News & updates

What is new in Skydex — flight, flying weather, races, flying spots, radio. Written by the people building it, not by a changelog generator.

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• A flight simulator page, and what you can fly today10 Nov 2026

  Skydex now has a page for people looking for a flight simulator in the browser. It lists all twelve craft with their real frame size, weight and thrust, the controls, the race tracks and a plain answer to whether you can fly a plane.

• Your PIP egg can now email you when it's ready10 Nov 2026

  Tick one box on the warm egg card and you get a single email in the evening when your egg is ready to hatch, but only if you haven't flown that day. Nothing is sent until you confirm, and one click stops it.

• No more waiting between aircraft catches in flight6 Nov 2026

  The one-minute pause between aircraft catches in flight is gone, in both the photo world and the stylised one. It was a safety measure, and the fair play checks that replace it are live. The radar scan on the map keeps its own limit.

• PIP on the leaderboard: a badge by your name and a season board5 Nov 2026

  Your PIP now shows up next to your name wherever Skydex lists pilots, with its stage on it. The season leaderboard gets a sixth board, With PIP, that counts the new cards you caught while PIP flew with you.

• Paint your PIP: looks that grow with it, flags of where you've flown5 Nov 2026

  PIP can now be painted. Each growth stage opens new looks, every country you fly to adds its flag colours, your pilot rank sets the metal, and from Navigator you can pick your own colour for every part. Other pilots see your paint in flight.

• Meet PIP, the cyber-gull who flies with you5 Nov 2026

  Every pilot now finds an egg on their first take-off. Catch anything to warm it, come back the next day and it hatches into PIP: a small robot gull that flies beside you, cheers your catches and grows through five stages as you build your collection.

• What's flying above you, wherever you are4 Nov 2026

  Ask your AI assistant what is flying overhead and it can send you a one-time Skydex link. Tap it, share your location, and the assistant names the aircraft around you with distance and direction. It never sees where you are.

• Skydex in your AI assistant: a public MCP server4 Nov 2026

  Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other assistants can now ask Skydex directly: what is flying or sailing near a point right now, aircraft types, airports, ships and receiver stations. Free, read-only, no account.

• Ask your AI assistant about your own receiver4 Nov 2026

  Feeders can now give their AI assistant a personal token and ask how their own Skydex stations are doing, or why one stopped. Two new MCP tools, read-only, revocable at any time.

• Quick phrases: say hello on the walkie without a microphone2 Nov 2026

  Press U in flight and pick one of eight phrases: Roger, Hello Hamburg, Anyone flying?, Nice catch and more. Everyone on your frequency sees it and hears it read out in their own language. No microphone needed.

• The walkie is on, and the tower answers when you call2 Nov 2026

  The walkie now switches on by itself as a receiver, no microphone needed until you want to talk. Press Y in flight to call the tower for traffic, weather, the nearest bridge or who is mayor. Every radio action has a key, so the mouse can keep flying.

• The tower log: what the towers said, on the World page and on every city2 Nov 2026

  Everything Skydex Tower and the local towers announced is now written down: the last 24 hours across the whole sky on the World page, and the last 30 days on each city and airport page. Arrivals, counted visits, new mayors and captains, first visits, epic catches and race records.

• The whole leaderboard, and the people around you2 Nov 2026

  The leaderboard used to stop at 20th place and show everyone below as a single "You #47" line. Now you can page down the entire board, and if you're below the top 20 you see the three pilots above you and the three below.

• Skydex Tower is on the frequency1 Nov 2026

  A control tower now talks to you in flight: hello on every take-off, your catch milestones and firsts, help when a catch doesn't work, the frequency of the city's tower and the odd joke. Every line shows as text under the top bar; the important ones are also spoken, between radio clicks.

• You can catch ships and aircraft before you sign in1 Nov 2026

  Visitors without an account now catch for real: the card turns over, the catch is kept for 30 days, and signing in moves it into your collection with the XP it earned. The sky radar works for guests too, over the sky our own receivers hear.

• The block worlds are closed1 Nov 2026

  Globe and Terra, the voxel worlds Skydex started with, are closed. Old links into them open a flight over the same spot, building pages and the blueprint gallery are retired, and everything that was built stays in the database.

• Ships are back to no pause between catches31 Oct 2026

  The 20-second wait between ship catches was a temporary measure while we worked on fair play. Those fixes are live, so the wait is gone. Aircraft keep their one catch a minute.

• Tridents for new aircraft types, fewer for shipyards29 Oct 2026

  Every aircraft type you catch for the first time now pays one Trident. Being the first in the world to uncover a shipyard pays 2 Tridents instead of 10. XP does not change.

• Fair play: catches are made by you29 Oct 2026

  Skydex now has a written fair play rule. Scripts, macros, bots and programs that aim, shoot or fly for you are not allowed. The flight pauses after 15 minutes without real input.

• A short pause between catches, now for ships too29 Oct 2026

  After any catch, the next ship can be caught in 20 seconds and the next aircraft in 60. Both reticles now show the wait as an amber ring that empties clockwise.

• MLAT shows up on station pages28 Oct 2026

  Stations that are in MLAT sync now carry an MLAT badge in the station list, and a station's own page says whether it is connected and how many neighbours it syncs with.

• Each lobby clip now has its own page28 Oct 2026

  The six short flights from the game's start screen (Hamburg, Manhattan, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Sydney) each have a watch page now, with the video at full width, what you see in it and a button that takes off from the same spot.

• Claim a receiver from another network28 Oct 2026

  A receiver you look after but don't sit next to can now join your account: the feed page gives you a one-time command to run on the receiver, and its history comes with it.

• superronin.com/circulars: an open index of maritime circulars27 Oct 2026

  One page per issuer with every circular and notice superronin reads: Zanzibar, Panama and Belize registries, the Hellenic Classification Society, three P&I clubs, the Paris, Tokyo and Abuja MoUs and the IMO. Each title links the original document. No sign-in needed.

• superronin News: port State control, P&I clubs and the IMO27 Oct 2026

  The circulars feed now reads the Paris, Tokyo and Abuja MoUs, the IMO, three P&I clubs and the Belize registry. A refusal of access that names one of your ships rings the bell even if you follow nothing.

• superronin: PSC inspections and deficiencies on the vessel card27 Oct 2026

  A new register for port State control inspections. Each deficiency keeps its code, action taken and RO responsibility, and one click turns it into a condition with a due date. The vessel card shows the history the way the Ship Info app does.

• superronin: PSC deficiency codes, guides and a news page of its own27 Oct 2026

  All 587 PSC deficiency codes in one list, pages on 30 frequent ones, four guides on port State control, and the superronin news moving here from Skydex.

• superronin: a newsletter for the circulars index, and how we count opened bulletins27 Oct 2026

  The public circulars pages on superronin.com now have a newsletter form with double opt-in. Inside the app, circular links pass through superronin before they open the document, so we can see whether bulletins get read.

• superronin: flag and class circulars in one line, with a bell27 Oct 2026

  Set the flag administration and the class society on a vessel and superronin follows their public circular lists. Each new circular arrives as one line with a link to the original document, in a bell, under News and by email.

• Which issuers superronin reads, and a circulars screen on the front page27 Oct 2026

  superronin.com/circulars/sources lists every flag administration, class society, P&I club and PSC regime in the catalogue: where each one publishes, how we read it, when we last did, and which ones we can't read yet. The front page now has its own circulars section.

• docker-shipfeeder now feeds Skydex out of the box27 Oct 2026

  Skydex is a built-in destination in docker-shipfeeder. One environment variable with your station id sends your ships to us, no AIS-catcher line to assemble by hand.

• /feed is now a list of your stations27 Oct 2026

  Station owners get a list with one row per receiver, an Add button at the top, and a page per station split into Overview, Setup and Settings.

