Update on FSLTL AI freeware project

[Tuskin38 6,529]

14 minutes ago, marsman2020 said:

"Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private."

over zealous mods on the MSFS forums, here's what it said (spoiler tagged because it's a big 'ol wall of text) you can also find it on their Discord

Spoiler

Development update 03/02/2021
Last month was tough. For the FSLTL team, for VATSIM users and for everyone waiting this mod becoming accessible to the public. We appreciate your support, voting on the AI improvements tickets, all this won’t be possible without you. However, we worked hard all this time and are proud to share our achievements with you today. This can be groped in three categories: Models, Liveries and General Strategy. I would like to start from the latter.
General Strategy
Hopefully learning on our mistakes, we decided to rework the structure of the FSLTL itself. First of all this means clear licensing and flexibility. FSLTL is not a “pack” of contributors and ours work, it’s not a brand that can own and inherit rights for other’s work, as it used to be and how many of the projects are done. Last but not least FSLTL is an independent, open Community project now.
Here’s the example that explains what this means and why it’s important:
Usually, when someone contributes their work to the project, pack or organization they give some rights on their work to this project, often unclearly. By this someone’s work becomes part of the project with attribution, like “FSLTL repaints by Great Artist”. At first glance, nothing dangerous happens, BUT just until time passes and someone different wants to use this work again and asks the permissions on it from the organisation, not an author. With unclear licensing, organisation owning the rights on the work actually can decide what to do with it. This can create a nasty precent, and we would like to not even give it a chance to happen.
This why, FSLTL transforms into a “Hub”, where everyone can upload(with a clear license) and withdraw their work independently. This makes authors in true control of their work on one hand, on other protects the whole project from collapsing like a card house.

FSLTL provides a CDN and an app for easy deployment, but the content is uploaded by the authors and stays theirs. FSLTL won’t own or inherit nothing of this work and won’t have an ability to do anything with it besides hosting it or removing if it violates the terms of agreement.

I believe that with your help, we can make FSLTL a true, modern, live project, populated by the simmers, for the simmers, staying transparent and friendly to the Community.
Liveries
This brings us to the next announcement. We decided to completely discard all ex-FLAi liveries and start from scratch. This may sound scary, but we have found this decision surprisingly well-made. Even small group of artists fully covered all Lufthansa fleet, all imaginable A333 and DH8D liveries, and much more just in two weeks.

Here the names of true heroes: Navanith Krishnan [@nk [Z + 0530]], @GERAirborne272, @AirplaneNiner, Alek Petseski [@Lyudol], and @Lewismrl (who made so many I never believed it’s humanly possible)

Not only this proved remaking all world liveries is more than possible in reasonable time, it also gave an opportunity to make them in high resolution to keep up with the stunning visuals of the MSFS.

As a painter, you’re very welcome to add your favorite airlines to FSLTL and get a closed Beta access. Leave a ticket or contact me directly there: @SofieGrozovski [Z+1] . It would be perfect if you provide some screenshots of your work when applying.

We will make FSLTL looking great, together! No low-coster will be left behind - thanks to you.
Models
First of all, the permission situation: I’ve contacted all the model contributors that granter us the rights in the FLAi-partnered phase of development some time ago, FSPXAI and HTAI already responded, we’re waiting for others. If by some chance you have means of contact any major FSX/P3d AI models maker - please contact me. Also, if you’re a FSX/P3d modeler reading this, please check your mailbox. E-mails sometimes end up in the spam folders. Or contact me directly.

From the technical side we made great progress by establishing a steady pipeline of porting old models to the native MSFS format, that permits use of complex parallax shaders, complex mapping of… everything and ability to fix/create animations that were broken or not even existed (as front wheel steering on many aircraft for example). Some of this features are postponed to the second wave as our primary target is populating the skies with as many aircraft as possible, digging into details is the second-rate task.

Also it great news that Asobo confirmed creating it’s own AI models that will be possible to repaint. We don’t know for sure exact models coming this spring, but we will be keeping this in mind so we won’t be heavily overlapping.
Release date plans
We will go public with limited amount of aircraft as soon as CDN is established. That’s it. With the reorganization of the whole project we decided to step off from “grand release” strategy and ship contend as it’s created and prepared by you and us.

