Major ELEVATEX Update & Introducing ELEVATEX Premium

Hello everyone,

We have a lot to share with you today, and we’re excited to dive in. First, we want to take a moment to thank everyone in our community, staff team, and developers. Your support and passion have brought ELEVATEX to where it is today, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Introducing ELEVATEX Premium
We’re excited to announce ELEVATEX Premium — an optional subscription designed to enhance your experience while helping to keep ELEVATEX sustainable. We want to be clear that all core features will remain free. Premium is about adding enhancements to your experience. We are introducing this subscription to allow anyone who would like to support us to do so.

Over the past two years, we’ve funded ELEVATEX entirely out of our own pockets — driven by passion and a commitment to create a community-based flight tracker. To keep ELEVATEX sustainable, innovative, and available for the long term, we’re introducing Premium as a way for our community to contribute directly to its future.

Limited-Time Offer: 15% Off ELEVATEX Premium

As a thank-you to our community — especially those who patiently stuck with us during the post-launch downtime earlier this year — we're offering 15% off both our monthly and yearly ELEVATEX Premium subscriptions.

This special offer is available for a limited time only, ending on July 28th at 23:59 UTC.

Take advantage of the discount and enjoy enhanced features while supporting the continued growth of ELEVATEX.

Premium Pricing:

• $3.99/month

• $39.99/year (2 months free)

The current premium features include:

• Discord and In-App Premium badge

• 1-second flight path rendering and storing at an increased rate, resulting in smooth lines and curves

• Unlimited 4K screenshots

• Early access to new features before they are available to everyone else

• Cloud Autosaves*

  • *Coming in an update in the next few weeks

• & more to come in the coming months!

Key Update Highlights
This is one of our biggest updates yet. We’ve made improvements across the board to bring you a faster, smoother, and more powerful experience. Here’s what’s new:

1-Second Flight Tracking and Storing (Premium only)

This update brings a feature that was highly requested to ELEVATEX. However, due to the effect of adding this feature, resulting in more storage used we can't offer this for free. This is the reason why this enhancement is part of ELEVATEX Premium.

For comparison, here are two screenshots of the exact same movement, one with Premium and one without.

With Premium                                                                                                         Without Premium

Navigraph Navigation Database & AMDB implementation (including VATSIM gates)

AMDB

Thanks to our partner Navigraph and their efforts to bring AMDB data to browser-based implementations outside the simulator, we are now able to display AMDB data directly in ELEVATEX. AMDB data stands for Airport Mapping Database, which contains the entire airport in a format you can map the airport with all the details from top down. In combination with our VATSIM Integration, this has enabled us to display available and occupied gates at airports that have AMDB data available. For the VATSIM users among us, we all know that time you connected and realized you are placed on the same stand as someone else. With our implementation, you can check this before loading into the stand/gate.

Navigraph Navigation Database (SID and STARS)

In the version you currently have installed (before installing this update) we have an initial implementation of our route parsing. With this update, we have taken that a step further. We allow you to modify the textual route and can now also parse SID/STARS along with their en route and approach transitions based on the runway. The next step we will be taking in a future update is allowing you to select the STAR/SIDS and approaches directly in the UI. Unlike the AMDB data, this will still work to an extent without a subscription. We fall back to the older Navigraph "free" AIRAC if you do not have a valid Navigraph Subscription.

Onboarding experience

To help new users seamlessly join the ELEVATEX community, we’ve launched the first version of our onboarding experience. This setup is designed to make it easier for newcomers to get started, configure their app, and get the most out of ELEVATEX from day one.

This is just the beginning — we’ll be refining the onboarding process based on your feedback to ensure it’s as helpful and intuitive as possible.

You’ll find the full changelog below, along with our roadmap outlining what’s ahead for ELEVATEX over the coming year.

If you encounter any issues, please report them on the forums — your feedback helps us respond quickly and continue improving the platform.

Thank you once again to everyone who’s been part of this journey. This update marks a major milestone, and it’s just the beginning of what’s to come.

DCS Support Dropped

We’ve decided to discontinue support for DCS. After investigating user reports indicating that tracking works in missions but not in free-roam sessions, we found that DCS only loads the required Lua files in specific scenarios. Because of this limitation, consistent tracking isn’t feasible, making ongoing support impractical.

Aircraft Database

Our aircraft database of their real-life counterparts is frequently updated. This update now brings the ability to bring your own stored aircraft up to date if the definition is modified. A future update will include the ability to override from this, for example, when a registration is reused. You will know if there is an update available with a simple badge that will indicate this.

Road Map

Roadmap Update: What’s Ahead

The roadmap above outlines the major features we’re working on through Q3 of next year. That said, these aren’t the only updates you can expect. We’ll continue to roll out regular improvements, including bug fixes, performance enhancements, and quality-of-life updates. Consider this a high-level look at what’s coming, not the full picture.

Next Major Milestone: Virtual Airlines

We’re excited to announce that Virtual Airlines is our next big feature. We’re building it to be fully integrated and easy to use—no need for third-party tools like FSUIPC or external apps. Flight tracking and VA management will all be handled directly within the platform, delivering a seamless experience from start to finish. We are working together with VA's for the development of this.