• MLAT on the Skydex feeder network27 Oct 2026

  Skydex now runs an MLAT server. One more line in your ultrafeeder config, and aircraft that don't broadcast a position can appear on your own map.

• Flag pages now show the flag administration's circulars27 Oct 2026

  A flag page on Skydex now ends with the latest circulars of that flag's maritime administration, linked to the originals: Panama today, Tanzania (Zanzibar register) and Belize as soon as their pages fill up.

• superronin.com: certificates and surveys for a fleet, on the Skydex account26 Oct 2026

  A separate tool for ship technical managers: every certificate, survey, condition of class and remark per vessel, with due dates, reminders, scans and a list of what each ship is still missing. Same sign-in as Skydex. Free while it is a pilot.

• Feed ships to Skydex from adsb.im or docker-shipfeeder25 Oct 2026

  If your feeder box already decodes AIS through adsb.im or docker-shipfeeder, one line in the extra options field sends the same ships to Skydex. No second decoder, no second dongle.

• Add a real photo straight from the map24 Oct 2026

  After you catch an aircraft on the map, a button offers to add your real photo of it right away. Ship cards on the map have a photo button too, and the aircraft photo form now opens the camera directly.

• Real photos open full size, collections sort by catch time23 Oct 2026

  Tap a real-life photo in the live feed to see the whole frame. Your aircraft collection now sorts by when you caught each one. Real photos also go to #clips-and-shots on Discord.

• Governors are now chosen by cities, not by days20 Oct 2026

  A region's governor is the pilot who has visited the most different cities in it. At least two, and airports no longer count.

• Winning a seat now feels like winning a seat19 Oct 2026

  Becoming mayor of a city, captain of an airport or governor of a region now gets a full-screen moment with the crown, the place, your visit days and what the seat paid. If you were offline when it happened, you see it the next time you open Skydex.

• Visits now show up in the live feed18 Oct 2026

  When someone flies two minutes over an airport or three minutes over a city, the live feed says so, with the visit tier and the day count.

• Towns can have a mayor now, villages still can't18 Oct 2026

  Places from the OpenStreetMap layer that are marked as towns now take part in the race for the mayor's seat. Villages and hamlets still count as visits, but they don't get a mayor.

• The race for the seat: who is chasing your city18 Oct 2026

  City, airport and region pages now show who is racing for mayor, captain or governor, how many days each pilot still needs, and what you need yourself.

• Put your Skydex badge on your website and earn Feathers every day18 Oct 2026

  A new mission for anyone with a blog, a club page or a personal site: place your badge, we check it, and every confirmed day pays Feathers. More different sites pay more.

• New mayors, captains and governors show up in the feed18 Oct 2026

  When a pilot takes a seat over a city, an airport or a region, the live feed says so, and so does the Discord #live-feed channel.

• First to fly there: every town gets its own page18 Oct 2026

  When a pilot counts the first visit to a town or village we did not know before, it gets a page on Skydex, with the discoverer, the regulars and, for towns, the mayor.

• Your cities, on your profile, on the map and in your missions17 Oct 2026

  City visits now show up where airport visits already did: a Cities card on every profile, a My cities page, rings on the map, regulars on city pages, two new missions and a step in the Pilot path. Bremen and other regional capitals count too.

• Your cities now know their region17 Oct 2026

  Every city and airport visit now carries its state, Land, oblast or province. Count the regions you have flown in, filter your city log by them, and see them on your profile.

• Every region gets its own page17 Oct 2026

  Each state, Land, oblast and province now has a page at /region/<name>: its governor, the pilots who fly there most, the cities and airports they visit, and how a visit counts.

• Mayors of cities, captains of airports17 Oct 2026

  Whoever has the highest visit tier at a city becomes its mayor. Airports get captains by the same rule. Seats can change hands, and both sides hear about it.

• Bridges are on the map now, and the sky points you to them17 Oct 2026

  Every bridge you can fly under now has a marker on both maps, with a card and a Fly here button. In the photoreal world an unflown bridge within three kilometres shows up as a short hint with its distance and an arrow.

• Every town and village now counts as a city visit17 Oct 2026

  City visits used to know a few thousand cities. Now any town, village or hamlet you fly over starts the three-minute timer, anywhere in the world, using OpenStreetMap place data.

• Some bridges have no gap under them, and now the game says which17 Oct 2026

  Google's 3D mesh fuses many small and middle bridges into the ground, so there is no air under the deck to fly through. The game now checks each bridge as you approach it, greys out the ones with no gap and stops pointing you to them.

• A badge for your station and a page about us17 Oct 2026

  Station owners can now put a live badge on a forum signature or a README. Skydex also has an About page that says who makes it, where we are and how to reach us.

• Your airports, on your profile and on their own page16 Oct 2026

  Profiles now list the airports a pilot has visited, with tier and days. A new page, My airports, keeps your own log with first and last visits and how far each airport is from its next tier.

• Airport pages now show who flies there16 Oct 2026

  Every airport page lists the pilots who visit it, with regulars and recent visitors by name. The map shows how many pilots have visited each airport and marks the ones you have visited with your tier.

• Two lists of places to fly to16 Oct 2026

  The 50 busiest airports of 2025 and the 100 biggest cities are now lists you can work through. Visit each place in Skydex, tick it off, and every part of a list you finish pays Tridents and a title.

• The station leaderboard explains itself16 Oct 2026

  The station leaderboard now says how Signal is counted, what changed this week and where the stations are, and you can search, filter and sort it.

• The Solar System navigator page, redesigned16 Oct 2026

  The Solar System page now opens with today's distances, groups the navigator's buttons by what they do, and explains the scales, the timeline, the Roadster and the data sources in short panels below the view.

• The live globe page, redesigned16 Oct 2026

  The 3D globe page now opens with live numbers, groups its controls, always shows the way to the Solar System navigator and explains every layer and every data source on the page itself.

• The live globe is easier to find16 Oct 2026

  The 3D globe with every aircraft and ship our receivers hear now shows up on the home screen, in the Network menu, on the network pages and as a button on the map.

• The front page now speaks your language16 Oct 2026

  skydex.online is now rendered by our own server in twelve languages, with the live count of aircraft and ships in it and a share card that shows those numbers.

• Fly under a bridge and it goes in your collection16 Oct 2026

  Nearly four hundred real bridges now count when you fly underneath them in the photoreal world. Each one counts once, lands on your airports page and moves you up the Under the Deck achievement.

• Fly two minutes over an airport and it counts as a visit16 Oct 2026

  Airports now keep a record of your visits. Fly low around one for two minutes and the visit is yours; come back on other days and the airport levels up from Visitor to Home base.

• Cities count as visits too16 Oct 2026

  Fly three minutes inside a city and it goes into your record. Come back on other days and the city levels up, the same way airports do.

• Airport visits now count for missions, and for continents16 Oct 2026

  A new daily mission and a new weekly mission ask you to visit airports in flight, and a new achievement counts the continents of the airports you have visited.

• A new lobby, and a pause menu that stays out of the way16 Oct 2026

  The first screen now shows live numbers for the whole network, puts both craft side by side and lets you watch a short flight before you start. Esc opens a short pause menu instead of the whole front page.

• One catch per ship per day15 Oct 2026

  Ships now follow the same rule as aircraft: once you have caught a hull today, the reticle tells you so and the shot is refused until UTC midnight.

• Your profile page grew up14 Oct 2026

  The page at skydex.online/your-name now opens with a big banner and a glass name card, shows your numbers in one strip, tells your story in plain sentences, and loads without blank gaps.

• After the first week: a path that keeps going14 Oct 2026

  Two chapters on the missions page tell you what to do next, one step at a time. Collectors get pointed at the fleet and the hangar, receiver owners at the bridge from their antenna into the game.

