I have found that there is no method that will group the livery under the variant of the 2020 legacy aircraft. ie with all the default liveries.
But I think you are mistaken that the source aircraft is using the 2024 system. It’s just using the same rules being used for liveries. The rule appears to be that MSFS will create a separate variant for each livery folder structure it finds. It only places multiple entries on the livery tab if that a single folder structure contains multiple aircraft.cfgs, or it contains an aircraft.cfg with multiple entries. It does this with aircraft, it does this with liveries. Same rule for both.
You just have to work with what we have been given.
Huzzah, SUCCESS!
You can get it to correctly appear under the LIVERY tab.
HOWEVER, you have to go back to ye ol’ days of adding liveries.
You have to drop the texture, model (if used) and aircraft.cfg into its own folder in the same SimObjects/Airplanes folder the base plane is and update the layout.json (I did using the MSFS Layout generator).
Now the livery shows under the LIVERY tab
Thanks for this info. Liveries for 2024 aircraft also require that the livery ends up in the same structure as the source aircraft.
I may have misunderstood the steps you took, as I couldn’t get this to work on any of my liveries. Could you show us your livery’s folder structure please, so we can see the structures required?
I think there have been some changes in today’s big patch. Some of the Asobo aircraft seem to be referred to a little tidier.
Plus - I think they might not be sorting on icao_model any longer?
On aircraft where I added an extra zero to the icao_model to control order of appearance (eg. DeHavilland DH.88 Comet as DH.088 to make sure it appeared befrore DH.104 Dove)… the order is messed up again.
Thanks for the update, now I understand, and can see how this works. But this is a process that only the end user can operate. This would also need to be repeated if either the source aircraft or the livery are updated. So as a livery creator, this is not something that could change the way I create liveries. But for a personal collection I guess this gets the job done.
Yup, so until the 2020 plane gets updated to 2024 and thus most likely lose the ability to be used in both sims at the same time, there’s nothing the livery creators can do to properly use the 2024 livery selection system from what I can see. Apart from properly filling the aircraft.cfg so at least it’s grouped under one plane. Maybe someone crates an app to install the liveries this old fashioned way - copy the correct files to the base airplane and update it’s layout.json. I can see that happening and not be overly complicated either. I mean there’s an app for everything these days.
One point that I read recently is that 2024 very much cares about file size in the layout.json.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with anything here, but, it’s something to keep in mind. I never used to worry about the filesize parameter, and would just update records in the layout.json in the past. Now I’ll have to use the the tool to create layout.json’s for every change I make to a package.
BTW, the livery packages I’ve tested, some ended up as separate model tiles (on purpose), and others as variants in the original model tile, I didn’t do anything special with them, other than modifying the header of the aircraft.cfg. They used the same file structure as I had for 2020.
The last thing I would ever do is modify or add to the OneStore directory. All my files are in the Community directory. All my testing was with a variety of Carenado liveries I had in 2020, most of which I created.