— The ELEVATEX Team

FULL CHANGE LOG
Core App Updates

• App initialization screen ensuring app is ready when map appears

• Onboarding process for new users

• Skeleton loading states added across the app for feedback when the app is busy loading

• Added a system notification when the real-time connection or backend connection is interrupted.

  • NOTE: This does not indicate ELEVATEX is down, sometimes we deploy quick backend fixes which can cause a brief interruption, but we now make it visible. 

• Fixed and synced app-wide translations, more updates will follow

• When the app is minimized, we stop rendering the map until re-opened, saving resources and minimizing system impacts.

Authentication

• Resolved the login bug that has been causing intermittent issues with the current build.

Map and Rendering

• Reworked the entire map rendering platform

• Added airports and heliports to the map

• New Satellite and Dark mode map options

• Navigraph AMDB Implementation

• Enhanced Navigraph Navigation Data implementation with SID, STAR, runway, and go-around procedures.

• New airport icons by type (international, regional, etc.)

• Map buttons redesigned

• Thinner and clearer tracking lines

• Added distance + heading ruler tool (double-click + drag)

  • This will be enhanced so you can pin your line from any item on the map to anything else that moves.

• Updated ELEVATEX and VATSIM selected aircraft window

• VATSIM Center/Approach/Departure now only light up when hovered on text for better accuracy with overlapping sectors.

• Map overview toggles for dark/satellite modes

• ELEVATEX Aircraft shows the ALT/SPD next to the aircraft when zoomed in enough

• Resolved issue with day/night line only appearing once opening the map toggles

• Filter to filter by simulator for the scanned scenery detected

• Resolved issue where default background would not show on the selected aircraft window

Active Flight

• Redesigned active flight card with a new progress bar.

• Callsign, flight number, and gate moved to "Plan' tab

• Fetch flight plan from VATSIM (separate from Simbrief)

• File custom VATSIM flight plans directly via ELEVATEX

• Automatic detection of departure and arrival gates (Only works with Navigraph AMDB, this requires a Navigraph Ultimate subscription)

• Auto-fetch Simbrief flight plan when tracking begins

• Time sync system fully rebuilt (note this is mainly meant for P3D but also works for MSFS)

• Implemented diversions (also visible now for other users) in-app

• Ability to modify your route with instant route parsing using Navigraph.

• Resolved an edge case where the active flight would not load on startup

• Flights performed on the same day stay visible on the app as long as the app is not closed

• Added departure and arrival gates on the minimized active flight window

Flights

• Redesigned Flights page

• Fixed search filters and results logic (e.g., “flight” vs “flights”)

• If no callsign is found, registration is shown instead

• Removed trailing slash when flight number is missing

• When aircraft definitions are updated by our data hub team, your app will show you that there is an update ready to apply. (for example when we correct dates, msn's etc.).

• Ability to navigate to aircraft by clicking the registration on the flight page

• Ability to switch between dark/light mode on the flight details page

• Retain scroll position and filters states on the flights list

Toolbox

• Toolbox items can now be minimized and saved

• Pause at TOD based on altitude and distance

• Added VATSIM frequency switcher

• Slide-out panels (Toolbox, Preferences, etc.) now auto-close when switching tabs

• Added Display tab in Settings to manage sorting and filters

Aircraft

• Aircraft details page redesigned

• Fixed incorrect “flight completed” status

• Ability to navigate to a flight, directly from the aircrafts page

• Retain scroll position and filters states on the aircraft list

• Resolved issue where registration of an aircraft in the sim was only detected if the user had an active flight in the aircraft registration window

• Display aircraft age on details page

• Display airline on the aircraft creation page

• Added a field to input the Simbrief Aircraft ID (this will be used for a future feature) to generate a Simbrief flight plan without needing to specify many parameters

• Added a setting under settings to combine aircraft by their type, displaying the total flight time and hours flown on a type

Friends + Social

• Friends list redesign

• Displays current aircraft and flight info

User Profile & Stats

• Profile page tweaked and cleaned

• Streaks system fixed and added to profile page

• Account stats now clear properly on reset

• Email and other settings now blurred for privacy

Settings & Preferences

• General tab redesigned, now links to Forums and Changelog

• Moved account data management tab to Account > Data

• Added the ability to auto-detect screenshots taken during a flight. Folders can be configured under Settings -> Preferences -> Tracking

• Scenery scanner now has GSX profile scanning implemented. This will show if you have a GSX profile installed for a scenery

• Resetting account and changing password now gives a warning when the incorrect password is supplied

Accessibility

• Customize your aircraft color and size

• Change color of other users' aircraft

• Option to hide other ELEVATEX users VATSIM aircraft who are active on both

Search

• Ability to search for airports in the main search at the top

Quality of Life refinements (QOL)

• Clicking outside of and on dropdown items now closes the dropdown

• ELEVATEX now switches flight levels on the map above 10,000 feet. We will make this configurable in a future update

• Autosave panel state files (PMDG) are now also removed along with the regular files upon deletion

• X-Plane replay mode is detected and pauses the tracking during replay

• Added aircraft designator to Discord Rich Presence

• Allow longer airport names on the active flight minimized window

• Forced capitalization in the aircraft route input field under active flight