• Your first week: seven steps, ten Tridents14 Oct 2026

  New accounts get a seven-step path on the missions page. Finish it within 14 days of signing up for 10 Tridents and the First Week title. A receiver on your roof counts as a step.

• The realistic gull finally glides like a gull14 Oct 2026

  The realistic gull used to glide with its wings held out flat. Now the inner wing lifts, the wrist bends and the hand wing angles down and back, the shape you recognise from a beach.

• Emergency squawks now show on the map14 Oct 2026

  An aircraft squawking 7700, 7600 or 7500 gets a red ring and its code on both maps, a strip at the top takes you to it in one tap, and the Alerts tab on /live says where it was and whether it is still squawking.

• Ship cards now show the moment someone caught them14 Oct 2026

  Ships without a Wikimedia photo now show the screenshot taken when a player caught them, credited to that player, and every card loads a small copy instead of the full screen grab.

• Four more paths: pilot, photographer, on air, community14 Oct 2026

  The path card on your missions page now has six chapters. The new four walk you through races, moments, the radio and walkie-talkie, and the people you fly with.

• Every page in the directory now looks like the directory14 Oct 2026

  Aircraft types, airlines, ships, flags, shipyards, ports and airports now share one page layout: a card up top, the numbers that matter as tiles, and the rest in panels.

• Directory sections: filters you can see, and a list view14 Oct 2026

  The vessel, airframe and aircraft type pages in the directory now show how the list splits by category or class in a bar you can click, tier chips with counts, pills for the filters you have on, and a dense list view next to the cards.

• Directory cards: no more black squares14 Oct 2026

  Ship and aircraft cards in the directory and in collections now load their photos through our own server, fall back to a drawn silhouette when there is no photo, colour the ribbon by tier and show a length ruler.

• Airlines, aircraft builders and flag states, now as cards14 Oct 2026

  The airlines, manufacturers and flag states pages in the directory are now grids of cards with logos, photos and counts, split by country or tier in a bar you can click, with a list view next to them.

• Adding a station got easier: new pages for the aircraft and ships networks14 Oct 2026

  The ADS-B and AIS network pages were rebuilt around one job: getting your receiver connected in four short steps, with the live numbers up top and the questions people actually ask at the bottom.

• A weekly e-mail about the sky over your city14 Oct 2026

  If you set a home city, you can now ask for one e-mail a week: how many aircraft and ships our receivers heard within 60 km of it, and the rarest of them. It's off until you turn it on and confirm.

• The directory gets a front page14 Oct 2026

  The /directory landing now shows the rarest aircraft types the network has heard, the biggest ships players have caught, how the rarity tiers split and the newest catches, with search at the top.

• A short list for your first flight13 Oct 2026

  New pilots now see a four-item card in their first flights: take off, spot an aircraft or a ship, fly to another city, and pick a home city or sign in.

• Your first catch now comes with directions13 Oct 2026

  New pilots get a small guide in the sky that points at the nearest aircraft or ship and walks them through zoom, hold and spot. On the day you sign up, your daily missions are about that first catch.

• What flew over your city yesterday13 Oct 2026

  Pick a home city and the bell tells you, once a day, how many aircraft and ships the network heard around it yesterday, and names the rarest type when it really was rare.

• You can now catch the airliner right above you13 Oct 2026

  Aircraft are now catchable within 9 km measured along the ground, not in a straight line. Jets at cruise altitude overhead used to be impossible to catch, and when one is out of range the crosshair now says so.

• Airports on the map, and a way into their pages12 Oct 2026

  Every airport that has a page on Skydex now has a marker on both maps. Tap it for what we know about the airport and a link to its page.

• What time is it there? The map now tells you11 Oct 2026

  The big map has two new layers: time zones, drawn as bands with the current local time, and a soft shade over the half of the planet where the sun is down. City names carry their local time, and aircraft and ship cards say what the clock reads under them.

• Street names on the map when you zoom in11 Oct 2026

  The satellite map used to go blank below city level. From zoom 12 it now names districts, stations, airports, parks and streets, and you can tap them.

• Every airport our receivers hear now has a page11 Oct 2026

  Airport pages used to exist only where a player had caught a flight. Now the receiver network fills them in, with arrivals and departures heard over the last 30 days.

• Airports you collect, and an index of every airport we hear11 Oct 2026

  The airports at the ends of your caught flights now count toward two new achievements, receivers get two of their own, airport pages show who caught the most there, and /airports lists every airport the network hears.

• Jumbos and MD-80s, measured from the factory drawings11 Oct 2026

  Big and common types now take their proportions from the manufacturers' airport-planning drawings: the 747, 777, 787, 767 and 757 families, the MD-11, MD-80 and MD-90, and three generations of 737. The 747-400 got its wingspan back and the 777-300 its length.

• Where's the Roadster? The globe now folds out into the Solar system10 Oct 2026

  A new button on the live globe zooms out from the Earth to the whole Solar system and shows where the Tesla Roadster SpaceX launched in 2018 is right now, next to the planets and the Moon.

• The Beluga, the B-52 and other odd shapes10 Oct 2026

  The real-shape aircraft table now covers every type our network has heard and the sources list, 407 in all, including the ones that don't look like airliners: the Beluga's cargo bulb, the B-52's paired engines, the V-22's tilting rotors and the E-3's radar dome.

• The whole network on a globe10 Oct 2026

  A new live page puts every aircraft and every vessel our receivers hear on one 3D Earth you can turn and zoom. It opens facing your own country.

• The live globe: coverage, trails, a camera button and some satellites10 Oct 2026

  The live globe can now show where the network has heard over the last month, draw the recent path of the aircraft you pick, save itself as a picture, and, for fun, put every Starlink satellite in orbit around it.

• A Solar system navigator, with a timeline and real scale10 Oct 2026

  The Roadster joke on the globe grew into its own page: the Sun, the planets, the Moon and the Tesla Roadster in readable or real scale, a slider from 2000 to 2049, and a button that plays back the last year.

• Save the Solar System navigator as a video10 Oct 2026

  Two buttons under the navigator record a short clip: the last year going by, or one turn around a planet. Three frame shapes, with the date and the credits in the picture.

• Your station now sits closer to home10 Oct 2026

  Station pages and the live maps used to name the nearest big city, sometimes 150 km away. They now name the nearest capital or regional centre. The live globe also tells you what it is still loading.

• Aircraft in the sky now have their own shape10 Oct 2026

  Planes in the 3D sky used to be one of a handful of generic shapes. Now 407 types are built to their published wingspan, length and tail height, and each type page has a model you can turn.

• Skydex now speaks twelve languages9 Oct 2026

  Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Japanese and Arabic join the language menu, and German, French and Spanish stop falling back to English halfway through.

• A leather flying helmet, goggles and a flight jacket for the gull9 Oct 2026

  Three new items in the Trident Exchange: an open-cockpit leather helmet, round flight goggles and a leather bomber jacket with a shearling collar.

• The Directory: every aircraft and ship Skydex knows, in one place8 Oct 2026

  A new reference section at /directory pulls aircraft types, airlines, manufacturers, caught airframes, caught ships, flag states, shipyards and ports into one portal, with filters and sorting on every list.

• The directory shares as a card8 Oct 2026

  Links to the Skydex directory now unfurl as a card with the collection's own numbers instead of the site banner.

• The Directory now answers questions, and hands out its data8 Oct 2026

  Every Directory section and every aircraft, airline, ship, flag and shipyard page now carries a short Questions block built from its own data, links into the matching filtered lists, and a JSON export of the reference lists is open to anyone.

• One search box for every aircraft and ship in the Directory8 Oct 2026

  The Directory has a search field now. Type a type designator, a registration, an airline code or callsign, an airport, a ship name, an MMSI or an IMO number, and the answer comes back grouped by section, with a link into the full filtered list.

