This is what the OP was alluding to…
Seems to me agreements could be made. Like WorkingTitle, Flightsim.to has pretty much become the defacto standard library for freeware. I certainly don’t bother to go elswhere, or upload anywhere else (though I have seen my stuff elsewhere. In fact, don’t download from elsewhere, you may be getting an older version).
Speaking of which, Jorg alluded to the fact that they can’t share software being sold from Steam as they don’t own the platform (yet?).
Agree. For the end users that would also mean, that downloads from those sites are validated thoroughly before being published. Like the app stores from Android and iOS.
Flightsim.to already validates for viruses, etc… I’m wondering what else would need to be validated? (real question)
Are people expecting quality to be validated? I see people bring this up, and wonder how it could possibly be done (beyond a simple, “does it load? and general package construction metrics”), or why people would expect quality to be validated by the librarian. That’s what user ratings would be for, especially for paid goods. When you go to a library, do you expect the library to weed out books you think are trash (but might be gold to somebody else)? (not addressing this to you, haha, the general people expecting Microsoft to only accept quality offerings)
Yeah Flightsim.to seems to become the biggest freeware player… And 50 smaller download places exist… Last month I found a Spanish language website with liveries for various South American and pacific airliners. There’s Dutch websites with sceneries and KLM-liveries… Dream on, I think it would be very difficult on the long term, to monitor and review (!) all possible external liveries. But for MP gameplay it is essential it works. That is not a bug, nor a feature YET… it is a challenge. On social media, I can upload an avatar picture. In MP flight, it should be just as easy. Maybe only the tail image with your personal picture ? It should be possible to use liveries you create yourself, without the need for distribution. And MP players still see it 
that would be great.
Who would go to a Spanish website? Really, people do that???
(yeah, I’m a United Statesian…)
(sarcasm added, just in case)
(And that was me laughing at myself that I disregarded that fact 
)
In this case validated would encompass:
Just thinking out loud here. But due to the free nature of these platforms, this would be too much work involved.
¿Qué pasa, hombre? 
I don’t think so. A ton of this could be automated. The dev tool already validates most of that, except the duplicate thing. Microsoft already does this. I don’t mind having to follow strict guidelines in package construction (thumbnail sizes, etc.)(don’t get me started on the stupid image layout of the Marketplace, though, you can’t see the ones you want to, and the others can’t be blown up, ridiculous… oh, wait, I said don’t let me get started).
Oh, that’s why I said agreements could be made… Choose a couple platforms, or… just Flightsim.to. Limit the ones from which liveries etc are shared so they can be managed appropriately. Still let other stuff be loaded, but, make it so it’s not sharable.
Well as long as these Spanish websites use readable aircraft types, readable airport abbreviations and the word “DOWNLOAD” in the proper place I’ve no issue 
just google MSFS [airport abbreviation] and you will find handcraft scenery for about every airport that exists. And probably also any national airliner company liveries, so even on a C152 you can see e.g. someone is from Ecuador, or Russia.
@FlyingsCool5650 @AmbitiousPilots @ArcanePython931
I’ve made suggestions already for the questions you’re raising in the aforementioned topic. Your suggestions would be most welcome over there!
One of the key point to me for this to work is not technical:
- Don’t make the user to have to download such MP 3D models manually otherwise it will defeat the purpose because you can’t know in advance what aircraft you’ll encounter during a flight nor you can’t know all the places where to download them from.
This feature must be promoted as being an integral part of 3rd party aircraft offering so that most 3rd party vendors embrace it.
For the rest (bandwidth, perf, intellectual property) this is not an issue. I’m offering suggestions for this specifically.
I have the premium deluxe edition, CRJ700 and the A320NX (dev build). I can imagine that aircraft models from mods that I do not own may cause the same behaviour as the liveries, but that is just guessing.
Besides that I found this in a post about known issues (multiplayer section):
KNOWN ISSUES (Last modified: April 21, 2021) – Microsoft Flight Simulator Support (zendesk.com)
Impressive idea, but could it be simplified ?
