How FS24 groups the aircraft in the "Change Aircraft" gallery?

[MSFS 2024] Questions & Community Discussions Aircraft
1

Hi,

I have developed several aircraft of the same manufacturer (BOEING) with the same designation (STEARMAN) but which correspond to different models (PT-17, PT-13, A75L300 and IB75A) and when they are declared in the Community, they are all grouped in the same heading under “Change Aircraft” even though the package names are different. For example, I have three packages differents:

  • gas-stearman-model-75
  • gas-super-stearman-ib75a
  • gas-stearman-an75n1
    and all theses aircrafts are in the same tab.

It is only by going to the “Configure” menu that I have access to the different variations.

How the program sorts the planes: by package names, by tittle declared in aicraft.cfg file?.
Under MSFS there are special precautions to be able to separate add-ons in the “Change Aircraft” gallery ?

2

At the top level, call it the model tile, the UI sorts aircraft and groups them by icao_model and ui_createdby. The same icao_model with different ui_createdby fields will get different model tiles. All packages with the same icao_model and ui_createdby fields will be grouped under a single model tile. (Hence, most of the Carenado aircraft releases must not include icao_model information, because many of them get grouped into a single model tile).

The following I’ve surmised through testing.
ui_manufacturer, ui_type, are only used in the fields shown in the UI. I’m going to assume ui_type then is used to differentiate variants within a model. Then ui_variation is used for the liveries for each variant.

Edit: I take it back, it does sort the tiles by ui_manufacturer, too, which makes up the title of tile along with the default either ui_type or icao_model and then ui_createdby

Sorting of variants and liveries seems to be rather random, I haven’t found a pattern yet. But I haven’t looked too deeply either.

So, if you want each of the Stearman to be different “model tiles”, you’ll have to assign a different icao_model to each of them.

I don’t know how important it is to use an official icao_model name, so you can make up your own I think.

These are the available ST75 official ICAO Model designations. As I noted, I don’t know what the consequences of making up your own are.

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1 Like
3

Hello,

I asked this question because I noticed that the rules for assigning these various parameters had been very well taken into account on our 2020 creations but that those same aircraft loaded in 2024 no longer appear in the same way making it very difficult to choose a model particular and then a suitable livery.

In other words: what applied to 2020 has been changed and no longer applies as it is on 2024 and that in order to be able to put on the market a plane compatible with both platformsforms, in the present state it will be necessary to provide at best 2 files aircraft.cfg at worst to provide two archives.

I hope that when stated in this way the subject will be clearer.

1 Like
4

Yes, you’re absolutely right. It’s a major change. With lots of consequences.

It also causes a conundrum for livery creators, do they take credit for their work through ui_createdby, or integrate it into the plane it’s related too and depend on the manifest.json to take credit for their work? If companies like 4simmers take credit for their work through ui_createdby, the library will become quite a mess.

And, hopefully, the Marketplace team forces vendors to properly write their aircraft.cfg’s and organize their planes appropriately. To this point, the aircraft.cfg has been very haphazardly filled in by most authors. Since I don’t purchase from the Marketplace, it means I can edit them, and I end up editing 80% or more of all aircraft.cfgs to fix things. For example, the Carenado planes are currently a mess, most all grouped together under a single model tile, and, since the manufacturer is always Carenado, you can’t search for the planes by manufacturer. So people think they don’t have planes that in fact they do have. Same thing with the Aeroplane Heaven DC-3, one big lump of a bunch of variants all under a single tile as a bunch of liveries mixed together with no organization.

I think the change was largely related to the integration of the Marketplace into the UI, they wanted to separate models of the same planes by author (The P-51D being an example, we have the Reno planes and the Aeroplane Heaven planes), and there was a major programmatic hole in the old way of organizing the library (inherited from way back), that I used to use to reorganize and properly name my library of aircraft. That will now be much more difficult, and is going to depend on access to all aircraft.cfg and livery.cfg files, encrypted planes or not, to do it right. If I can use the VFS to rewrite aircraft.cfgs for me, I’ll be able to get the control back that I’m used to. I really can’t depend on authors to understand how important it is to me to have all my planes organized and named the way I want them named :laughing: :upside_down_face:

Too your point about needing two different archives, one for each sim, I imagine,too, they also hope this will give some impetus to authors to upgrade their aircraft to 2024 compatibility. And, really, it’s probably smarter to do that, as much as it is a major pain. I know you’ve been all about your workflow :smiley:

Hopefully someday they give us the ability to add multiple typeroles to a single variant or even livery, one of which could be “Favorite”. Even better if they allow users to create their own Typeroles.

Right now, if you search for Amphibian, none come up, even though there’s a bunch.

And I’d also LOVE the ability to turn particular liveries off, so they don’t show up in the Library. And not just the Aviator liveries. Some planes come with tons of liveries I’ll never use, and I hate having to sort through them all the time.