• Aircraft type pages now say who flies them7 Oct 2026

  Every aircraft type page has an Operators block: which airlines our receivers heard flying that model, and how many distinct airframes each one has. Military and private aircraft are counted but not named.

• The shop gets things for your station, a week-long try-on and a monthly drop7 Oct 2026

  Nineteen new items that dress your receiver's page, map marker, share card and reception rose. Feathers now rent any Trident item for a week. New stock arrives monthly, and you can mark what you're saving for.

• Buoys are not boats any more7 Oct 2026

  AIS aids to navigation (buoys, beacons and virtual marks) used to show up as generic ships you could even spot. They now render as buoys in the sim and as chart diamonds on every map, and they no longer count as vessels.

• The shot now has a moment, from the crosshair to the card6 Oct 2026

  The ship or aircraft you are locking onto now gets a contour in the world, the lock beeps and snaps shut, the shutter closes like an aperture, and the card back gets real screen time before it turns over.

• Turn your cards over5 Oct 2026

  Cards in your collection now tilt toward the pointer and turn over to show their back.

• The catch card has a proper back now, and coins look like coins5 Oct 2026

  The art for the catch reveal has arrived. Every card now turns over from a metal back with a frame in its tier colour, the rare ones crack with light before they flip, and Feathers and Tridents have their own glyphs instead of emoji.

• Night over Hamburg now looks like night3 Oct 2026

  After dusk the ground goes properly dark and the roads light up by class, in the flight sim and on the Hamburg Airport live stream. Plus a fix for panes that showed a day sky at midnight.

• A world map of where people fly1 Oct 2026

  skydex.online/world puts every city pilots have flown over on one map, with periods, filters, a top 100 and how each week compares with the one before.

• The photoreal world now needs an account from your second day1 Oct 2026

  Your first day on Skydex is the full photoreal 3D world, no sign-in. From the next day on, guests fly over the simple map until they sign in with Google, and then the photoreal world comes straight back.

• Aircraft pages now share as a card with our numbers on it28 Sep 2026

  Paste a link to an aircraft type, a single airframe, an airline or a manufacturer into a chat, and the preview is now a card we draw ourselves: the name, the maker, how many airframes our receivers heard and where, and a credited photo.

• Every catch now turns over a card25 Sep 2026

  Catching an aircraft or a ship used to give you a line of text. Now the card you just won flies out of your sights, builds up by rarity and flips face up, with its photo, your points and your coins.

• Signing in now says what you were about to keep25 Sep 2026

  Guests still fly without an account. When you try to keep something, the sign-in box now names it, and a first sign-in opens a short welcome card instead of an old editor full of voxel settings.

• Your receiver now counts towards prestige25 Sep 2026

  Tridents earned by keeping an ADS-B or AIS receiver up now count towards prestige stars and the prestige leaderboard, not only towards your Exchange wallet.

• Invite links now open the right page25 Sep 2026

  Your invite code can now land a friend on the ADS-B hub, the AIS hub, the station leaderboard or the player leaderboard, each with its own preview card.

• Your receiver now pays you, every day24 Sep 2026

  Every UTC day your ADS-B or AIS receiver stays up 80% of the time earns Feathers the next morning, and every five such days add Tridents. Ship receivers earn more, and the first 20 aircraft and first 25 ship stations get a little extra for good.

• Streak freezes, and what each currency is for24 Sep 2026

  Feathers now buy streak freezes and a same-day streak repair. The rule behind it is simple: Tridents buy things you keep forever, Feathers buy things you use up.

• Skydex posts to X now24 Sep 2026

  Skydex now posts to X on its own. A weekly summary of what the network heard, plus an announcement for every feature we ship here, starting with this one.

• You can send photos in messages now24 Sep 2026

  Attach a photo to a private message. It is stored privately, stripped of location data on the way in, and deleted when you delete the message.

• How we moderate photos in private messages24 Sep 2026

  Moderators now look at the photos people send each other in private messages. Never the text. And there is a new mute that stops an account from sending anything while it can still fly.

• Founding stations now show their number24 Sep 2026

  The first 20 aircraft receivers and the first 25 ship receivers now carry a visible Founding badge on the station leaderboard, on their own page and on their share card. The Founding title goes on by itself if you aren't wearing one, and the AIS hub shows how many ship places are still open.

• The map controls got tidied up24 Sep 2026

  One set of icons, one layer panel instead of a scrolling chip row, and the same controls on the in-game map and on /map.

• Achievements now pay for every tier24 Sep 2026

  Tiers I and II now pay Feathers, short achievements pay Tridents when you finish them, the aircraft and receiver branches get their own titles, and the achievements page shows what the next tier is worth. Tiers you already hold are paid retroactively.

• Your profile link now unfurls as a card23 Sep 2026

  Paste a Skydex profile into Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp or X and it now shows a proper preview card with your avatar, crest, rank, XP and collection counts, instead of a blurry stretched avatar.

• Your name, dressed, in every list23 Sep 2026

  Nameplates and name lettering are now in the Trident Exchange, and the name colour you may have bought months ago finally shows in the roster, chat, the feed, leaderboards and the station list.

• Your crest in the menu, on your avatar and on the leaderboard23 Sep 2026

  Earlier today the rank ladder became a gallery. The places where you look at yourself still showed a coloured dot, so the crest now opens both profile menus, sits as a medallion on your profile picture and appears next to every name on the leaderboard.

• A second rhythm on the missions board: one goal for the whole week23 Sep 2026

  Daily missions reset at midnight UTC and reward whoever shows up that day. Now there's a second card that waits a full week, pays 60 Feathers, and skips the daily wallet cap entirely.

• The Wingman ladder: prizes you can only earn by bringing people in23 Sep 2026

  Every friend you invite who actually flies moves you up a five-rung ladder. Each rung pays Tridents and hands you an item the Trident Exchange does not sell.

• The station leaderboard gets a podium23 Sep 2026

  The top three receivers in each band now stand on a podium, every station shows its Signal as a bar, and the table is easier to read on any screen.

• The leaderboard now shows more than a number23 Sep 2026

  A leaderboard row used to be a place, a name and a score. It now also shows what the person has earned and put on, the top three stand on a podium, and pilots who run a receiver carry the 📡.

• Share missions: they count when somebody opens your link23 Sep 2026

  The daily set can now ask you to share. A share mission ticks when another person opens your link, never when you press a button. You can switch them off.

• Prestige shows up on your profile23 Sep 2026

  Tridents you have earned over time now show on your public profile. There is a gold star chip next to your rank and a Prestige card in the Career section with large stars, your lifetime total and the distance to the next star.

• Network Builder: a prize for bringing in a receiver, not just a pilot23 Sep 2026

  Getting a friend to fly is one thing. Getting them to put a receiver on their own roof is another. Now the second one has its own ladder, separate from Wingman.

• Daily missions get their own page23 Sep 2026

  Your three daily missions now live on a board at /my/missions. Every card says how to finish it, and a Go button takes you where it gets done.

• Find any ship we have heard, not just the ones in range23 Sep 2026

  Fleet search now covers every ship our feeds have heard in the past year, not only the ones on the radar right now. It takes IMO numbers too, and you can paste a whole list at once.

• Dress up your profile: themes, auras, a live sky and a showcase23 Sep 2026

  Your public page can now wear a theme, an entry effect and an aura around your crest. Feeders get a live banner of their own sky for free, there is a showcase for the catches you are proudest of, and you can gift items to other players.

• The rank crests, at full size23 Sep 2026

  The fifteen rank crests were drawn in detail and shown at twenty pixels. Now the ladder is a gallery, your profile shows your crest big, rank-ups are bigger, a tap on any small rank mark opens the crest, and a rank can be shared with its crest in the preview.

• The network links now unfurl as maps23 Sep 2026

  Share a Skydex ADS-B or AIS network page in Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp or X and the preview is now a map. The live maps show every aircraft or vessel the network hears that minute; the hubs and coverage pages show 30 days of measured squares.

