I’ve been playing Infinite Flight for a while now and I’ve always been curious about something…how difficult is it to add a new livery to the game?
I’m not trying to complain or request anything specific—I’m just genuinely curious. I’ve seen a lot of great livery requests in the community with plenty of votes, but not all of them make it into the sim. That got me wondering: what are the main challenges the developers face when it comes to adding liveries?
Is it more about licensing, development time, optimization, or something else? I’d love to learn more about the process if anyone has insight.
Thanks in advance!, and again… this is just out of pure curiosity!
I’ll also share something that Dan said on Discord a while back when it comes to choosing liveries for the initial release of new aircraft:
“When choosing liveries for new aircraft, the staff team tend to favour the larger operators as they’re the most common - they’re more likely to be used by players.
Every livery they add uses bandwidth, so they prefer to add the major operators first & then add any other operators later down the line. It gives them a clear indication of demand for the liveries & if they’re worth adding in the future.”
I highly doubt this will ever happen down the line but I would propose this,
Unlike the various poorly drawn / unrealistic liveries seen in RFS, perhaps the staff could hire some highly trusted users (maybe IFAET users) that are dedicated on creating high quality, (realistic) airline liveries for the game.
Or, similar to IFATC and IFAET, Infinite Flight could create the Infinite Flight Livery Editing Team (IFLET).
However, unlike RFS where there is practically no rules, new livery will need to be approved by the staff before they are released. Perhaps a photo of the aircraft will be required as proof to let the staff know that this livery on this aircraft exists in real life.
That way, the staff could fully shift their focus on other things such as new development for the game, reworking legacy aircraft, etc.
In my opinion, it’s kind of mixed.
Firstly, they need to make sure they are able to use/create the livery, without risk of getting into legal trouble. Secondly, they will either import the livery, draw it, etc… into some editor app (or something), which they will then add it to infinite flight for it’s release.
I believe it’s mostly that the staff are working on something else. They also can’t add “too many liveries” as liveries would eventually become the main focus and everything else would be outdated. If they remodel an aircraft, they would also have to redo all of the liveries they added for the old one. I believe this is the reason why, for example, they have added Srilankan airlines to the A330 but not the A320, even though Srilankan airlines operates them.
That would be the reason why both the Rossiya 777 and Pobeda 737 have not been added despite being confirmed for ove a year. A bunch of confirmed liveries were added in 24.4 except the 2 Russian ones and since the war started I don’t think IF has added a Russian livery (I could be wrong though) IF is a flight sim and I if they are not adding the liveries because they support Ukraine I hope that people demand that the two liveries get added and for them to keep politics aside because those airlines have nothing to do with the conflict and both are great liveries.
Oh I see. Although to be fair, during WWII, anything replicating the Nazis was frowned upon. Now I’m not comparing the Russians to the Nazis at all, please don’t draw that conclusion, but if you have an invading country, it’s just typically frowned upon to replicate their things. This has nothing to do with my own political opinions, I’m just trying to rationalize what might be happening. Although the delay may have nothing to do with the war. But I understand your point, hopefully IF isn’t political and will add the liveries soon!