The custom tail number (registration number) feature in MSFS 2020 is super important to virtual airline players, as it lets us register our aircraft in the country/region where the aircraft is operating.
And yet many 3rd party addon aircraft developers have disabled this feature. Carenado has it, so it can be done by 3rd party developers, but very few 3rd party aircraft developers include the custom registration number on their aircraft.
Why? Is it extremely difficult to do?
Do you mean the livery, or ATC referring to you by your custom call sign?
If the latter, all you need to do is comment out the lines in one of the CFG files, where they have entered the call sign that matches their livery.
I meant the visual registration number as displayed on the exterior view of the aircraft 
And yes, I know how to change the ATC call sign, but when it doesn’t match the visual registration number on exterior of the aircraft, it’s an immersion killer for me.
Viewing the aircraft from the outside isn’t? 
No, not at all.
I fly low and slow, and other than when taking off, landing, and performing other significant maneuvers, I’m in exterior view to enjoy the scenery, which I can see much better in an exterior view. But continuously staring at an out of place registration number bugs me.
For instance, I have a virtual airline based in Africa comprised of small aircraft flying tourists to safari locations, flights feeding passengers to larger airports, etc. But with fixed liveries for only the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the UK, it just doesn’t work.
And what I don’t get, is that custom registration numbers are a standard feature in MSFS 2020, which was a brilliant design idea. Why would 3rd party developers disable that feature on their addon aircraft?
It’s not that they have disabled it, more like they don’t know how to enable it. Carenado can do it, but I think this is something of a black art, perhaps not even fully documented in the SDK.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. I would like to think that Asobo would post a note, or however they communicate to 3rd party developers, on how to do it.
I’m not knocking the 3rd party developers at all. There are many wonderful aircraft being offered, and many with beautiful liveries. I’m just hoping that Asobo will get the message that they need to help 3rd party developers with this feature
It doesn’t change the livery, which is the issue. Carenado managed this, some other developers have not.
@syldon13 The post is about custom tail numbers on 3rd party aircraft and custom liveries given most you can’t set your own with however there is clearly a way even if it’s some weird workaround as we see it done by Carenado and a few others 
There is a guy here tells you how to add liveries.
That still means manually making a livery for every single call sign ever use on a plane rather than being able to simply just use the box in ATC options. Which yes you can do but when when have the likes of Carenado proving the ATC option menu method can be done it seems crazy especially if on about a situation above where you run your own virtual airlines. Obviously there are work arounds but making liveries is a skill most people don’t have even with the instructions as is a huge learning curve which takes time that could be spent flying. That is the purpose/ benefit of the ATC option menu is how painless and accessible it is for anyone to change their tail number. The livery changing option works well for something like the new F-14’s name on side of jet but you are still stuck with the default tail number unless go on a massive learning curve which many just don’t have the time for. Plus if on Xbox you are instantly stuck as can’t even edit the liveries never mind make custom ones. Yet you buy 3rd party aircraft so while making custom liveries for every plane and call sign use is possible if got the spare time, a pc and the skill (plus money to cover cost to use photoshop if going off your link) but it’s not how 99% of us would spend the time nor should we have to when it can be done. It’s just a case of what’s stopping it being done and what Asobo/Microsoft and/or 3rd party devs can do to make what in 2021 is a really basic feature in principle actually work properly.
The renaming option is available for all planes. When I set it for one it applies to what plane I choose after that.
The OP specifically asks if it is hard to do. All I did was supply the information as requested.
The video link may mention photoshop, but there is plenty help in the comments below that. They mention Gimp and paint.net as free alternatives. What may be too much hassle for you, may just be fun for another.
Since the OP is in 3rd party addon, it is a fair assumption he is not on Xbox. AFAIK 3rd party addons are not supported as yet.
It doesn’t work for all planes, as far as I know. The changes you make, both in the sim settings, and commenting out the hard coded tail number, and/or flight number will allow ATC to refer to you as you have set them, but it won’t affect the aircraft markings.
But it certainly does work for some, like the Carenado planes. If they do it right, you don’t need a paint program to edit the livery.
My apologies if it does not. I don’t hold a huge array of 3rd party planes, but I tried a few custom as well as the ones supplied in game.
I’ll double check a couple of my payware ones tomorrow.
A friend of mine just told me that the Yak-18T has the custom registration numbers working like Carenado does, so Nemeth knows how to do it, too.
And that fact has made the Yak-18T my next purchase! 
What some 3rd party developers are doing is supplying only liveries with the registration numbers included in the livery art. So you can’t overwrite the reg number using the MSFS 2020 custom reg number feature. And they don’t enable the feature, so 3rd party livery makers can’t leave the reg number off their art so you can add it using MSFS 2020.
It makes no sense that 3rd party developers would ignore this feature, unless, like was mentioned above, they don’t know how to do it.
I know JustFlight offers both; several liveries of the aircraft with their own designs/fixed tail numbers and one where you can set your own using the ATC options menu. Which is a solid way to go about it
