No, the issue was Ubisoft/1C Madox using the name, "Grumman" without their permission. If they had just left their name off of the packaging and written material, it would have been fine. The designations of the a/c, such as F6F or TBF were assigned by the government not the manufacturer. It was the use of their name that caused all the stink.

I don't think that was Oleg's decision, either. He didn't tell them to use that name, Ubi marketing was the brilliance that decided to and then they got slapped for it and told him to cut the planes out altogether rather than just comply with what was known to work already for 20 years of PC sims.

Taxpayers paid for these companies to make these designs known. If it's a company-funded prototype that the gov't never buys, a one-off proof-of-concept that goes nowhere, fine, I accept it's the company's IP. Don't dare tell me I can't have an F-22 in my game after the tons of tax dollars I contributed to its creation.



The Jedi Master

Military industrial complex gone amuck.

Licensing is becoming a big issue in the flight sim hobby.

For those of you who don't fly civilian sims like FSX, over on that side of the hobby it's already a very real factor.

Gulfstream do not allow anybody to sell a recreation of their aircraft. Nada. Nothing. Verboten.

A year or two ago a guy made a payware Rafale and attracted the attention of Dassault who forced him to remove it from sale.

Various developers have alluded to licensing and the associated costs being something they have to take into account nowadays. If you want to recreate an aircraft in a flight sim and charge money for it you have to get approval from the manufacturer, lest you risk attracting the attention of their legal department.

It's not just names or designations, it's the likeness. In fact the whole thing is a complete minefield. I'm sad enough to read EULAs and I've noticed a few from one developer, who claim the copyright to the likeness of their creation, even though that was in turn created from the likeness of the real aircraft which is obviously owned by the manufacturer.

Any of you guys into MSFS and the like might have noticed you can't get an American Airlines livery in a payware package. That's because AA don't allow anybody to include it in a paid for product. You can only get AA liveries as freeware or as a free download from the payware developer's website.

That came about about 15 years ago when some guy (actually a notorious, nay infamous flight sim "entrepreneur") negotiated a deal with AA to buy the franchise to the AA logo in flight simulation. He then demanded royalties from everybody who wanted to distribute an AA repaint for MSFS. He sent letters to all the big flight sim websites demanding they remove all AA liveried aircraft from their file servers and only reinstate them with his permission - i.e. after the author paid him a royalty. This guy thought he was going to make a fortune, he was even trying to negotiate a deal with British Airways. The only problem was his deal didn't cover freeware, only payware. When AA got wind of what he was trying to do they cancelled the contract and slapped a blanket ban on anybody selling a product with their logo.


Not only flight sims...

Fire up Ace Combat and check out how many corporate logos of aircraft manufacturers are on the splash screen.

Even model aircraft kits now..... I've got a 1/48 Douglas A-20 kit that has a nice little logo on it..... "Boeing Officially Licensed Product".... which is also exactly the same logo that's on my PMDG 737 and 777 for FSX.

Speaking of PMDG.... part of their success is down to the level of access and technical assistance they get from Boeing. Which in turn depends on their relationship with Boeing. Which in turn is dictated by their licensing agreements with Boeing. Imagine for a second the potential #%&*$# storm that would ensue if it were revealed that the pilot who crashed the Asiana 777 at SFO had been practicing in FSX with the PMDG 777? Remember the #%&*$# storm over the 9-11 hijackers apparently using MSFS to practice?

Basically the whole thing is because of lawyers and everybody ready to sue everybody else at the drop of a hat.

It's news like that which reinforces my belief that we'll never see a resurgence like we had in the 90s. Unless you make all hypothetical aircraft (and we saw the ruckus raised in the Arma 3 forums for that), the costs are going to be too high to make business sense or they'll just be denied flat out.

It will only get worse, never better.



The Jedi Master

There was a bit of delay in the release of the UH-1H Huey by Belsimtek as they had to get a licence for it too before they could release it.

VEAO had a bit of a delay as well with the Hawk

This sucks, why not make the sim and call it a fictional name. We all know it's a skyhawk, just a way to get around greedy Boeing. There has to be a better way for the future.

I'd buy a Böeing Skylark any day.

-C-

That makes two of us.

Because if it looks like a Skyhawk, and acts like a Skyhawk, then it won't matter what you call it because you will still get sued.

Come on is Boeing really going to sue veao for making a skylark ? I mean that's like cutting off your nose to save your face. How does ea get around having f18s and apaches in battlefield ? Is ea really paying Boeing for a license ? I say make the sim and tell Boeing to pound sand. Like someone mentioned earlier in this thread, veao could have just made the sim and Boeing would have never noticed because it's such a small potatoes operation.

I still say make the sim and call it a skylark, this it what they do in the music industry. How do you think vanilla ice got around using David bowie's song ?

EA just made something that looks a bit like it and works nothing like it. There is a big difference when you are modeling, or nearly so, the complete avionics systems.

I'm sure even in a high fidelity sim you could leave enough variation to argue in court that this is different than the real world. I still can't believe this killed the project, I mean how did BST get around Bell for the huey ? I'm sure Bell could have demanded some outrageous sum, but they put it out and it's been pretty successful.

Uh, no. That is NOT what Boeing cares about.

By that logic, the F-22 game Novalogic made in the 90s that had LM's logo and "seal of approval" on must have been totally accurate in systems modeling?

They care about their name being used #1, above all else. That is theirs and courts back them up 100% on that. After that, sometimes the name like Apache or Eagle can be owned by the company. Hence many sims use nothing but AH-64 or F-15C because those are DoD designations and are not owned by the company, as opposed to a company designation that they own like a 787.

Make a Blackhawk and call it a UH-60L, that's one thing. Call it an S-70A Blackhawk and that's another.

The final thorn is appearance, what it looks like. That is the gray area that is less easily avoided compared to using names and numbers. Some try to argue that they made the shape so it's their IP, while others say taxpayers funded it so it's not really theirs. No idea where the courts have come down on that one.





The Jedi Master

Amazing...The aeronautical industry killing flight sims.

Well... an A4, even FC3 level, for maybe 7 euro... that would have been quite a deal. A realistic enough plane without 600 pages of pdf to be learnt.

Some planes are ok FC3 level. The Skyhawk would have been one of those.
Just my opinion of course.

So who owns the laws of physics?

It all depends on what you like really - I personally was really looking forward to the Scooter as it's the aircraft of my childhood (New Zealand's last fighter aircraft) so was looking forward to learning it, even though it's a simple a/c in relative terms, but hey, we have the F-86F Sabre and that's pretty straight forward.

I'm guessing it has more to do with needing their cooperation on how the plane handles and such to create a proper FM, in addition to info on the avionics. Either way, screw Boeing!