• Bring a friend, and you both get paid23 Sep 2026

  Every Skydex account now has an invite link. When a friend joins through it and starts flying, you both get Feathers, you earn Tridents, and you climb a new Recruiters board.

• A missed message now reaches your inbox23 Sep 2026

  If a direct message on Skydex sits unread for a while, you now get a plain e-mail about it. One mail per conversation, no message text inside it, and it never fires for people who already saw the bell.

• Ranks get their crests22 Sep 2026

  The fifteen career ranks stop being emoji. Every one of them now has a cast-metal crest, and the ranks you have not reached yet show as dimmed silhouettes on the ladder page.

• The water side of the site grows up21 Sep 2026

  Shipyards, flag states and ports now have browsable hubs, the pages say what they know, and a vessel page finally tells you which of our own receivers have had her in range.

• The hours you actually flew21 Sep 2026

  Flight time was counting parked tabs, and the feed was announcing reconnects as arrivals. Both now measure what happened instead of what was open.

• A 400 metre ship is not a canal boat21 Sep 2026

  Ship rarity now means size measured against the vessel's own class, epic is reachable without the legend list, and the XP pop shows where every point came from.

• Who is in a headset20 Sep 2026

  The online list now marks the pilots flying in VR, the same way it marks the ones on the phone. Nothing new is published; the flag was already there, and nobody could see it.

• The near field in VR20 Sep 2026

  Stereo in the headset was always real, but there was nothing close enough to use it. Your own aircraft is back in first person, and the gull's beak stopped floating five metres away.

• Your hangar keeps a passport19 Sep 2026

  Two more sections on My hangar: the airports flights of your tails have touched, and a day-by-day feed of when our own receivers heard them.

• The tails we will not track19 Sep 2026

  A pilot typed a registration into the hangar and got told it was the wrong length. Behind that bad error message sat a bigger one, so both are fixed.

• Type the tail number18 Sep 2026

  The hangar's add box used to want six hexadecimal digits. Now it searches the sky our own receivers hear, by registration, flight number, type or operator.

• The hangar is live again18 Sep 2026

  My hangar was built when every look at an aircraft cost money. Our own receivers changed that, and the page had not noticed. Every card now shows what the network hears right now, for free, and the daily quota guards only the lookups that are still billed.

• Spotting in the headset18 Sep 2026

  Ships and aircraft can now be caught from VR. The binocular is the zoom, the right trigger is the shutter, and the lock ring lives on the eyepiece.

• The gull reports for duty15 Sep 2026

  A pilot's uniform for the gull: black jacket, white shirt and tie, gold buttons, wings over the left breast. Plus a pilot's cap with the winged badge to match.

• The water on one map14 Sep 2026

  A new page at /ais/live puts every vessel our volunteer AIS receivers can hear, the receivers themselves and the water they have measured onto a single view of the world. The ships band now has the same three maps the aircraft band has.

• The rest of the shop14 Sep 2026

  Underglow, motor sparks and decals for the quad, a bezel and an OSD theme for the goggles, rear-view mirrors that are free for everyone, celebration effects, bundles, and a beak you can finally see.

• The network on one map14 Sep 2026

  A new page at /adsb/live puts every aircraft our volunteer receivers can hear, the receivers themselves and the sky they have measured onto a single view of the world. It is the third map of the band, and the first one that answers how far this network actually reaches.

• The flight keys are yours now14 Sep 2026

  Settings has a new Controls tab where you can rebind the drone and the gull, one key at a time, with a reset on every row. The keys printed around the game now show your keys rather than ours, and a card in flight lists the lot.

• Save the network map as a picture14 Sep 2026

  Both live network maps now have a Save image button. You get a PNG of the frame exactly as you framed it, with a caption strip carrying the counts, the UTC date and the Skydex lockup.

• Replying to a message14 Sep 2026

  The rooms and direct messages can now answer one line in particular, with the quote attached, and the person you answered gets a bell.

• Rare now means rare here14 Sep 2026

  The alert channels were announcing 846 aircraft a day, and four of them were 83 per cent of one channel. Rarity is now measured by what our own receivers actually hear, so an An-124 gets a card and the daily A330 does not.

• Dressed for the pier14 Sep 2026

  A player asked the Trident Exchange for a pimp cane and hat for the gull. It got those, plus the coat and the medallion to go with them.

• Dress the bird14 Sep 2026

  Caps, glasses and scarves for the gull, a portrait of your craft on your profile, and a shop that finally shows you what you are buying.

• Your name is yours again13 Sep 2026

  Display name, photo and handle are editable from your own profile page — no need to enter the world to fix the handle a sign-up guessed for you.

• Two ticks13 Sep 2026

  Messages now say whether they arrived and whether they were read, and this post says exactly what each tick can and cannot prove.

• One shell, everywhere13 Sep 2026

  The header and footer are now written once and read by both renderers, the navigation is four items plus More, and the three comms icons finally reach the thousand-odd pages that were missing them.

• Messages13 Sep 2026

  Private conversations between people, because the hardest thing on this site was saying something to one person.

• Six ways to answer without typing13 Sep 2026

  Reactions on private messages and on the chat rooms, plus the ability to edit or delete your own room lines, and one small layout fix so every section of the chat widget puts its "open full view" link in the same place.

• Fix a message, see who visited13 Sep 2026

  Your own messages can now be edited or deleted, the bell tells you when somebody opens your profile, and a green dot shows who is here right now.

• Dressing the bird13 Sep 2026

  Tridents had almost nothing to buy, and the few things they did buy were invisible in flight. The Exchange now sells plumage, liveries, trails, name-plate frames and a catalogue of titles, and all of it renders in the sky where other pilots can see it.

• In flight, chat moves into the top bar13 Sep 2026

  The feed and chat panel no longer sits in the corner of the sky. On a desktop it opens from three icons in the top bar, one each for the feed, the chat rooms and your messages, so every badge means one thing. On a phone it stays one icon.

• The water we hear12 Sep 2026

  A second AIS receiver joined the network, on the Humber, and the coverage map carried on showing only the first one. Fixing that turned up three separate faults and one missing page: there was no live map of what our own antennas hear.

• The sky comes out of Discord12 Sep 2026

  The rarest aircraft the network hears now show up on the site, on your own station page and in your feed card. The shell also tells you who else is here, and writing @someone rings their bell.

• The receivers nobody owns12 Sep 2026

  Four antennas are feeding the network right now under an id no account owns. The station leaderboard now says where they are and what they caught, so whoever runs them can claim them.

• The chat comes to the front page12 Sep 2026

  The feed and the global chat now live in the site header, next to the bell, so you can read them without entering the world. The collapsed in-game chat finally shows a count.

• Pick your channel12 Sep 2026

  The feed grew a row of chips, one of them is your own antenna, and a receiver can now ring your bell when something genuinely rare passes over it.

• Every capital on every map12 Sep 2026

  All 199 national capitals and 2,364 regional seats now appear on the flight minimap, the in-game map, the shell map and the voxel minimap, from world zoom down.

• A ships receiver going live is news too12 Sep 2026

  An AIS station's first packets now light the same three lamps an aircraft station's do — the bell, the network channel and the live feed in the game. Until today the water band went live in silence.

• Claim a receiver that is already feeding11 Sep 2026

  If your antenna already sends us data under an id we didn't issue, you can now take that receiver over from the /feed page, keeping the uptime and coverage it has already built.

• Your profile now says who follows you10 Sep 2026

  Follows have been working since F4 shipped. The two lists behind them had no place to show up, so nobody could see them. Both counts now sit on every profile, yours included, and open the list of people behind them.

