This is an old revision of the document!
Welcome to the BVI Pilots community chat, a place for blind / visually impaired flight simmers and friends to talk and find out about group flights / similar events. Our community platform is based on the Matrix communication standard, this is unlike our previous channels which were hosted on WhatsApp and Discord. While this means you will need to get used to a new app for chatting on the server, this approach offers lots of great advantages such as the following:
Head over to https://matrix.bvipilots.net, and click the “Create Account” link, a username and password are all that's needed to join, you'll also need to solve a Recaptcha audio challenge which helps prevent spammers from signing up.
After registering, you'll already be able to participate in conversations right within your browser, this also includes the ability to send voice messages from your desktop.
If you want a more permanent desktop application for windows then we recommend you download the element desktop application Here. It functions much as the browser version would in terms of it’s interface.
Element is a messaging app that can be used to connect to our server directly from your iPhone. The app is available from the App Store Here. There is also a public beta version available, which can be downloaded through Testflight Here.
1. After downloading Element, open the following link on your iPhone: https://mobile.element.io/?hs_url=matrix.bvipilots.net&is_url=vector.im 2. You should now be prompted to login to the matrix.bvipilots.net server, follow the instructions and enter the username and password you used when creating your account. 3. The app might ask you to verify the new device log in, in which case you should follow the instructions provided by the app in order to do so.
The Element Matrix client is also available for Android, and can be downloaded from Google Play. However, this has not been tested by our community at the time of this writing, and so we cannot speak to the exact steps of the login process or, most importantly, the accessibility of the app. If you are using Element on Android, we'd love to hear from you so we can improve this section with better instructions.
This new project is currently in beta, so there may be issues along the way when joining or using Matrix. If you do encounter any such issues, we'd love for you to share your feedback with us, either on the server directly or using our contact form in case you are having difficulties signing up.