We just had a community flight.
From the XBox guys most of them only saw Standard G-36 with the Standard painting 
I was on PC and had no problems with seeing the planes I have installed and which have been flown by other members.
But if MSFS-2020 is to be the flagship for cloud geekery, then it should also work properly on all platforms. And not only the correct plane and livery, also the state of flaps, gears, doors, windows, and whatever can be changed on an aircraft or helicopter.
First step would be to give an approximation. We’re never going to have all group pilots owning the same aircraft. Sometimes a pilot may own the model you’re flying, but not load it into community that day.
But at least if it’s a single-engine prop taildragger, show it as a Cub. Single engine prop tricycle gear like 172, show a 172. Twin piston like Caribou, show a King air ( not an airbus) , warbird like Corsair, show a Daher TBM 930, etc.
Is there a way to have a generic model that is in the equivalent class of the aircraft that is flown by another person in MP that you may not own. For example. If I didn’t own the F35, it would default to a f18 instead of a 737 model in multiplayer. There would be a default model for military jets, Turbo-props, piston, etc!
Thanks!
This is something that has been bugging me too. I also fly warbirds and classic aircraft and have seen this issue, especially to the extent that RandyWA has seen, with warbirds being substituted for airliners. This problem also happens with repaints: A friend and I can have the same aircraft model (let’s say the Carenado Staggerwing for example, has happened before with this model but is not limited to this), but he will fly with a repaint that I don’t have, and I won’t see him as a Staggerwing, leaving the substitution model to something insane again. Back in FSX, if this happened the sim would just show you a different repaint, although give you the correct model.
Building on what Chucks5361 commented on earlier, if these aircraft are on the marketplace, an external model/traffic model could be made available just for multiplayer traffic, like how DCS does it with their aircraft: Even if you don’t have an aircraft model from their shop, you’ll see an external model of the correct type, even to a correct repaint if you have the repaint installed on your machine.
I think many of us are thinking of similar solutions. If it did involve a series of multiplayer models then I really think it either needs to be built in to the base sim (my preference) or at the very least a single package download. I don’t think people would want to pick through loads of individual downloads. Just package them up and update that package as required.
To make things work for those that are not in the package for whatever reason the model matching logic needs to improve. So for example show another aircraft of comparable type to the one that is missing and as you quite rightly say do this also if a livery match isn’t found.
This is a must in multiplayer, one folder with ALL the aircraft in the Community folder or divided by categories if you want etc.. Someone with skills could start this project and share it e.g. in flightsim.to, gathering already freeware external models in the net and modifying the characteristic to match the payware or freeware aircraft to be shown in online mode for the other users.
Any person or developers could add their exterior models only with a basic picture of the interior or so and they promote their product in that manner. It is really sad and bored to watch unreal generic planes like copters as a double aisle commercial aircraft or a 2 Mach aircraft as a small general plane. Please it is the time.
Aircraft such as helicopters and fighter jets that other players fly appear as airline planes. Is it possible to find a solution to this? It would be nice if simple models were added to the generic aircraft to simulate them.
There is a long topic on this subject here:
Multiplayer: display other players actual aircraft 3D models and liveries around you - Bug Reports & Wishlist / Wishlist - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
Please vote there.
This is my number one annoyance in the sim (assuming it’s functioning correctly otherwise). I couldn’t begin to count the number of times you see, for example, an Airbus A320 landing (especially on someone’s stream) only to see the label displaying C160, or something similar…
Even if we were given the option of purchasing the “skin” of the model at a nominal fee (say, £1 or the equivalent) so we can see the actual aeroplane that someone is flying.
My number two annoyance is that nearly three years in, this has yet to be addressed…
New development! I can see everybody who has the new ATR as an ATR, even though I don’t have the model. It’s an overall white livery but I see them correctly! I need to see one though with an addon repaint to test it further. I wonder if they are slowly working that out or if they had an ATR model ready already?
What do you use for AI traffic? FSLTL? AIG? Whatever you’re using, I can pretty much guarantee that this is the reason for being able to see the ATR properly. Any addon aircraft that uses the correct ICAO code as it’s multiplayer identifier (in this case AT46 and AT76 for each of the ATR variants) will show correctly in multiplayer. In other words, if developers used airframe ICAO codes as their identifier in multiplayer, then these aircraft (as long as they’re covered by FSLTL or AIG) will display correctly, as the FSLTL or AIG version. Unfortunately most developers seem very lazy in this regard, and they gave their aircraft ridiculous multiplayer identifiers.
Long story short, Asobo haven’t done anything to improve this issue. Devs just need to label their products properly.
It happened to me as well yesterday. I’m on Xbox and all of a sudden i could see at least one correct aircraft.
I was using the Typhoon when this guy showed up in an F18.
Lets hope that they are working on a fix for this really annoying issue.
The F-18 is a default aircraft in the sim. No doubt that’s why you’re seeing it.
On xbox the model match it is so broken that even default aircraft are not showing up correctly. Seeing a default F18 as an F18 in this case is a miracle. 
Yeah I’m aware of that. The DC-3, another default aircraft suffers from this issue. It’s absolutely shocking that Asobo can’t get such basic stuff right. I think the F-18 and DC-3 issues are livery related. If the the other person is using a 3rd party livery that you don’t own, they’ll show up as a huge stupid looking airliner instead.
No, sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn’t. It’s just the way it is, especially if there’s lots of people flying different aircraft.
If I’m not mistaken, a user asked Zendesk why and the answer was that this option is disabled due to memory limitations on the XBOX.
A shame, I would really like Asobo to make an effort in this regard. There is no greater immersion breaker than these generic planes.
Well, if they use the 3rd party planes in all their glory, it is understandable, why showing the planes of others put a dent into the XBox memory.
But there is a very easy solution. They just have to add frame rate friendly low poly models for the respective aircraft and smaller texture sizes for the right livery.
I don’t mind, if the planes of other players are not in the same appearance like my own, but I mind if the models are not correctly shown.
Even if they are downgraded to a very basic appearance, it is better than the current state.
It is indeed a huge, if not the biggest, immersion breaker, besides the generic colorful textures for the AI traffic.
On PC, are the planes in the marketplace seen by other players even if they have NOT purchased them?
