Most liveries don't work in 2024

[Bananimal6685]

Here’s what I think needs to happen.

1. Get rid of the thumbnails entirely except for developer/user created variant thumbnails on the Variants page.

2. Use the Liveries 3D model livery loading panel with arrows on either side of the model to scroll through/load each livery and allow 3D rotation and zoom to get a look instead of relying on the thumbnail to make the selection. Set the initial load to be 3/4 front view like the current thumbnails I am taking so that the initial view is useful.

3. Add a searchable drop-down list to the 3D model viewer to allow for quick loading of a particular livery if the user wants to. This is how DCS does it and it is very effective.

4. If they could allow for renaming the skin in that menu, that would be awesome and allow for sorting the menu properly for inexperienced users. I’ll still use PowerShell to rip through the config files to achieve this.

5. Finally, add a hot link to jump into the cockpit like we could in the hanger. This is REQUIRED to ensure that all interior textures are loading properly. I cannot tell you how many skins I’ve pulled from FSTo where some cockpit textures were missing and needed to be corrected in the texture.cfg or panel.cfg files.

There is no reason to have thumbnails other than to include them in the content manager list. The third-party devs can do that when they build the package. This would save GB of data the sim currently has to crawl through to load the PNG files and would streamline the interface to boot, making for a much leaner, snappier, useful interface experience.

MS would be wise to pay attention to these recommendations as they ultimately will have to stream these ridiculously large PNG files as end-user Marketplace collections grow. Putting them right back into the long loading times issues they claim this new sim was to resolve. As an example, the CowanSim Bell 206L3 add-on contains 63 liveries totaling 152 MB in required thumbnails if following the current SDK requirements for thumbnails. Totally unecessary and redundant if MS would use the 3D model viewer properly.

[RonFLE8397]

They did replace the old textures with more textures for the C172, so yes, they did it with more than the once you’re describing!

[BilingualHarp7]

@FlyingsCool5650

2020 liveries do work for 2020 planes. Most of my Carenado plane liveries still work.

I have found most 3rd party creators haven’t made changes that kill existing liveries. But for Asobo created default aircraft (ie the original 2020 line up) the 2020 liveries are just so much burnt toast now for 2024. So I am talking about some very popular aircraft, the 152, 172, 787, DA40 (NG & TDi) Baron, Bonanza, TBM930. These are just the one I have tried to get working in 2024. But I am guessing this list extends to all other 2020 original aircraft. This changes shows a huge disregard for the FS community, since the changes made brought no benefit, they just different, and so broke existing liveries.

[BilingualHarp7]

@FlyingsCool5650

There’s also that the team hates supporting the FSX style liveries, especially the 8K ones. They, correctly, surmise that those 8K liveries on AI aircraft killed performance of 2020, especially if the textures didn’t have all the mipmaps, and there was nothing they could do about it, yet they (Asobo) gets all the blame. At least in 2024, they could only upload the necessary mipmaps, if they exist.

Sorry, this argument just doesn’t hold water. Firstly it is just as easy to create 8K textures in 2024 as it was in 2020. And also the KTX2 texture conversion process is actually less efficient at compression than the old DDS format. A 8K DDS texture could be compressed to 42.6mb using DXT1 compression which is fine for ALBD textures. But the best you can do with the KTX2 tool provided by Asobo is 85.3mb for the same 8k texture.

And 1 or 2 8K textures doesn’t have much impact when you look at all the textures an aircraft model has to load in order to operate. The few extra 8K textures have virtually no impact. I haven’t seen the loss of any FPS for even the 787 in 8K which uses 4 main fuselage textures. But my general rule is usually 1 fuselage texture use 8K, multiple fuselage textures use 4K.

And while these liveries might be a problem for AI aircraft , I always disable my liveries for AI in the aircraft.cfg, because they are not designed for that purpose. Not even sure if this function still works in 2024, since they have ignored many aircraft.cfg fields in 2024.

So the change that wreaked all liveries for so many default was not made to force livery creators to use a different format. All the old bad habits are just as likely to occur using the new format as the old. More likely in fact, as there are now 15 textures where there used to be 1.

[BilingualHarp7]

@Bananimal6685

stated most skinners had no clue how to properly setup the cfg files

Part of the problem is that Asobo never did any guide aimed livery creators in 2020. And have repeated this oversight in 2024. Just one look at the SDK tells you it is not designed for livery creators. So Asobo have to shoulder the blame for this problem. Asobo are at fault here, for ignoring (and continuing to ignore) a whole section of the FS community. And this small part of the community produces products that are used by all of the FS community. Err except Xbox users (sorry fellas).

[FlyingsCool5650]

@BilingualHarp7

But for Asobo created default aircraft (ie the original 2020 line up) the 2020 liveries are just so much burnt toast now for 2024. So I am talking about some very popular aircraft, the 152, 172, 787, DA40 (NG & TDi) Baron, Bonanza, TBM930.

Those are all 2024 aircraft.

The benefit is better performance and ray tracing support.