• Your profile now knows how long you have flown10 Sep 2026

  Flight time was never counted anywhere. The counter that looked like it did belongs to the voxel worlds and is unmounted the whole time you are in the air. Profiles now show hours at the controls, with paused time taken out.

• Where your antenna hears9 Sep 2026

  AIS stations now have a coverage map: the squares of water a receiver has actually heard traffic in, measured rather than predicted.

• Where the network hears9 Sep 2026

  A coverage map for the aircraft network, built from where the planes were rather than from where we guessed the antennas are. The live map stays exactly where it was.

• Where is it going9 Sep 2026

  Aircraft cards and the in-flight plate now show the scheduled origin and destination, and the map draws the great-circle line between them.

• What your antenna earns9 Sep 2026

  Six achievements for people who run receivers, split into a sky ladder and a water ladder, awarded by a sweep rather than by anything you click.

• The landing learns about ships9 Sep 2026

  feed.skydex.online was an ADS-B site from the hero down to the FAQ, two days after we started taking AIS. It now covers both bands, with both connector lines, separate statistics and separate station tables. Two live bugs turned up while rewriting it.

• See what your antenna hears9 Sep 2026

  Ships receivers get their own filtered view of the live map: the hulls your station is delivering right now, and nothing else.

• Ports of call9 Sep 2026

  Every catch now records where its flight was coming from and going to, so your collection has a second shape - a map of airports rather than a wall of aircraft.

• Did my ships stream arrive?9 Sep 2026

  The AIS network now answers the first question anybody with a receiver asks, and the ingest reply tells a station what it delivered today.

• Lists that arrive instead of appearing8 Sep 2026

  Every list on the site used to show a blank space and then snap into place in one frame. The station leaderboard, your collection, the type hubs, the live feed, ship and race pages, your receivers page and the sort buttons now hold the shape of what is loading.

• Your antenna can hear ships7 Sep 2026

  The network takes a second band. If you run an AIS receiver you can now feed it to Skydex with one flag, and the ships it hears show up in the world, on the public map and in your station's numbers, including on water no commercial feed covers.

• The rarity table is open7 Sep 2026

  Every aircraft type Skydex knows, its tier, and where that tier came from now live in a public GitHub repository. Argue a tier in an issue, add a missing type in a pull request, and watch the result reach production.

• The other half of the water7 Sep 2026

  Every AIS transmitter speaks one of two dialects and the map was only listening to one. Class B, which covers pilot boats, workboats, launches, small fishing boats and every yacht, was never asked for. It is there now, and the small boats it brings arrive anonymous until they say what they are.

• A front door for ships7 Sep 2026

  The AIS side of the network has its own page now, skydex.online/ais, with both ways to feed it, the hardware you need and what we publish. Before today the only place any of that was explained was a dropdown behind a login.

• Rare sky, in your Discord6 Sep 2026

  The Skydex Discord now has alert channels fed straight by the receiver network: legendary and mythical aircraft as they appear, epics in their own room, held emergency squawks, station milestones, and a 20:00 Berlin daily digest. No bot to run, no commands to learn.

• What the plate says now5 Sep 2026

  The card that floats over a live aircraft in the sim used to show a callsign, a four-letter code, an altitude and a speed. It now names the machine, shows whose flag it flies, says how far away it is, and shouts when the aircraft is squawking an emergency.

• Two ladders5 Sep 2026

  A player's profile ranks them by XP; a receiver ranks on the station list by Signal. The two ladders were never meant to merge, but until today they did not even point at each other. Now a profile lists its receivers with their place, the station list is numbered, and a station page says who runs it.

• The network has a front door5 Sep 2026

  The Skydex receiver network finally has one page that says what it is: skydex.online/adsb. And every city page now shows what our own antennas hear over that city right now, the one block no weather site or tracking map can write.

• Seen, not caught5 Sep 2026

  A feeder's aircraft collection is mostly types an antenna heard and nobody photographed. Those now look the part: silhouettes in their own section, two-number counters everywhere, and a bar that says how far the hands have got through the list the antenna wrote.

• Heard by the network: type and aircraft pages now say where our receivers picked them up5 Sep 2026

  Every aircraft type page and every airframe page now carries a block built from our own ADS-B receivers: how many different airframes of that model the network heard, on how many days, at which stations and where those stations stand. Counts only, never a tail number.

• Dormant stations5 Sep 2026

  A receiver that has not sent a packet for a month leaves the station ranking, not the network. Its page and its history stay, and the first packet puts it straight back. Owners get three reminders on the way there, and one nudge if the receiver never fed at all.

• Your stations page grew up2 Sep 2026

  /feed listed your receivers the way a settings screen lists devices — a name, a date, a connector line to copy. Everything that says whether a station is any good lived somewhere else. Each receiver now gets a card: what it is doing this second, what it did over the last thirty days, and the shape of its horizon, all in the place you already had open.

• Your collection, sorted by who built it2 Sep 2026

  The aircraft dex could show you types, or every airframe flat. It now has a third view: types grouped under the company that built them, with an honest count on each heading.

• What this station gave2 Sep 2026

  A station page could tell you how many hours a receiver was up and how far it reached — and nothing at all about why any of that matters. It now says how many aircraft it put into somebody's collection, and which ones nobody else in the network heard.

• What flies past your antenna2 Sep 2026

  A station page can now show the models a receiver hears, each with two numbers that mean different things: how many different aircraft of that model came past, and how often any of them did. Collections fed by a receiver get their own row for the same scale.

• Stations have a class now — and a page worth opening2 Sep 2026

  A receiver's page was a column of numbers with no verdict and no aircraft. It now has a Signal score, an airspace-style class from G to A, and a wall of everything it heard — as cards, with photos, grouped the way you want them.

• Your cards have levels now1 Sep 2026

  Rarity says how unusual the aircraft is. It never said anything about you. Cards now carry a level — I to V — earned by how deep you have gone into that one subject.

• The catalogue said there were two aircraft achievements. There are twenty-three.1 Sep 2026

  A quiet fallback filed most of the aircraft track under 'Social', so the achievements page told plane spotters the game had almost nothing for them. Fixed — and the page now shows which achievement you are about to finish.

• Your streak was invisible — now it flies with you28 Aug 2026

  Daily missions and a streak have been paying out since early August, and the only place either was visible was a card on your own profile page. Taking off now secures your day, the lobby tells you whether it is secured, the flight HUD carries a streak chip, and the streak finally leaves a permanent mark.

• Where your station hears: the reception rose is finally on the page28 Aug 2026

  A station page told you how far your receiver hears — one number, a median of the daily records. It never told you which way. The direction was measured all along, three weeks of it, sitting in the database behind a check that quietly answered "no data". Station pages now draw the reception rose: thirty-six ten-degree sectors, each one as long as the farthest aircraft ever heard that way, with the directions we have never heard in left empty rather than filled in.

• Am I feeding you? Ask without an account25 Aug 2026

  There is a group of people our feeder pages could never talk to — the ones already sending us data anonymously. Their stream helps the network and earns them nothing, and because they have no account and no key, nothing on the site could tell them so. The /feed page now has a button that compares the address you are asking from with the addresses our ingest sees, and answers in plain words. The same work closed a leak we found on the way in.

• The antennas get a page23 Aug 2026

  Every aircraft in Skydex was heard by somebody's antenna, and until this week the network knew exactly one fact about each of those receivers — that it had once sent a packet. Now it records a row per station per day, publishes a page for each one, and tells owners when their box goes quiet. It also means an old promise had to be rewritten rather than quietly missed.

• When does the sun set here? Skydex finally knows22 Aug 2026

  Our weather service could tell you the temperature over Hamburg, the gusts, and whether the evening was flyable — but not when the light runs out. Sunrise, sunset and daylight length are now computed from the city's coordinates, not fetched, and the same calculation replaces four separate guesses that decided "night" by looking at the clock.

