With the new year (2024) we have started working on a set of major new features and improvements that will come to SmartFoxServer in due time. Here is a short list of what’s cooking:
Support for Java 21: the latest LTS release introduces new language features, powerful API and a new Garbage Collector that can be beneficial for server apps such as SmartFoxServer.
Virtual Threads: is one of the main attractions in JDK 21 and a long awaited feature to improve scalability. We’re planning to redesign the threading model in SmartFoxServer to take full advantage of this feature, simplify the the configuration and offer better performance overall.
Reliable UDP: a new addition to the SmartFoxServer bag of supported protocols. Reliable UDP (RDP in short) is ideal for low latency, real-time communication and we plan to provide multiple QoS (quality of service) levels to support different use cases.
Analytics Update: we’re also planning to redesign some of features of our Analytics module to make it more flexible and well integrated.
New Javascript runtime: since Nashorn was dropped in JDK 15 we’re researching different solutions to keep the support for Javascript on the Server side.
Lots more in R&D stage: there are at least another 3-4 major features that are in the early stages of research and a long list of other improvements and tweaks that will interest the server core and API.
At the moment there is no set release date as we’re in the building and testing phase, but we’ll publish more info when it’s time and provide more details.
