Options we have now regarding flight number censorship

So basically, the flight number/callsign censoring issue that we have been encountering, has just been marked as “by-design” by Asobo, as it came from XboxLive’s own profanity measures.
(and personaly I feel offended by that response. It’s like saying “no this is all correct, you are not supposed to fly with a Virgin callsign or a flight number of 118 to begin with”)

With that said, what options do we have now?

  1. I tried to go to Xbox Live forum but I couldn’t log in. It seems that I already have a Xbox account bound to my Hotmail, and then my system automatically intends to login with my MS account, which also was bound to the same Hotmail, causing a “duplicated account” error. To make things worse, the auto-login happens so fast that I can’t even cancel login and use a different account.
  2. I heard in that thread (before it was closed) that you can force-input a flight number/callsign by editing a certain file. It would get past the filter for the input page, but has anyone tried whether it would make ATC work?
  3. Would it be theoretically possible to somehow develop a mod that corrects this? I am rather pessimistic about it as live ATC voice would need to transmit information to Azure server after all, and that could mean getting into a filter that we can’t bypass. But maybe there is a way to do it like how it worked before the Azure hiccup a few weeks ago?

I have two airports I can’t go to for weeks for this issue, I really hope someone can come up with a solution.

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What were you trying to use, if you don’t mind me asking?

For problem 1, have you tried using a Chrome Incognito session?

For Option 2 I just tested this, and my very mild swear word did appear in the livery screen, though the image of the plane was blank for some reason.

When I spawned this is what I saw. It really didn’t like messing with this, and I think I may have changed one too many fields. :wink:

image

But my custom tail number came through anyway.

image

I shouldn’t have touched the UI, or texture elements. :slight_smile:

So yes, it turns out you can put something that might be considered offensive, but only you will see it or hear it phonetically. You must also turn off the custom tailnumber, as that overrides what is in the “aicraft.cfg”.

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I was trying to use these flight numbers
118, 113, 605, 606, 153, 156
the original thread had a few other guys having some other numbers, as well as the (airline) callsign “virgin” being censored.

Although I must point out what you are experiencing was not what we were experiencing. We didn’t have our plane models censored, but instead have our callsign (depending on what part of the callsign “violated the rules”)

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Odd. I found another word for excrement was perfectly acceptable. :man_shrugging:

That worked for ATC as well. I always found it odd to censor something that can only ever be seen or heard by the person sat in front of the simulator, unless you are streaming of course.

I’m assuming those are crash related flights, and MS don’t want people glorifying that in some way.

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That was one of the theories but some rather well-known crashes were not censored. IIRC 123 isn’t. (JAL 123, the biggest single-plane crash in aviation history)

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Well, its only un-blocked until it isn’t. If enough people reported that it might get added to the blocklist as well. :thinking:

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to be honest I don’t think that’s the case. In the respond from Asobo in the previous thread they said they were simply using the same “blacklist” as Xbox Live. That’s why Virgin is banned.

In other words whatever is censoring us it’s not a database based on aviation related issues.

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If the resolution is “it’s the Xbox Live filter” then this implies:

  1. there needs to be a way to turn the filter off when not using multiplayer
  2. there needs to be a way to report nonsense and mistakes in the filter and get them fixed

(Realistically there are likely organizational barriers to either happening, but that’d be really nice from a basic consumer rights point of view.)

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I would also like to clarify that “editing file” means editing a certain value in a file, namely your previously saved airline callsign and flight number. This seems to be able to get past the world map but not necessarily

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I would agree with that, but with Asobo’s attitude on the previous thread they don’t seem to be interested in doing either of them.

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Because it isn’t in their power to “fix” it. They either use live filters or they don’t.

I’m not sure I buy the explanation though, it is disallowing some bizarre call signs that are unrelated to profanity or historical flight number.

Something odd is going on but it still may be what the filter is returning to them so their hands may be tied.

They ought to at least raise a ticket with the live service though. Beyond that they have bigger fish to fry.

It’s annoying but meh.

Well that’s the problem. They insist on using the filter and refuse to come up with any kind of solution to this.

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It might be a condition of using the live service, to maintain the “E” rating

ESRB rating “E” is given by… ESRB, not by Xbox.
Also there’s a disclaimer on earlier ESRB ratings “Online interaction not rated by ESRB”. I think it should still be the case. In other words, the inclusion or non-inclusion of profanity filters for online features shouldn’t affect a game’s ESRB rating.