• Is my receiver actually feeding? The station page now answers22 Aug 2026

  The Skydex Feeder Network page listed your receivers, handed you a connector line, and then told you exactly one thing about them — the timestamp of the last packet we ever saw. That answers "did this work once", not "is it working now". Every station row now carries live status from the ingest itself: online, connected-but-silent, offline, or honestly unknown, with messages per second, positions per second, uptime, link rate and latency.

• Real photos, but only of planes you actually caught19 Aug 2026

  You can now attach a real photograph to an aircraft in your collection — if you caught it with the aircraft genuinely overhead you. Here is why the rule is that narrow, and how the review works.

• Have I caught her before? The sea finally answers17 Aug 2026

  Aircraft have carried a "seen 3×" marker on every live surface since August; ships carried nothing, so a hull in the reticle looked identical whether it was your hundredth freighter of the evening or the one you had been chasing for a week. Fixing that exposed something worse — the vessel spotter did not know where you were looking, and picked the nearest boat in a flat bearing cone. Both are fixed.

• Every place link takes off now16 Aug 2026

  The button on every city and country page said "Play in Hamburg" and quietly dropped you into the old voxel globe on foot. It now hands you an aircraft over the same coordinates — and the already-shared links from before do too.

• Which flight is that?15 Aug 2026

  Aircraft cards now name the flight — LH441, not just DLH441. It turns out we already had the answer and were showing it in the wrong notation.

• Four icons in the top row: radio, walkie, who is flying, who is waiting15 Aug 2026

  On phones the music player and the walkie-talkie no longer sit on top of the flight controls — they hide until you tap their own topbar icon, and each icon shows whether the set is switched on or off. The online roster gets its own icon too, so you can see who is up there before you ever take off. And there is finally a pause button, because Esc is not a thing on a phone.

• One, two, spot: the catching ritual now teaches itself15 Aug 2026

  Zoom and shutter used to sit in opposite corners of a phone screen with nothing explaining that one arms the other, and while zoomed the HUD could only ever talk about the single thing already in your crosshair. Both are fixed — a numbered, framed pair of buttons that narrates every beat, and a bearing ribbon that shows what there is to catch in the first place.

• Who is flying that? The map now says so, in the airline's own mark12 Aug 2026

  Every aircraft on the map used to be a callsign and nothing else — you had to know that DLH441 is Lufthansa. Now each contact carries its operator's logo beside it, with the airline's name spelled out when the sky is quiet enough to read, and a coloured code chip for the operators we have no logo for yet.

• The ladder learns to fly — three ranks renamed11 Aug 2026

  The career ladder was written when Skydex was about ships, and it showed — seven of fifteen ranks were nautical, and both endgame tiers were sea myth. Three names have moved to wording that works for plane spotters too. Nothing about your XP, your position on the ladder or your history changed.

• You can finally catch the aircraft you see from the cockpit10 Aug 2026

  Live traffic has been flying through the simulator for two days, and until now all you could do was look at it. Zoom in, hold the crosshair, press P — the aircraft goes into your collection. No daily limit, because that sky costs us nothing. And the ones that were really above you are marked forever.

• Am I going up? The drone HUD can finally answer that10 Aug 2026

  The artificial horizon was drawn at roughly a quarter of the angle it should have been, from the wrong camera, with no scale — and on a quadcopter a horizon cannot answer "am I climbing" anyway. The drone HUD now has a vertical-speed gauge, a proper pitch ladder, a flight path marker, an AGL readout and an optional audio variometer.

• Hamburg's sky is now live in the sim, 24/7 — powered by station №19 Aug 2026

  One receiver on one windowsill keeps every aircraft over Hamburg flying inside the simulator around the clock — the station's whole 140 km footprint, with photo plates, distance tags and optical zoom. Your city is one antenna away from the same.

• Aircraft type and airline pages now have something to read9 Aug 2026

  Every type, airline and manufacturer page used to be a title, a card and an empty spec list — and most of them were invisible to search on purpose. They now carry real text, a fact sheet, browsable hubs at /aircraft-types, /airlines and /manufacturers, and a gate that lets a page into the index when it actually has content.

• Skydex Feeder for Mac — feed the sky without a Raspberry Pi8 Aug 2026

  A native macOS menu bar app that turns a $30 RTL-SDR stick into an ADS-B feeder. Decoder bundled, two-minute wizard, feeds Skydex and every other network in parallel. Free.

• The sky is no longer empty — real aircraft now fly inside the simulator8 Aug 2026

  Aircraft picked up by the Skydex Feeder Network are now rendered in the 3D world, at their real altitude, attitude and heading. Park by a runway and watch actual departures rotate and climb out.

• Sky Radar now shows the whole sky — catch three per scan, and keep the receipts7 Aug 2026

  A scan no longer trims the list to three aircraft: you see everything overhead — even private aircraft, anonymized — pick up to three catches per scan, and a new history panel remembers when you caught whom.

• Season rewards: what happens when the month runs out6 Aug 2026

  Season 1 «First Light» now has a real finish line — automatic rewards, permanent profile badges and four titles the moment the season closes.

• The collection split in two: aircraft and ships each got their own page6 Aug 2026

  The profile's Collection tab became a real overview with clickable stat tiles, and the collection itself now lives on two separate pages — /dex/aircraft and /dex/ships, aircraft first — instead of one URL with hidden tabs.

• skydex.online/live — the site finally has a center6 Aug 2026

  A full live-feed page is now the heart of the site shell — published moments as big photo cards, sightings, builds, catches and records in one scrollable stream with hearts working right there. And when you pause mid-flight, the feed widget opens itself, because pause is when you can actually scroll.

• Hearts on moments, hearts in the feed6 Aug 2026

  Published screenshots can finally be liked — on the post page, on profiles, and right from the live feed. Plus the polish pass on hearts everywhere - double-tap to like, a who-liked list that works on phones, and a proper little pop animation.

• Feeder badge is live, and the feeder page now shows real network numbers6 Aug 2026

  The 📡 Feeder badge now appears on your Skydex profile the moment your receiver's first packets arrive, feed.skydex.online shows live network stats instead of promises, and confused feeders get a one-click path to a human in Discord.

• Aircraft type cards: your collection now has three floors6 Aug 2026

  The aircraft dex got a new collectible level — one card per aircraft type, with your caught tails grouped underneath and links across the whole aircraft graph.

• Aircraft pages get real photographs6 Aug 2026

  Type pages now carry a real hero photo of the aircraft, and individual airframe pages show an actual photograph of that exact tail — with the photographer credited, the way it should be.

• Seasons are here — career forever, glory by the month5 Aug 2026

  Skydex now runs monthly seasons. Your career, ranks and collection never reset — but every month a parallel race starts from zero, with its own XP, ships, aircraft and race boards. Season 1, «First Light», is already counting.

• Radio chat gets hearts and replies5 Aug 2026

  Station chats are conversations now, not just a scrolling wall. You can heart any message, answer a specific person with a quoted reply, and the bell tells you when someone reacted to what you said while you were away.

• Live sky on the Skydex map — powered by our own feeder network5 Aug 2026

  The map has a new layer — real aircraft, live, drawn from the Skydex Feeder Network's own receivers. Wherever the network has coverage, planes crawl across the map in real time, free to watch, with a tap-through to every airframe's page.

• The Skydex Feeder Network is open — plug in your ADS-B receiver5 Aug 2026

  Skydex now runs its own ADS-B aggregation network. If you operate a receiver, one config line points it at feed.skydex.online — and aircraft scans in the game over your area get served by your antenna. Non-exclusive, free, with feeder perks rolling out next.

• Every caught aircraft now has a page — and so does its type, maker and airline5 Aug 2026

  Aircraft subject pages are live — each airframe you catch on Sky Radar gets a canonical page, linked up to its type, manufacturer and airline pages with specs, spotter history and world-first credits. Caught subjects now flow into the sitemap automatically.

