ATR liveries work with FS2024, but they are displayed as “variant” rather than “livery” in aircraft configuration menu if not modified
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Just popped into this thread to see what gives on the livery/skin management front since I’ve been away for a year. Also to keep this thread from dying. Disappointingly, judging by what I see on FSTo.com related to available skins for 2024 after I have not looked in over a year, I’d say Asobo killed the hobby for serious skins collectors like me. I used to go into FSTO.com daily and pull myriads of skins. It got to the point where I couldn’t keep up. Now, it’s a vacant wasteland when it comes to 2024 skins.
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Yes, for performance reasons, and perhaps others, Asobo changed the file format to a proprietary one, so you have to use their archaic dev tools to convert files, when you’re able to figure out how to find them. Then they added streaming, which essentially hid all the planes, until you can figure out how to use the VFS projector to get access to the files. Then they broke up planes into a whole ton of directories, making it really difficult to figure out what’s what. Then they decided to organize planes in the library by the authors of the digital recreations instead of the just the manufacturer and type, further fracturing the library.
So, yes, now FS is a complete mess for those of us who used to like to collect planes and liveries. It will likely take several years for the hobby to get back to what it was for those who use FS2024. Hopefully someday I can figure out how to get around their organization principles and bring some order back to my library.
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First thing I do when d/loading a livery is going to the aircraft.cfg and updating the “ui_type“, “ui_manufacturer“ and “ui_createdby” lines to be identical to the main plane’s aircraft.cfg (then regenerating the layout json of course).
That doesn’t fix all problems (far from it) but helps to remove some of the insanity in that horrible MSFS2024 hangar.
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I was intending to dabble with creating my own liveries for personal use, something I used to easily do with FS2020, but it’s such an absolute nightmare with this one that I simply can’t face jumping through all the hoops.
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After reading this entire thread and testing many MSFS 2020 liveries in MSFS 2024, it’s clear this is not just a community adaptation problem, but a platform-level regression.
The core issue is that liveries are no longer handled as true variants of a parent aircraft:
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Liveries appear as separate aircraft instead of variants
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Many legacy liveries are inconsistently detected or ignored
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Creators are forced to fully repackage liveries instead of using lightweight variants
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This breaks years of established repaint workflows
The consequences are serious:
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Aircraft selection becomes cluttered and hard to use
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Large livery libraries (especially AI / airline packs) are no longer practical
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Expecting creators to manually convert hundreds of liveries is not realistic
Asobo previously communicated broad compatibility with MSFS 2020 community content.
For liveries, this is currently not true in practice, even when textures themselves are compatible.
What is urgently needed is an official platform fix, for example:
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Restore or emulate MSFS 2020 livery-variant behavior
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Provide backward compatibility for legacy aircraft.cfg livery entries
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Or introduce a clear, documented migration layer so liveries properly attach to parent aircraft again
This should not be left to community workarounds.
Liveries are a core feature for immersion, AI traffic, airline operations, and overall UX.
Please clarify whether this behavior is a bug or an intentional design change, and prioritize an official solution.
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It was definitely an intentional design change.
I’ve been trying to communicate, what you so clearly defined here better than me, all the issues and more to the SDK development team since day one, as well as here in the forum as well.
Asobo is happy with how they now organize aircraft by developer instead of by manufacturer and type only. I think the main reason is the marketplace integration that we now see. Personally, I think this could have been accomplished easily within the old framework based on the old 2020 base_aircraft information, with no changes to how the library is organized. It will take a HUGE effort I think to get them to change what they’ve done.
They could develop better tools for helping us unpack and pack ktx2 files. Right now, they believe they’ve done enough.
I think we can still use the old aircraft.cfg format for liveries, but, I have a lot of work to do to confirm this.
There’s soooo much to learn about their new package configuration methods and rules. Hopefully, someday, I’ll have the time to learn it all and develop a template for it. But, currently, I’m overwhelmed by figuring out how. And I’d also like to figure out ways to rename aircraft so they have the correct manufacturer and type, and erase the author field in the avatar main name, even better if I can at least figure out how to put that information on a second line at least, or in the “Configure” page somewhere. I really don’t need that information when I’m just trying to scan my library to figure out what plane I want to fly, and it really just clutters up everything.
I used to be able to take total control of naming my aircraft by alphabetically ordering the name of the vfs folder for the livery before the base_aircraft vfs directory. Then my aircraft.cfg information took precedence. It also helped me fix all the fields developers always get wrong (like appropriately setting isAirTraffic and canBeUsedByAITraffic, and changing parking in “Any”, which put Piper Cubs at gates for me all the time, to more appropriate values). They, unfortunately, “fixed” this workaround, to the great detriment to my ability to keep my library organized.
I find it soooooooo annoying developers can’t figure out how to set all the aircraft.cfg cards correctly. Why is it so difficult to setup what ATC should call the aircraft? Why is it so difficult to correctly set the ICAO information (other than the fact ICAO took their page down 
)
And it’s really too bad they took away the ability for livery authors to claim creator-ship of their work.
I don’t think they understood how many of us have 100’s of planes and 100’s to thousands of liveries. As you noted, they literally destroyed the ability to collect planes and liveries like pokemon cards like we used to. Or, perhaps they just didn’t care, and were more interested in making money than continuing to support the hobby any longer.
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Thanks for the clarification so far.
Several technical contributors (e.g. FlyingsCool5650) have noted that MSFS 2024 internal aircraft/livery file reading logic has changed compared to MSFS 2020 — which suggests this is not a simple content adaptation issue but a change in how the platform interprets aircraft.cfg fields.
If this is an intentional change, could Asobo clarify:
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Whether backward compatibility with legacy liveries is planned?
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Whether there is a documented reference for the new required fields/settings?
Clear guidance would help avoid unnecessary rework and allow community creators to update legacy content more effectively.
They’ll just send you to the SDK
But the answer is yes, legacy aircraft.cfg’s still work. And the new modular style aircraft still honor the aircraft.cfg, kind of. In briefly checking out a few 2024 native aircraft, the aircraft.cfg file also gets kind of split up across multiple directories. There’s a base version typically for a single livery, and then liveries, which can live in separate directories only need portions of the aircraft.cfg, I assume those portions that are changed for each livery.
I’m hoping that somehow I can use the vfs “replacement” function to override what I need to of the base .cfg, but, I haven’t taken the time to work through what works and what doesn’t. There are things they ignore I think, but I don’t know all the rules.
From what I’ve read, the developers who’ve taken the time to learn the ins and outs of the whole new aircraft modular structure like it and think it helps them manage variations, and likely helps with memory management. But, it takes a lot of reading and testing to figure it all out.
You can start here https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/byL8kmgyVGQ