Can anyone make ED ships for Flight Simulator?

That would obviously be illegal.
No it's not as long as you don't put a price on it. In fact you have replica of real aircrafts and airlines liveries. I'm sure the legal office of these is much bigger than the frontier's.
Also I don't think FDEV would reject some free advertisement for their games since MSFS has much more players...
 
No it's not as long as you don't put a price on it.
Read up on copyright law - making money from it is yet another issue.
In fact you have replica of real aircrafts and airlines liveries.
Which is entirely possible and legal if you (i.e. Microsoft) got permission in advance. And the size of the legal office doesn't matter. Or do you mean on that 3rd party site? There is a lot of copyright (and otherwise) illegal content on the internet. Sometimes it gets prosecuted, other times not.
Also I don't think FDEV would reject some free advertisement for their games
That is entirely up to FDev. Ask them in advance, and they will tell you whether you will get permission or not. It's not that complicated: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-media-usage-rules.510879/
Now, you might be able to claim that using FD content would be poermissible under the rules stated in this article. However, since it would involve datamining the game files for the models to be used inside another (commercial) product, I'd simply ask FD for permission. While it is usually easier to obtain forgiveness than permission, this is not true in copyright law...
 
That would obviously be illegal.
I'd be interested to know where the legal line is drawn. I've seen modders use assets from other games with the caveat that "You must own that game to legally use this mod." For example, I'm having a blast flying X4 Foundation ships in Space Engine. These ships are freely available in the SE Workshop on Steam, and I'm assuming if Egosoft had a problem with it, that would not be the case.

There's also a question of derivatives. For example, if someone takes the basic Cobra shape (which is available in OOLite) and makes their own Cobra, is that illegal? When I built Elite Dangerous ships in Space Engineers and upload the blueprints to the workshop, is that illegal? I don't think it is...

Disclaimer - all assumptions are based on American law.
 
No it's not as long as you don't put a price on it.
That's overly simplistic. I think selling someone else's creative work will more quickly bring the owner's wrath, but putting a copy of Taylor Swift's latest hit song in a public Dropbox and then linking it here would most definitely land you in hot water. At the very least it'll be taken down, and you'd likely be suspended from Dropbox and the forum.
 
I seem to recall a long long time ago that someone was 3D printing ED models using some DX pipeline tool - it was fine until they set up a website offering them for sale? Maybe it never got that far.
Fun anecdote; I used to work for a company who called themselves Tricorder as we made hand held 3D scanners - all was fine until there was a media spread about us (with a Star Trek pic)… then a letter from Paramount arrived :)
 
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I'd be interested to know where the legal line is drawn. I've seen modders use assets from other games with the caveat that "You must own that game to legally use this mod." For example, I'm having a blast flying X4 Foundation ships in Space Engine. These ships are freely available in the SE Workshop on Steam, and I'm assuming if Egosoft had a problem with it, that would not be the case.
This is only possibly allowed if the assets are not included in the mod itself. That is why you will not see such mods with assets owned by EA, for example. EgoSoft is too small to go after this.
There's also a question of derivatives. For example, if someone takes the basic Cobra shape (which is available in OOLite) and makes their own Cobra, is that illegal? When I built Elite Dangerous ships in Space Engineers and upload the blueprints to the workshop, is that illegal? I don't think it is...

Disclaimer - all assumptions are based on American law.
I genuinely don't know. Intuitively I'd assume you can't really claim a basic geometric shape for example. Then again, American law seems to basically be build around the idea that the most expensive lawyer wins so who knows. ;) All I know is you really cannot take actual assets from a commercial product and share the files on the internet. Whether FD will take action is another question.
 
This is only possibly allowed if the assets are not included in the mod itself. That is why you will not see such mods with assets owned by EA, for example. EgoSoft is too small to go after this.

I genuinely don't know. Intuitively I'd assume you can't really claim a basic geometric shape for example. Then again, American law seems to basically be build around the idea that the most expensive lawyer wins so who knows. ;) All I know is you really cannot take actual assets from a commercial product and share the files on the internet. Whether FD will take action is another question.
But the Cobra isn't that basic. Cobra is made out of very basic shapes, due to the early limitations of computers. In fact every graphic is made of basic geometric shapes in games (and probably many movies). I'd say Cobra is quite iconic because it was one of the first designs and it gained popularity. That, imo, constitutes its - end Elite's - intellectual property.
 
Yeah exactly... can someone import the model in the sdk?
Sorry, didn’t realise it was the mfs sdk 🤦‍♂️
I don’t know anyone with experience using it, am rather interested myself, I always wanted to have a seagull flying about :)
I used to play around with the previous mfs plane building, fs4 rockets were fun!
 
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