[BilingualHarp7]

@Bananimal6685

It is abundantly clear that they have not gone through these aircraft and made sure they are 100% 2024 compatible.

I think the Bonanza V35 is a 2020 legacy aircraft in 2024. So I think they thought that near enough was probably good enough for those aircraft. Yep, thumbnails can be a problem. This is the side view the SDK says is required.

I found that I couldn’t get them to work for the CS C130 as what looks like a drone collision appears in the thumbnail. For those aircraft i just used the old thumbnail and resaved it as the extra thumbnails 2024 requires.

Speaking of the Bonanza V35, have you been able to disable the dynamic tail number for the V35? All my V35 liveries use a fixed tail number to allow me to match a real aircraft livery.

[FlyingsCool5650]

Sure, it’s easy to 8K textures. Piece of cake. What does that have to do with anything? The problem is how much memory they use. And what benefit do they really provide? Not much. We’re talking about the whole sim, not one aircraft. The aircraft we fly is one of a thousand or more that are in the sim at every moment. Do you make sure all the mipmaps are created when you save them? Not many authors do. And I’m not sure their new LOD method is capable of stripping textures at the MipMap level anyway. Maybe? I don’t know. But, be that as it may, an 8K texture takes a ton of memory compared to a 2K file of details and a few decal color files.

That’s correct, as Jorg noted, the LL and FF planes have not been converted, that’ll be done over time (and probably based on usage statistics).

The dynamic tail number functionality has changed, and, apparently it’s broken, too, in terms of being able to change it. There are several bug reports on DevSupport about the fonts and placement and ability to modify the registrations.

The point of my comment about the dev staff hating the FSX method of creating liveries has to do with efficiency. The evidence is all over the SDK, where they say, essentially, “Our way is wayyy better, so efficient, and the future of gaming assets”.

At some point, you have to move on if you want to continue creating a better game, so I understand where they are coming from.

Yes, all the old liveries are now toast. Over time, we’ll learn the new ways to create them, and we’ll get more tools to do it.

I haven’t bothered to do any 2024 liveries yet, I have a lot to learn on the process, and need some good examples of the structure and everything about them. It’s so complicated now, lol. I’ve only gone through and tested some 2020 liveries on some 2020 planes to see if it works, and was also studying the new library sorting methodology. To see if I could game the system like I used to to overcome encrypted aircraft.cfg files. You can’t anymore, they plugged that hole.

Xbox users had plenty of liveries to choose from, btw. They only didn’t have access to freeware, any freeware. And, yes, all those livery products they bought… toast. Unless 4simmers and the like choose to upgrade them for free.

[Bananimal6685]

So, I’m digging through all VFS default aircraft in the Premium Deluxe version as well as the 2020 stuff, mostly the Aviators package, I think I’m missing two of those, and I am finding where it appears Asobo was smack in the middle of converting some of the 2020 packages to native 2024 format and they left the old skin folders in the VFS. You can’t make this stuff up. I feel like I bought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of a sim. And I have no napkins as I attempt to force feed myself the thing. LOL!

I’m finding this stuff as I recreate the VFS folder structure so I can take new screens for each aircraft. That too is a disaster as so many of the aircraft sink into the ground within the aircraft capture tool. There is absolutely no doubt this sim wasn’t fully baked before they forced it out the door. I know they’ll fix most of it, but I’m sure a lot of it will never be addressed. And that is where we’ll come up short as customers, IMO.

You could see the look on their faces during the Dev Q&A. It’s a hot potato for sure.

[Bananimal6685]

I haven’t yet, but I have some skins I’m putting into the sim that don’t use the dynamic reg, at least in the capture tool. So, they are working there. Loading them into the sim might be a different matter though. As soon as I get a chance to look, I’ll let you know.

[Bananimal6685]

Ugggh! And it gets worse. Whoever setup the methodology for default aircraft thumbnails shared thumbnail folders between different variations of the aircraft. So, if I take a screenshot for the Cessna 208 “Static_Scientific_01” livery, the other variants, cargo, floats, etc. use the same folder for their thumbnails. That means these variants will have wheels in the menu system because they all use the same thumbnails.

This is elementary stuff and the kind of stuff that happens when unrealistic timelines are set on projects. Shortcuts are taken. The state of thumbnail creation in the sim is severely broken/compromised by these types of shortcuts implemented by the devs. It is more than clear to me the person responsible for setting up the thumbnail system hasn’t a clue. Between the dynamic registration issues, some aircraft sinking into the thumbnail creator ground, registration panels showing up as white squares when creating thumbnails, I’ll just go ahead and say now, it’s effed beyond belief. This entire system needs to be rewritten in code to allow proper displaying of thumbnails in the sim.

As I’ve said before, and because of the effort required to go back and set this system up correctly, I just don’t see it happening. There are bigger fires burning in the Asobo studios right now. In this scenario, Asobo would do well just to trash the entire thumbnail component in the sim and use the 3D viewer accompanied by a menu system for livery selections. It is that broken. They are never going to go back and fix all this stuff. I just don’t see it happening.

