Aircraft Selection - Complete Mess (Not missing aircraft)

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Who on earth ever looked at this aircraft selection screen and thought this was how they wanted to release the game.
Even with just the included aircraft.. this is a complete and utter mess.

The naming conventions are completely random - I mean.. some aircraft don’t list a manufacturer.. or they have the creator in the manufacter slot.. some don’t have the correct manufacturer.. not even all the aircraft names are correct

The grouping.. wow.. some aircraft have each livery treated as a separate variant of the aircraft.. others have variants not appearing, instead being treated like a livery. The naming screw up means that related aircraft don’t even appear together in the lists.

There’s no search function. At All.
The filters are vague and not customisable

And only 6 aircraft visible at once with no option to resize?

I know there are plenty of other teething issues out there, but no one seems to be mentioning this.. and I know it’s going to drive my slightly OCD mind absolutely crazy. Especially with everything no doubt so locked down by DRM that I won’t be able to correct it myself like back in the FSX days.

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There IS a search function.

Aside from that… yes, its comoplete garbage.

Its a weird trend of being more… horizontal in MSFS2024. Like its meant for ultrawide screens only.

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I’ve figured out the following… (assuming what I’ve learned is correct).

The entries on the aircraft selection are controlled by icao_model. So two aircraft with icao_model = A1 will appear as a single item on the selection screen. icao_model = A2 will be a second item.

The text shown for the selection screen item = ui_manufacturer ui_type - ui_creator
This is also the text shown as the main aircraft naming text in the configure screen

So the text doesn’t affect how aircraft are grouped… and the grouping doesn’t affect how the aircraft are named. I think… if you have two aircraft grouped, but with different names… the most recently selected one is the name that appears.

The sort order for aircraft is by ui_manufacturer ui_type - ui_creator. icao_model does not affect sort order.

The text shown in the variant and livery selections for each option is ui_variation. Leaving ui_variation blank results in the display showing ‘Default’

The main thing I cannot figure out is… what determines if a specific ui_variation should appear under the variant tab or the livery tab?

And from there… how do you set a specific livery to be tied to a specific variant?
At the moment… all the liveries seem to appear their own variant and not connected to any actual variant (including the default). So my variants are coming up as livery 01, default, floats, skis… etc.
Default, floats and skis have only their 1 default livery. All the liveries actually appear as liveries for the livery 01 variant. Changing the livery selected doesn’t appear to change the name of the variant from livery 01 to, for example, livery 01.

I also have no idea what controls the sort order of liveries.
By setting liveries up as 01, 02, 03, 4, 55, 06, 07, 08
I actually get the order 01, 07, 4, 02, 55, 03, 08, 06. What’s going on there?

My ideal aim is to figure out how to set up a single entry in the aircraft selection… with variants (Standard, Floats, Skis) and then maybe standard liveries (white, blue, red etc… ) but with the ability to have float specific liveries (maybe 1,2,3)

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This is an extract for a livery conversion guide I have been working on.

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image632×570 20.1 KB

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So… liveries will always appear grouped together as their own variant rather than being related to a variant already on the tab? That’s… disappointing.

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FYI, there are a number of wishlist items around this issue, for example:

and bug reports, such as:

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Yeah - none of those specifically address the difference between how FS24 defines a variant vs. a livery. Which seems odd.. why have separate tabs for each unless you can actually define them as two different things?

Perhaps I’m being naively optimistic in thinking that it does work as it appears to have been intended and that we just don’t know how to setup the aircraft.cfg files correctly yet, rather than assuming, bugged or bad design.. and not working?

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I agree. I’ve been waiting for the Zlin Shock Ultra to show in my library is last Tuesday, only to discover today that it was hiding as a variant of the Zlin Savage Cub. So, I choose it. Now the Savage Cub no longer shows in the library - unless I configure the Shock Ultra, in which case, there it is. Surprise! The Aircraft UI is very confusing… :crazy_face: