Happy (belated) New Years from everyone at NLD. The slightly geeky headline of this blog post is just a reassurance. We know that lately we have been rather quiet on the blog front, but that we are, as always, still here and have been working hard, despite the festive period.
We are working on the final touches of a major update to NLD, finally rolling the major version number up over to 2.0 which will come with some significant changes both under the hood and visually. We will also be introducung support at some level for the Mavic Mini, a feature that has been much requested in support since before it even got announced. We hope to have a release fresh out of the oven by the end of January.
We already have several release's worth of work in the pipeline too, but we will discuss these additions more as we get closer to release of each change.
/all at NLD
24/03/2020 Update - From Cs2000
Hi all, just wanting to address some of the very very misinformed comments both approved and now shown on the blog yet.
NLD is out to rip off our customers?
Totally untrue. Development on the core of NLD 2.0 has stopped and started again many times due to new product launches from DJI, new firmware for old devices that we needed to add support for and other reasons. We have also had to build in plenty of other parts that arent part of the core, backend systems to support the new app for example. We are NOT just announcing new things in the hope of drumming up new license sales, only to dissapear in a puff of smoke with the payments. We genuinely ARE working on this and it WILL be released. Also please remember that we are a very small team, things such as family life does "get in the way" of work sometimes.
Why no "Insert drone here" support?
We dont have access to any secret technical info that allows us to magically open the doors on the hardware DJI designed. As with the last comment, were a very small, but capable team not some super lab of thounsands of people with tens of thounsands of $ of hardware. We have to start from scratch on each new hardware revision and reverse engineer everything ourselves (or with the help of willing community members). Again, this takes time. Time that is then taken away from our real world jobs and families. Please dont read this as we're not dedicated or not willing to put in the work, we absolutely are and do, but some hurdles are difficult or impossible to overcome without insider knowledge which 1, we dont have and 2, would likely be illegal to use even if we did!
Why do you always miss release dates?
Guys, please look back on the track record of this blog. In the beginning, we regularly shared updates regarding what we were working on at whatever stage we were at, often mentioning "it should be released around X date". Software development is difficult and often progress gets halted for one of many many reasons. When we miss a date, we get berated for missing a scheduled release date, which is fair enough. Moving on, we then went quieter, but then the old blog posts and our support system get filled with comments asking us why we have made no progress. See the problem here? Also note that the last blog post said "We hope to have a release fresh out of the oven by the end of January." and not "We will have a release fresh out of the oven on January 31st."
Please take the following away from this blog post.
1. NLD is actively being developed every single day. Whether its looking for more mods, a new client version, fixing bugs or whatever, there is ALWAYS progress being made in one area or another.
2. If you leave a passive aggressive comment on the blog, no, it will not get displayed. We do read them all of course and will respond if there is something to respond too. Fair comments that arent just positive praise however will get approved if they contribute in some meaningful way.
3. We are human and we make mistakes. Timelines and expectations being one of them. It would be very easy for me to redact this blog post and remove any mention of a release date, but thats not how we operate. Please understand this moving forwards
4. Everyone at NLD is grateful for your support, but monetary in terms of purchasing a license, or just a positive or helpful blog comment. Please lets keep this place positive so we dont have to waste time filtering blog comments and addressing them when we would all, im sure, be happier with us working on the app.
What with everything going on in the world right now, use your energy to look after yourself and your familly, just as we are doing with ours, rather than posting these agressive comments on the state of the app and how we do business. Its a much better use of your time and energy and complaining will not magically speed things up.
Be safe out there.
/cs2000