These features are planned to be included in the game when launched.
Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. Ayla runs on all of these platforms, and all of these platforms are able to play together mixed and matched on the same ship or on different ships in the same game.
Load up your ship with your crew and face off against other ships that are loaded with other players also. Several ships can all be in the same scenarios working with or against each other.
Play over the Internet using centralized servers, or run your own game locally. LAN is built in and available on all devices.
Open your favorite web browser on whatever device you have and point it to the address of your main machine. Ayla runs a web server internally to serve up HTML for the UI. This allows you to use older devices and get your friends playing without installing software.
You can write an entire custom UI of your own and communicate with Ayla through it's API using simple GET/POST requests and JSON. You can read the current information about your ship and completely interact with all of it's systems. You can even trigger music, sounds, lights and more.
When in LAN mode, you can load your own models, textures, music, sounds and more. You can create your own scenarios loaded up with whatever objects you want and script various events. Perfect for your LARP or team building event.
Lighting adds a lot of immersion. It's really fun to set lights to different colors or to flash on and off when your shields get hit or when you're firing your weapons. Ayla support Philips HUE lights (all platforms) as well as DMX lights (windows only).
Ayla works with XBOX Controllers, Flight Sticks and more. You can assign various flight functions to the different axis and buttons on your controller.
These features are being planned for future releases.
Your players are having too easy a time? Spawn some nasty aliens near them, or issue commands to existing ships to attack. There are also some plans to be able to fiddle around with the other ship and give them bonuses (or bad luck).
I love the idea of people creating physical knobs and switches to interface with Ayla. Flip that switch and issue the fire torpedo command over a COM/USB port from your Arduino. You could also use a simple display and show info about coordinates, shields, and more.