Sky Dolly v0.11 - A Big Update for Minimalists
Sky Dolly v0.11 has just been released, read the announcement.
The complete new feature set is also described in the CHANGELOG on github.com. Here I’d simply like to highlight one big theme of this release: minimalism.
A Truly Minimal UI
While most of the work has been done “under the hood” the biggest visually recognisable feature is Sky Dolly’s new, truly minimal user interface (UI) mode.
Note that this is a fully functional Sky Dolly interface, even allowing you to record formation flights. Simply switch into the Formation module first (key F2), enter the minimal UI mode (key M) and keep clicking on the record button, and the aircraft get added to your formation.
And of course all your flights and aircraft still get automatically persisted in the logbook (which keeps working in the background, of course). Reduced to the max.
It does not get simpler than that!
Minimised RAM Usage
Sky Dolly now only allocates resources (e.g. for dialogs) on demand, and immediatelly releases them after use (instead of only at the end of the application). Like this the RAM usage could be reduced even more, especially when launching the app in the minimal UI mode (the choice gets remembered in the application settings).
Here is the absolute RAM usage (in Megabytes [MiB]) just after application launch, compared to the previous Sky Dolly v0.10 and to other replay applications:
Sky Dolly v0.11 now only uses 12.1 MiB in minimal UI mode, right after application launch.
In percent:
Note that already in previous iterations all import and export functionality is implemented as plugins: they are only loaded on demand and released (unloaded from memory) right after usage, too.
Happy flying!