To make this day sooner, we’re expanding the team:
WANTED
- Livery artists. While the CDN is not established we’re working directly, but all stated above obviously applies.
- Node.js/Electron developers, we need more hands on the front-end. Experience required.
- 3D artists for fixing bugs. We use Blender, but any experience is acceptable.
 

 

[Drumcode 1,893]

I mean at this point I'll take whatever is available and wait for AIG to unleash the beast.

[Noooch 1,084]

@Tuskin38 Thanks mate, this should be posted on flightsim.to where all the artists are.

[cianpars 1,166]

Really looking forward to this.  I added all the liveries I wanted to FS9 and FSX and have been really missing that realism in MSFS. When I'm flying a Ryanair route I want to be doing it in a Ryanair 737 and when I hear a BA flight on the radio, I want to see a BA plane, etc.

To have RW traffic with matching liveries is going to be amazing, especially when we see RW traffic actually ooerating again ( airports are so quiet at the moment).

[kt069 569]

3 hours ago, cianpars said:

Really looking forward to this.  I added all the liveries I wanted to FS9 and FSX and have been really missing that realism in MSFS. When I'm flying a Ryanair route I want to be doing it in a Ryanair 737 and when I hear a BA flight on the radio, I want to see a BA plane, etc.

To have RW traffic with matching liveries is going to be amazing, especially when we see RW traffic actually ooerating again ( airports are so quiet at the moment).

For the moment, not perfect but adequate, I recommend PSX Real Traffic which is almost the sane with flightradar24 with just about 20 seconds delay.

The manuals are clear and can be configured, easily. Needs a bit search and attention. Our airports are very crowded with RW Traffic 🙂  

https://www.lekseecon.nl/

Happy Flying.

Edited February 4, 2021 by kt069

[Redge 241]

Does the in-game ATC recognise the PSX generated traffic?

[kt069 569]

1 hour ago, Redge said:

Does the in-game ATC recognise the PSX generated traffic?

I am not using in-game ATC but I think it will not recognize.

But, I tried with Pilot2atc and it recognizes.

Edited February 4, 2021 by kt069

[duckbilled 310]

9 hours ago, Drumcode said:

I mean at this point I'll take whatever is available and wait for AIG to unleash the beast.

I totally agree. I had UTL, flai, AIG, and random other packages installed in P3D. I initially used flai to populate UTL prior to AIGAIM coming out.

I'll take whatever I can get.

Edited February 4, 2021 by duckbilled

[Kaiii3 1,979]

9 hours ago, Drumcode said:

I mean at this point I'll take whatever is available and wait for AIG to unleash the beast.

we are making progress, actual today I got some info that one of our internal testers has made some hugh progress on one issue we had been working on for some time. I do not want to get into much detail here, but the beast is getting more and more in shape^^

 

And it will be nice to see how FSLTL is handling the bugs we are tracking down at the moment.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Kaiii3

[motishow 123]

AIG will be the ia traffic we need.!!!!!

[Tuskin38 6,529]

5 hours ago, Redge said:

Does the in-game ATC recognise the PSX generated traffic?

It doesn’t.

[Redge 241]

Ok. I seem to be one of the few supporters of the in-game ATC around here (seeing it as a definite upgrade from X-Plane 11), so that’s a non starter for me. Thanks for saving me the trouble!

[Tuskin38 6,529]

I use the ingame ATC as well, makes the skies sound more alive. Yes the phraseology isn't accurate, but it's better than nothing.

[LGAVLGKO 6]

I use this and it makes a ton of difference. It is a major improvement to default ATC, if you don't mind European phraseology.

European ATC Phraseology Mod - Version 1.3 (24-Nov-2020) - Third Party Addon Discussion / Tools & Utilities - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

[MaVe64 414]

3 hours ago, Kaiii3 said:

And it will be nice to see how FSLTL is handling the bugs we are tracking down at the moment.

Don't worry about FSLTL, they tracked down all the bugs months ago. Everything is working fine. Any remaining bugs are for Asobo to fix.

I wish you good luck.

Edited February 4, 2021 by MaVe64