Any new info on how IFCS is going to change going forward?
TL;DRIFCS will keep developing and iterating, with David Colson taking over from John Pritchett and new in-editor thruster tuning tools that speed iteration, and some changes were expected to reach the test server that day.
It's going to continue to develop and iterate just as it always had. Our own David Colson has taken over work from John Pritchett. John Pritchett has been training him for the last couple months, actually. So it's been a handoff that's been...
Yeah, maybe to add a little bit to that, the tools they develop now for IFCS, in the newer systems, are so much better. Better in terms of the iteration speed. So David Colson and his team have set up the in-editor thruster tweaking. So basically they can really sit there and iterate super fast on the actual thruster tweaking. Just to give you an idea of what they had to do before, we have these standalone XML files that they're typing in values, reloading, trying, typing in values, reloading, trying. It was just the loop; even though it's a two-minute thing, it's something different when it's just two seconds for them to actually tweak it. So it's pretty cool. I think the tools make it so that they can really hone in the flight better.
And I think right now, actually, as we speak, I think we should be going to PTU today with some ESP changes that Colson has been doing. Same with Andy Nicholson. They've been going through and setting that stuff up.
It's also important to remember that we have a development team that's over 500 people now. And even though you see more developers in our broadcast than you will anywhere else, you're still only seeing a small selection of them. It tends to build the perception that these are the only people that work on these things, or these are the most important people that work on these things. And in some cases, like Todd, that's the case, not so much with Sean. But oftentimes it's just important to remember that there's a team. There's a team of folks that are working on any given feature. So when you see a departure like John Pritchett, because he's the only person you've talked to or you've seen, it tends to build that perception that, oh no, it's up in arms. There's a team of folks.
Only some of us want to subject ourselves to being on video and stuff like that. That is definitely not the norm for a typical programmer. And to get Nico Schultz or someone like this on video would be just an amazing feat. But some of us are more comfortable than others going up on video and getting subjected to the chat roll of either Twitch or YouTube, or Reddit to a lesser extent.