How To Fly Multiplayer, Same Aircraft, Different Liveries

Question

I'm running a multiplayer simulation with each pilot flying the same type of aircraft (Cirrus SF50), but I want a different livery for each plane - so I can easily tell them apart.

The simulations works quite well, but if I change the livery on one machine (player 1), then it also changes the livery for the player on the other machine (player 2).

How can I set this up so that player 1 has a different livery to player 2 ?

Selecting different liveries works OK if the pilots fly different aircraft - but not if they fly the same aircraft.

Comments

I'm not really or "yet" a geek or so.. but i think it maybe has to do with some code..

Answer 1

Hi Gary,

I am no expert but had a rush of blood to the head offering a solution.

Try this.

1.  Note where the aircraft you wish to use is located within the X-plane directories

2.  Copy the aircraft file you want to use to a secure location.  This is your master file in the event something goes wrong.

3.  As you know how to change the livery of an aircraft change the livery for the first aircraft and save the file with a slight change in the name. Save it to the general location of your master (parent aircraft). This may give you one of your required aircraft.

4.  Repeat this process for each additional aircraft you require.

5.  When running your system each "pilot" then selects one of your renamed/changed aircraft as their plane.

In making this suggestion I see it as another way of having many copies of the same aircraft produced and purchased from other developers.

Hope this helps.

Glenn

Comments

Hi Glenn,

Many thanks for that suggestion - a nice idea !

I suspect this is just a small 'glitch' in the coding - and hopefully will be fixed in the full release - I've reported this to the developers - fingers crossed :)

Best regards,

Gary

Answer 2

Multiplayer aircraft on your computer are really just AI planes behind the scenes, in X-Plane's opinion. So, just like AI planes, the livery you are using is what the AI / multiplayer aircraft must also use.

This is a limitation of the current .acf file format and will not be changing in the near future.

Comments

Thanks jroberts (sorry, I don't know your first name because your post wasn't signed) ...

This is unexpected behaviour though ... it's also inconsistent with the behaviour of the XP11 UI and setup screens.

It becomes very difficult to fly with more than one other if you fly the same aircraft - it's impossible to tell who-is-who.

Also, for a non-pilot observer using an external view, it becomes impossible to tell which-is-which.

IMHO - it would be good to see this 'fixed' in a future release - so you can select whichever livery you like on each machine.

Gary

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Hi Glenn,

Thanks again for your suggestion - I found a solution that works, based on your idea :-

1. Duplicate the FOLDER for the aircraft you want to use in multiplayer mode, and give the duplicate a different name (eg Cirrus SF-50 Red).

2. You will need n copies for n players (for example : Cirrus SF-50, CirrusSF-50 Red, Cirrus CF-50 Blue)

3. Do the same for each machine in the multi-player simulation

    - so for 3 players, you need the same 3 copies of the aircraft folder on each machine.

4. When you run XP-11, you will now see n instances of the aircraft in the 'Aircraft' pane on each machine

5. On each machine - select a different aircraft and assign the livery you want to each individual plane

6. It works !

This solution isa bit clunky, but it does work.

I hope Laminar will try to fix this in a future release.

Gary

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Hello Gary,

 is this over internet? or LAN?... if it's on internet, what kind of connections are you using? bandwidth, latency

Thank you

Pablo.

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we had same issue last night when we fly multiplayer. copy&paste is a feasible solution. Thanks

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Hi , are you able to use multiplayer over internet via Hamachi on XP11.36 ???

Seems to be broken