I think a lot of developers pay licensing fees. As I understand it, being, I think, Chilean, they’re kind of not bound by those laws sort of? But, why risk it? Given their catalog and the amount of business they do, I’d imagine they could be seen as a nice juicy licensing target.
Now that you’ve said that, I’ll go look for the proper logo and replace it in the livery I’m making.
I’m not sure I’ll release it, I don’t know how to do decals, and their texturing isn’t the smoothest. it’s ok…
Aside from Microsoft obviously paying license fees to Textron, etc for the default aircraft, I’ve never heard of anybody paying for rights to make a representation of a real world aircraft in any version of MSFS. I don’t think most of the payware developer shops would have the cash to pay. The real manufacturers tolerate it because it doesn’t really take any money out of their pockets and if anything maybe it’s advertising for them. I could be wrong though. Not sure if any of the payware developers who post here would feel comfortable opining.
Good luck with the livery, we need more for this plane, although all of the included ones it must be said are quite nice. In the real 170 cockpits I’ve seen pictures of (the ones that haven’t had the yokes replaced with more modern equipment) the yokes have either the Cessna wordmark logo of the time (the one with that sort of boomerang symbol) or a rather art-deco font “CESSNA 170” like in the attached
One thing I’d really like to see in custom liveries is interior colors matched to the outside so we get that “flying 50’s diner” vibe the AH version of the little brother 140 has.
I can show you at least one example (Iris recently wrote about it, and I think I recently read somebody else, perhaps ask DC Designs)… And there are others. They definitely pay licensing fees, it’s not necessarily that much and you’re likely right not all do.
I’m working on one… I can’t figure out why the bottom carpet is taking that blue hue, in the textures it’s a gray close to the gray on the bottom sides of the door. The seat fabric is the same as the doors (I didn’t see your comment on interior colors until I came back from taking photos…
I’m still working on it, the Reg # is about 10% too large on further review, and I’ve got some waviness to try to correct (the texture is a straight line, not so much on the plane). If I change the color of the floor rug, it changes, but, the gray I want turns blue. I’ll figure it out. Oh, and I think the red is a bit too red. Many photos of the plane show more of a Candy Apple Red. But red is so hard from photographs, the process really screws up reds.
I like the colors and style, keep it up!
A couple comparison pics from a flight I did tonight at the same airport above… I couldn’t stop doing touch and goes, and hour and a quarter of them, I lost track, something like 12 - 15… beautiful night, just perfect (in a Warrior similar to the paint I did, N244ND instead of N276ND)…
Here’s the real C170B (Super). Anyone else notice Carenado reflected the 170 decal on the tail? the arrow is supposed to point forward on both sides. I painted that one on. If I release it into the wild, I’ll release both versions regular and Tundra wheel.
Is there a set of blank textures you started with? I used to do some repaints back in the FS9 days but when I looked at the textures for this plane I couldn’t make head or tail out of it… every livery looked to have identical blank white exterior.
So the texture in the texture.base directory is actually a white texture. I used that as a base (which I believe was Carenado’s intention).
So, yes, with MSFS, the new way to paint is actually using decals. It uses much less memory, and you can get much straighter lines with it, especially if you paint with a 3D painter like Substance Painter or Blender. But I haven’t taken the time to learn all the steps you need to do to do it. There’s tons of videos on YouTube about it.
I still paint the old fashioned way, like you’re saying. But, authors don’t spend as much time getting the UV mapping straight these days as you don’t need to anymore. This plane is kind of a bit hard to get straight lines in some places.
I haven’t figured out where the spinner is on the textures so I can chrome it. I hope they did put a texture on it. I’m probably going to have to do a fill the whole thing with a color to find the right texture (likely ext1 or ext2), and then remove the color until I find it… if it’s there.
I see. So what files in the various texture folders for the included liveries are the decals? Or is even expecting to be able to find files for them there showing how outmoded my understanding is?