Suppose we’re talking official and market place and FSX-converted aircraft. Asobo has all models already. The issue is in the unofficial livery texture, or missing texture as a result of version difference (see above)
What if a MP pilot could join a multiplayer flight… and upload some “avatar picture” or some country flag at that point ? When you join a flight, you need upload only that single picture, not the complete livery. Works like an avatar on forums. Others see standard livery, but with your avatar added to the tail of the aircraft ! And because that symbol is a single png or jpg, Asobo could scale it, convert it server side to DDS if needed… no validations or virus checks are needed, it’s one simple 2d image.
Wouldn’t that mean that Asobo would distribute unlicensed content? If i need to have the exact same livery like the other player on my drive than Asobo is only sending the information about what type of livery it is.
In a system where the game is “downloading” liveries or models for multiplayer Asobo could get in trouble.
There would be no need for Asobo to “get in trouble” if they had planned ahead for this and had a livery distribution system built into the sim from the beginning. Then they could have just put some words in the EULA for the sim that the user is granting rights to reproduce any models or textures in the Community folder for the purposes of the multiplayer experience.
They could have even included special LOD levels for aircraft makers to used and some encryption system to ensure that the content transferred for MP purposes stayed protected.
By communicating this upfront the aircraft and livery makers would either agree, or not make content for MSFS.
But since there was no plan on how to solve this issue, now I agree it is very difficult to solve, because it would be a big change mid stream.
That’s interesting. Just to note, I have stuttering and CTD issues (mostly CTD, not so much stuttering), and I never use multiplayer or play with AI on. This is just my specific problem but I’ve narrowed it down to AMD drivers for sure. October drivers and before seem to never cause CTD for me.
Also I’m trying out the newest driver 21.4.1 right now, and so far no crashes.
So I’m not sure if the problem is totally one thing, like multiplayer liveries, or drivers.
One thing is sure, I noticed Multiplayer when I switched it on… stutters. Do you folks always have multiplayer on ? I found: when I switch on all internet stuff, multiplayer and traffic, the airport loading takes 2x the time… and stuttering occurs, normally (flying solo) I don’t have stuttering at all and zero CTD’s. I run low end graphics. Last week I got curious about these “flickering nameplates” in MP and activated multiplayer. Yesterday… i switched it off again… I did not see CTD’s, but I wanted to land comfortably without stutters.
I always run multiplayer but never real world or AI traffic. I only had CTDs while in MP flights usually with a large number of players and I’m pretty sure that the whole CTD runtime issue is related somehow to all the liveries issues as well as the flashing nameplate/stutter bugs. I sent in all my findings and they said “This sounds like a known issue and be restasurred we are working on it.” OK then I guess that is the best we can ask for right now.
I was flying for a just a few minutes in a very large group flight on the N Europe server and one person that was in the area and not in the stream was flying something that had a flashing nameplate and causing stutters. This makes me think to the two pilots in CRJs 3rd party and one had a custom livery so I’m thinking this person was flying a CRJ (I don’t own it) with a custom livery. They landed and as soon as they logged out the stuttering stopped. Now I wonder what is different about the CRJ as I don’t have some other 3rd party aircraft that don’t cause that and get a generic model inserted for them.
I guess we wait and see what Asobo can do to fix the problem. I’ll just keep flying in MP and if I get the stutter I switch servers or just turn MP off.
Hmm… this CRJ is a freeware bombardier aircraft ported from FSX ? So its nameplate was flickering and it showed the official (=FSX) livery instead, while it was flickering ? What if this is a connection issue… e.g. the livery cannot be downloaded, you get failed TCP timeouts that could mess up your rendering… just speculating…
Hi man, how did you get those generic traffic ? A340/350 etc etc it looks great !
And per the license info where they are downloaded, the models are only for use when flying on the IVAO network and not for you to just do whatever you want with them.
Do i distribute their content without permission? No.
Am i causing any financial damage? No.
So what is the problem here? Plenty of people are using their models for MSFS traffic. What did IVAO do? Nothing.
We can still download that stuff. As long as i’m using it for myself and don’t cause any damage i don’t see any problem.