Cargo variant thumbnail folder:

Floats variant thumbnail folder:

Medical variant thumbnail folder:

Passenger variant thumbnail folder:

Scientific variant thumbnail folder:

Skydive variant thumbnail folder:

[gcs7e74205]

This topic is somewhat related, so I’ll link it here too:

[MSFS2024] Option to disable random aircraft registrations

Please let us disable the randomly generated aircraft registrations introduced in MSFS 2024 and use the ones preset with the liveries in the atc_id parameter instead. The random ones are making the in-game ATC use wrong registrations for liveries without dynamic regs. The popular flight trackers are creating the aircraft based on this so they’ll create a random aircraft each time you use them.

[BilingualHarp7]

A lot of 2024 stuff indicates it was designed by programmers that had no interest in aviation. This Iin Itself is not a problem, if they have been given a decent technical specification. And providing their work is checked to make sure it does what it is supposed to. The thumbnail problem you describe here is further evidence of that. There are so many instances when stuff was not only not checked, but not even looked at. The totally stuffed PC24 is a prime example. The 737 max tail number in the top of the right wing is another. These problems could only be in the sim if no-one even looked at them after the changes were made

The real problem is that changes made in 2024 don’t appear to have been checked by anyone. So tte programmer tells Asobo that it works, so they just shove it in without even looking at in.

[blueline308]

@BilingualHarp7

A lot of 2024 stuff indicates it was designed by programmers that had no interest in aviation.

Something is telling me that AI was used extensively in the development and QA testing of FS24.

[Bananimal6685]

While somewhat related and thumbnail creation does exhibit problems displaying proper aircraft registrations, this is more an oversight in how to allow end-users the proper ability to manage and organize their aircraft livery inventory. This is so bad, it not even remotely funny. Honestly, I don’t ever see myself being able to properly manage my skins in 2024. It’s simply not going to happen given the current state of the sim.

[FlyingsCool5650]

It was a nice idea by them to show country related N-numbers on AI aircraft… and maybe for people who don’t know what they want. But, the fact they got rid of atc_id for those of us who like to create real world aircraft liveries and have the real livery and font, who like to use the real world registration of their own real aircraft, or support VATSIM, etc… is just egregious, and shows they didn’t really consider users who like to customize or,… organize their libraries and collect aircraft. Or who are interested in showing the actual names of their aircraft.

“But, Carenado doesn’t want their planes to be called ‘Cessna 185’, or ‘Mooney Ovation’, we have to support the developers over the users”. We all know it’s a Mooney, yet we can’t even search for Mooney, or Amphibian, in the library because they’ve restricted the whole interface.

I’m all for protecting copyrights, I agree that the flight model is owned by the author, FS gives us the ability to create our own flight model for aircraft. But, protecting the aircraft.cfg and how the author named the aircraft is too far.

I think, really, it seems they’re not interested in the hobbyists; they’re more concerned with supporting 3rd party developers who charge money and create aircraft. All of these changes support 1. career mode 2. creating modular planes to reduce the size of models for performance 3. integrating the Marketplace into the library.

PC freeware just is not on their radar.

If they really want us to use their methodology to paint aircraft, for the good of the sim, they need to give us the tools to do it. All of us. A Blender interface script, that’s fraught with issues, is not enough, and we don’t have access to the 3D model to begin with, anyway. For fair reasons. I don’t know how to manage that issue. At the moment, it seems our hobby is going the way of the Dodo.

[BilingualHarp7]

The 2 things that MSFS 2024 disabled was the ability to hide dynamic tail numbers, and the ability to influence the colour of the dynamic tail number. The good news is that I have been able to get around both these issues. The bad news is while it worked for the Bonanza V35 it didn’t work for Caribou. Also on the Bonanza V35, while I was able to successfully hide the external tail number, MSFS still displayed its own dynamic tail number on the instrument panel no matter what I did. This, and the reason it didn’t work on the Caribou gives me an idea of why this work around was successful. I have to explore that more as a general solution for hiding the tail number, to see if that theory is correct. The work around is not ideal and brings its own problems, but these are are not insurmountable.

Dynamic tail number version that uses the tail number generated for the country of the departure airport.

Fixed tail number to match a real aircraft, with dynamic tail number hidden and ATC using correct tail number.

[FlyingsCool5650]

There is a known bug in the dynamic registration. Even the developers are complaining about it. It is being reviewed, and I think fixes may be forthcoming.

We need to be able to turn it off, like we could in 2020.

[BilingualHarp7]

There is no guarantee that any fix for the dynamic tail number will include the ability to turn it off. I think that they are more likely to just fix the issue that stops the end user from changing it, as that is the only bug in their eyes. They haven’t taken the time to understand how people use MSFS, nor consider livery creators even the tiniest little bit, so any solution will also ignore us. They’ll just take the easy route and only fix the obvious bug.

[FlyingsCool5650]

C’mon!!! You gotta let a man dream!..

sigh