• Uncovering a shipyard now pays — even if the answer arrives late4 Aug 2026

  Finding out who built your ship is now a rewarded discovery. First yard in your collection pays XP through the notification bell, being the first player in the world to uncover a yard pays Tridents, and the flag and shipyard pages now look like the collectible cards they always were.

• Saw her with your own eyes? Put it on the card4 Aug 2026

  If you're standing where you can see a real ship, you can now photograph her and attach the shot to your card — verified against the live map, rewarded fatter than anything in the sim, with a whole new family of achievements for the people who go outside.

• Ports get their own pages — who's in harbour right now4 Aug 2026

  Every port your tracked vessels touch now has a live page — which ships are in port at this moment, the last 30 days of arrivals and departures, and how late each arrival ran against its declared ETA. Built entirely from the fleet watch you already power by starring vessels.

• My hangar — keep the aircraft you care about, ask where they are4 Aug 2026

  A hangar for aircraft, the way the fleet works for ships — star a plane you caught on Sky Radar, keep it with your notes, and ask "where is she now?" up to twice a day for a live position fix. No background tracking, by design.

• The world map is alive now — ships and players by default4 Aug 2026

  The public world map linked from every page now shows what makes this world worth watching — live AIS ships and the players who are flying and building right now — while community spots became an opt-in layer with its own toggle.

• Your fleet tells you more — port bells, declared status, punctuality4 Aug 2026

  Fleet tracking got three upgrades from data we were already receiving — a bell notification when your ship reaches a port, the crew's own declared status (at anchor, moored, aground) on every card and ship plate, and honest punctuality stats against the ETA the crew promised.

• Where bound, and when — ETA for your fleet4 Aug 2026

  Fleet cards now carry live voyage data — the destination the crew punched into their AIS unit and the ETA they reported, kept fresh by the worldwide watch instead of frozen at the moment you starred the ship.

• Real ship photos on your collection cards4 Aug 2026

  The Wikidata photo that already decorated a vessel's own page now travels with the card — onto your dex wall, your profile showcase, and the shipyard pages, which themselves turned from text lists into proper walls of holo cards.

• Your own shots, kept3 Aug 2026

  The screenshot you take when you catch a ship used to be a throwaway download. Now it becomes the card's photo, it lines a public wall of everyone who ever caught that vessel, and your gallery finally sorts the way you'd expect.

• The ladder grows — five new ranks and a page that explains them3 Aug 2026

  The career used to top out at Albatross, which active pilots were hitting in a month or two. Five new ranks now stretch the ladder to Poseidon, a dedicated /ranks page finally explains how the whole thing works, and your profile shows exactly what every badge was earned for.

• Catching a ship is a shot you line up now3 Aug 2026

  Spotting used to be one keypress and a mystery card. Now it is aim, zoom, hold the lock while a dossier of the vessel reveals itself, then take the photo. Every ship has its own page with the full history of everyone who caught it, and your collection is one wall of cards.

• The yards behind the ships — shipyard pages and a hidden shelf3 Aug 2026

  Catch a notable vessel and the game now quietly learns who built her. Shipyards get their own public pages listing every spotted ship they launched, and your collection grows a golden shelf that only appears once you've found your first yard.

• Ships at their real size3 Aug 2026

  A 263-metre container ship was being drawn in the world as an 18-metre dinghy. The cause was a six-minute AIS message we kept missing, and the fix gives the world a memory — hulls we have identified once now stay identified, and the collection cards written while we were guessing are repaired in place.

• Rare flags glow, and missions get a second chance3 Aug 2026

  Two follow-ups shipped the same day they were asked for — the Flags shelf now knows which flags are genuinely rare and tints them accordingly, and any daily mission you don't fancy can be swapped once a day for Feathers.

• Every race track now explains itself3 Aug 2026

  A track page used to be a schematic above an empty table. Now each of the nineteen courses has a written description of the route, a full course profile, flying advice, and an honest summary of who has flown it and how fast — and the tracks players build themselves finally have public pages too.

• A bell, and everything you missed3 Aug 2026

  Rewards used to exist for two seconds and then vanish. There is now a notification bell in the header — every achievement, every rank, every Trident, with the reason it was paid — and it remembers what happened while you weren't looking.

• Your fleet gets its own page — with movement history3 Aug 2026

  The fleet you star in-game now lives at its own page, skydex.online/my/fleet — every tracked vessel with live status, private notes, port activity, and a 30-day movement track per ship. Your profile shows which ships you follow; the history itself stays yours.

• Every flag gets its page3 Aug 2026

  The flag tiles on your collection now click through to full pages — every vessel the community has spotted under Panama, Malta or the rarest registry you can find, with spotter counts and the flag's true rarity, all indexable for the world to discover.

• Flags of the world — your collection now collects countries too3 Aug 2026

  Every ship you catch flies a flag, and now those flags are a collection of their own. Your dex page grew a Flags shelf — one tile per flag state, levelling from Bronze to Platinum as you catch more distinct ships under it.

• Something to spend your Feathers on — three boosters for ship spotters3 Aug 2026

  The Feathers wallet finally has a shop for the people who fill it — Recon boost stretches your lock reach, Fast dossier reveals a vessel's identity sooner, and Spotter's eye briefly flags the rare ships hiding in your area. Comfort for sale; access, never.

• Daily missions — three small reasons to fly today3 Aug 2026

  Every day you now get three missions — one for spotters, one for pilots, one wildcard — each paying Feathers, with a set bonus for closing all three and a gentle streak that grows day by day. No punishments, no paid streak insurance, ever.

• A little more joy when you catch something3 Aug 2026

  Catching a ship or aircraft, or unlocking an achievement, now lands with a bit of animation instead of a quiet grey toast — a joyful "+XP" pop on every spot, and a proper little banner for each achievement with the XP it paid.

• Your career page, and finding your way around3 Aug 2026

  The profile now leads with your collection, achievements group by activity and open to explain themselves, your rank shows how far to the next one, and every page finally shares one navigation bar with a breadcrumb trail so you always know where you are.

• A cleaner way in2 Aug 2026

  The welcome screen was quietly wearing the whole flight cockpit — altitude, minimap, the whole button rail — stacked over the one thing it is meant to do, which is get you into the sky. Now the cockpit waits until you are actually flying.

• Your fleet, even when it goes dark1 Aug 2026

  Star a ship and Skydex keeps watching it worldwide — so a vessel shows on your map at its last-known position with a "last seen 3h ago" tag even when it has sailed out of the live radar, plus a timeline of the ports it has come and gone from.

• How we decide whether today is flyable31 Jul 2026

  Every weather service tells you the forecast. None of them tell you whether you can fly in it. Here are the exact thresholds we use, why gusts outweigh steady wind, and where the data comes from.

• One map for everything30 Jul 2026

  Ships, flying spots, your fleet, your saved places and every city — on one full-screen map that works the same in the game and on the web, and finally works properly on a phone.

• A map of where people actually fly29 Jul 2026

  spots.skydex.online is a catalogue of real-world FPV and drone spots — seeded from open data, claimable by the clubs that own them, and honest about the countries where flying is restricted.

• Your collection now has a page28 Jul 2026

  A public leaderboard, an achievement catalogue, a career hub on your profile and a full collection page at /your-name/dex — plus one shared navigation bar so the site stops feeling like a pile of unrelated HTML.

• Tridents — a currency you cannot grind27 Jul 2026

  A second currency that only pays out for firsts, world records and the hardest achievements. It buys cosmetics and nothing else, and there is no way to farm it.

• Start your own radio station26 Jul 2026

  Skydex Radio is no longer just our stations. Anyone can create one, upload tracks, give it a cover and a genre, and put it on air for everyone flying — with your name on it.

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