So, the decals are built into the model. You’ll notice each plane has it’s own model. the textures of most interest to you are the albedos, those are the main texture, what you’d paint. the comp controls the occlusion, shininess, and texture, through the R, G, and B channels. To work with them, you have to separate out each of those channels and the alpha channel, and then use it like a gray scale to control intensity of each channel, and then recombine them. And the normal is the bump map. In each texture you might find a texture called Liv… typically one to 4 colors in a square. This controls the color of the decals in the model. Hence, how people make different colored versions of all the same texture set.
Now they do use decals for other things, like screwheads and labels. Those are labeled decals and self explanatory.
So, sometimes, to get around a decal, you need to set the liv texture to black and the alpha channel to black, too. This can turn off the decal, so your paint on the base texture (the white textures you found) can show through.
PMDG’s products are officially licensed Boeing products (Boeing owns the Douglas trademark now too, so by extension, the DC-6 is also a Boeing-licensed product). SimWorks Studios’ upcoming Kodiak is licensed by Daher. Also, IRIS Simulations’ upcoming Pilatus aircraft are licensed by Pilatus.
It is possible MS have negotiated rights with major manufacturers that cover payware addons as well I suppose, no idea. If not, they probably get away with it because the lawyers for the IP owners have not noticed or are too busy doing other stuff or as you say do not really care.
However some companies do care and are are more litigious than others. Lockheed and Northrop Grumman for example were notorious at one stage for chasing down copyright infringements dating back to WWII and earlier.
However the IP situation can change rapidly for example the Corsair was made by Vought which at one point was part owned by Northrop Grumman but the rights to Vought IP now seem to reside with a corporation called the “Triumph Group”.
The C170 is of course a Cessna and hence the IP will reside with Textron Aviation a subsidiary of Textron Inc who also own Lycoming and also TRU who supply 737 MAX and 777 training simulators to Boeing.
Isn’t there that other aircraft manufacturer that refuses to grant licenses for flight simulator and as as result there are no such aircraft in any sim? Gulfstream?
Yeah, that’s one of them.
That said I wonder if, for example, Elbit Systems Ltd. would want to see that ■■■■ A-10 in MSFS. But this is off topic and could be discussed elsewhere.
Is anybody else finding this plane to be extremely squirrely on the ground? As soon as the tailwheel comes up I have to kick in a TON of right rudder, and I find it difficult not to overcorrect. Similar issues with landing, but maybe not quite as severe. Honestly the Waco behaves similarly, perhaps it’s a Carenado thing? I am not asking for it to feel dead if this is realistic but to me it seems a bit extreme.
I believe that is normal. In fact, for the PC-6 Turbo Porter I believe you have to set full right rudder trim on take off. The Thranda PC-6 for XP has a disclaimer in the cockpit to check that prior to take off. Not sure about the real aircraft.
A spinning propeller is essentially a gyroscope, which is a spinning disc. That means it has the two properties of a gyroscope: rigidity in space and precession. We won’t make this next part a physics lesson, but we will quickly (and painlessly) explain precession.
Precession happens when you apply force to a spinning disc. Here’s how it works: you apply a force to one point of the disc, and the effect of that force (the resultant force) is felt 90 degrees in the direction of rotation of the disc.
For the most part, this only applies to tailwheel airplanes when they lift their tail off the runway during takeoff. As the tail comes up, a force is applied to the top of the propeller. And since the propeller is spinning clockwise, that force is felt 90 degrees to the right. That forward-moving force, on the right side of the propeller, creates a yawing motion to the left.
I know I was critical of this plane earlier in this topic but having flown it for a while I absolutely love it. It is just about my favorite plane to fly now, and more than worth the $15 I spent on it.
The 170 has what seems like a reasonable amount of pull on take off. It’s nowhere near the Waco. The Waco I think is excessively difficult to keep straight on takeoff or especially landing.
