalment of what we in the Truckspace Team think will be a great way to keep everyone in the community well informed about the exciting stuff we're working on. Before this we've kept people up to date on our Discord (and will continue to do so) but we never really went into detail about where we're at.

These Mission Logs will include exclusive screenshots and details about the projects we are currently working on. The first of which being Navio.

Before we carry on, I want to make it clear that this post isn't supposed to serve as a bunch of excuses but instead provide some clarity and explanation about what the heck is going on back at mission control.

So, without further ado...

What on Earth is Navio?

Look, there's no hiding it or denying it, we've kept people waiting a long time for what we've called a revolution in the virtual trucking community. For those who haven't heard or just simply need the reminder, here's the quick low down on what exactly Navio is:

Navio is a simple job logging tool for your virtual trucking company. A simple install and forget solution which provides your drivers with the best job logging experience leaving them with more time to focus on what they enjoy: driving. Once your drivers have installed Navio, their jobs will be automatically sent directly to your drivers hub allowing you to easily interact with the data and build something awesome.

We announced our idea for Navio towards the end of 2020 and after the release of VTC Directory, development was soon underway. Since then a lot of our supporters and others in the community have asked numerous times on when Navio will be released to the public.

Cool, great. Thanks for telling me all this but what does it change?

I'm getting to it, I promise.

Where on Earth is Navio?

So to break it down, Navio itself comprises of two main modules;

• The game client
• The web application

The Navio client team have been working throughout the summer on some awesome features such as:

• Core job logging functionality
• Linux and MacOS Support
• Cross-platform overlay support

Accompanying the client, is the web application. The web application handles all the data and sends it to the relevant drivers hub, think of it as the brains of the process. It allows the owner of the company to manage which users have access to the job logging client, a basic overview of all the jobs coming through and a whole load of other things.

We've been tweaking and fine tuning both of these modules over the past few months. Because of the high volumes we expect to see coming from the job logger, we have to be sure everything works perfectly from day #001. I mean can you imagine the frustration you'd feel if you lost a number of your jobs because of an error on our part?

With that being said, we have to once again make it clear that these projects are something everyone in the team does in their spare time, aside from work, school and other real-life obligations.

The good news

Navio is coming! Oh, and it's coming soon.

Over two months ago, we began to speak about opening up Navio to private alpha testing. This would include a whole test of the system in action, from logging jobs to posting that data to custom dashboards and driver hubs. We are choosing to do a private alpha because it's important to get feedback from companies of different sizes about how they would use Navio and try to discover if there are any possible bottlenecks in the system.

Okay okay! But when? Give me a date!

We can't, we just simply cannot give an exact date right now. It wouldn't be fair on the team who, as previously mentioned, have other obligations and can't work on this full-time.

To conclude

I really do hope that this post has given you some reassurance and understanding about where Truckspace are at with the development of Navio. We don't expect you to stop asking "Where on Earth is Navio?" but we do hope that from now on you'll be able to understand the challenges we're overcoming in development and just how close we are to releasing this thing to the community.

If you have any questions, please feel free to pop them in our Discord and we'll do our best to provide an answer.

Until the next one.

Mwikala