An update on the status of my liveries for MSFS 2024. Spoiler alert – it’s not good news. If you don’t want to know the details skip to the last paragraph.
You may have noticed that very few of the liveries on Flightsim.to are listed as compatible with 2024. This is the first clue that all is not right in the world of free liveries for 2024. The 2nd clue is Asobo have disabled the 2024 Marketplace. This is to stop people buying 2020 content that mostly just won’t work in 2024.
Asobo told us that they were working on backwards compatibility and that you would just need to move stuff across to 2024. I actually have this in writing from one of their blogs. For liveries at least this is just not correct, as most simply won’t work without some concerted effort to update them. The few freeware aircraft I moved across mostly worked, but they also suffer from many of the problems that plague my liveries and will require updating.
There have been a number of changes made in 2024 that present difficulties for livery creators
- In 2024 there are 3 types of aircraft and each requires a different structure for liveries. 2020 had one type and they all used the same structure. This creates a level of complexity I haven’t managed to wrap my head around yet.
- As all aircraft are now streamed, and Asobo have disabled local storage of aircraft, we can’t look at default aircraft to learn and understand how then 2024 aircraft structure works.
- Asobo have introduced an automatic tail number creation for the dynamic tail number in 2024 aircraft. This can’t be overridden by the end user or the livery creator. MSFS will ignore whatever anyone wants and do its own thing. The tail number it generates will be random and the format based on the country of your departing airport. Want to fly A US registered aircraft out of the UK, MSFS won’t let you.
- The method that we use to control the colour of the dynamic tail numbers no longer works as it did in 2020. So where a dynamic tail number is used on a livery, it now may not match the livery any more.
- None of the methods previously used to disable dynamic tail numbers work. Many liveries use a fixed tail number to match an airline’s unique tail number font or position on the aircraft. Aircraft like the JustFlight 146 of the Captain Sim C130 escape this problem as they don’t have a dynamic tail number, but most other aircraft and virtually all default aircraft aren’t so lucky.
- 2024 uses different thumbnails and more of them. Creating new ones for existing liveries is time consuming.
Liveries available for free on sites like Flightsim.to and Flightsim.com have made a huge contribution to the popularity of MSFS 2020. But Asobo haven’t consulted with or involved free livery creators when developing 2024. Asobo have also provided no assistance to free livery creators to assist them converting their liveries to work with 2024, as far as I am aware. There is the SDK (software development kit) but it is it is more geared towards developers creating an end-to-end aircraft. And liveries that are part of an aircraft, do not work in the same way as liveries created as standalone (ie standalone = virtually every livery on Flightsim.to).
Less than 10% of my liveries even show up in 2024, and those that did need work to display correctly. The other 90% are in my community folder, but are nowhere to be found in 2024. Even modifying the those few that did show up, takes a huge amount of effort to get them to work correctly. I have managed just 1 so far and while it is works, it still not right. But it’s “kinda sorta” OK.
The only bit of good news is that the textures themselves will most likely not require updating, although we don’t know that for sure for default aircraft.
When Asobo finally give us access to locally stored aircraft, livery creators will be able to look at the new structures and hopefully work out how to get their liveries working in 2024. When that might happen is anyone’s guess. I am hoping some bright young spark comes up with all the answers, and I can just look at what he (or she) has done. Monkey see, monkey do. My eyes were bleeding and my head pounding after trying to work out things from the SDK myself.
So, if you are expecting all your favourite liveries on Flightsim.to to miraculously sprout a “compatible with 2024” tag any time soon, my best guess is that you are going to be disappointed.
