The Economy9 min read
The Livery Workshop
The Livery Workshop at /portal/workshop is a 3D paint booth staged in a hangar at your own airport: pick a real airframe and paint right on the jet. It is free to join, free to experiment in, and priced like a real paint shop when you publish - one Paint Bill with three sections: Paint, Finish, Decals.
Joining & the free floor
The Workshop opens to every pilot who has verified their sim with one real flight - the same one-flight bar that verifies a land claim. No purchase, no supporter requirement: install the companion app, fly for a minute, and the booth is yours.
Experimenting is free. You pay when you publish. Nothing charges while you sketch, repaint, or tear a design down and start over; the bill panel keeps a live quote of what publishing would cost, and the publish dialog shows the exact total before you confirm. Every publish gets a receipt.
The Paint Bill
The bill has three sections, and each one prices a different kind of work. Everything on it is charged once per livery, at publish.
Paint: one flat line
Any color work at all - fills, regions, strokes, bands, pinstripes, painted paths - adds a single Paint job line at Ⓐ750. It is flat: one layer or fifty, any hex color, the price is the same. A factory-white jet carrying only decals and a finish never pays it.
Finish: one line, the best material wins
| Finish | Price |
|---|---|
| Factory, Matte, Gloss | Included |
| Bare Metal | Ⓐ1,250 |
| Chrome | Ⓐ2,500 |
One line per livery: the highest finish used anywhere on the airframe.
The finish line prices the best material on the jet, wherever it appears: a single bare-metal accent on a gloss airliner bills the Bare Metal line once, and nothing more. Tinting metal or chrome any color is included, and no finish is locked behind a rating - if you can afford the line, you can fly it.
Decals: per placement
| Line | Price |
|---|---|
| Text or shape decal | Ⓐ50 |
| Library decal (logos, flags, art packs) | Ⓐ100 |
| Uploaded image | Ⓐ300 |
| Wrap panel (artwork covering more than 10 m) | Ⓐ750 |
| Full wrap (artwork covering more than 40 m) | Ⓐ2,000 |
Each placement bills separately - mirroring a decal to the other side is a second placement.
Text and shapes never hit the wrap rates: a stretched stripe is trim, not a wrap. Wrap pricing applies to library and uploaded artwork only, and uploading images requires Painter Rating Journeyman (II) - see the rating ladder below.
The wrap coverage rule
Wrap rates price coverage, in plain terms: how much of the airframe one piece of artwork actually covers. A library or uploaded decal wider than 10 m as it sits on the aircraft bills as a Wrap panel; wider than 40 m, as a Full wrap. Exactly 10 m or 40 m stays in the lower tier; strictly above moves up.
One painting gesture that lands across several texture sheets is still one line on the bill, and its coverage is measured honestly: the widest piece times the number of sheets it touches. Tiling the same art across six sheets at 9 m each therefore prices as 54 m of coverage - a Full wrap - exactly what painting it in one sweep would cost.
Worked examples
| Livery | Bill |
|---|---|
| Solid two-tone recolor (two fills) | Ⓐ750 |
| Airline scheme: fills, 2 text titles, 4 library logos, 1 uploaded fin art under 10 m | Ⓐ1,550 |
| Bare-metal polish: one fill, Bare Metal finish, 2 text titles | Ⓐ2,100 |
| Metal accents only, no color work | Ⓐ1,250 |
| Decorated chrome showpiece: fills, Chrome, 2 text titles, 4 library logos, 1 upload | Ⓐ4,050 |
| Fully wrapped chrome: base fill, one full-wrap upload, Chrome, 2 text titles | Ⓐ5,350 |
| Republish any of the above unchanged | Ⓐ0 |
| Add one library decal later | Ⓐ100 |
| Upgrade Bare Metal to Chrome | Ⓐ1,250 |
| Grow a 9 m upload past the 10 m wrap line | Ⓐ450 |
A typical fully-worked livery lands around Ⓐ1,500 to Ⓐ4,000; wraps and chrome sit above that.
Republishing: pay once, pay the difference
Your first publish charges the full bill. After that, each publish charges only what is new - items you have already paid for show up in the bill panel as already paid and cost nothing again. An item is identified by what it is, not where it sits, so moving, scaling, rotating, and recoloring never re-bill.
- Upgrades pay the difference. Take a published Bare Metal jet to Chrome and you pay Ⓐ1,250, not the full chrome price. Grow artwork past a wrap boundary and you pay the tier difference.
- Downgrades are free. Dropping chrome back to gloss charges nothing.
- Removals never refund. Paint is consumed: deleting a paid decal or stripping a finish returns nothing, and adding it back later bills it as new.
- Rewording a text decal re-letters it. The lettering is what you paid for, so new wording is a new Ⓐ50 line.
An unchanged republish costs Ⓐ0, and there is no compile fee - iterate on a published livery as often as the daily cap allows.
Hangar Bays
A bay holds one livery through its whole life - draft, published, and every revision. Bays are the Workshop's only account-wide purchase; everything else on this page is per livery.
| Bay | Price |
|---|---|
| Hangar Bay 1 | Free with verification |
| Hangar Bay 2 | Ⓐ5,000 |
| Hangar Bay 3 | Ⓐ10,000 |
| Hangar Bay 4 | Ⓐ20,000 |
| Hangar Bay 5 | Ⓐ40,000 |
Bays buy in order - each one requires the bay before it.
The whole ladder costs Ⓐ75,000. Supporters get 5 extra bays on top of whatever they own, free. An unused bay refunds in full within 24 hours of buying it.
Painter Rating
Painter Rating is the Workshop's prestige ladder: five levels, earned by publishing liveries, painting distinct airframes, and logging landings. It is never bought, so a high rating on someone's showcase means the work behind it is real.
| Rating | How it is earned |
|---|---|
| I Apprentice | The baseline: verify your sim with one real flight |
| II Journeyman | 1 published livery, 5 landings |
| III Craftsman | 3 published liveries, 2 distinct airframes, 25 landings |
| IV Master Painter | 6 published liveries, 4 distinct airframes, 100 landings |
| V Legend of the Line | Curated: featured work and event wins, granted by the team |
Earned, never bought. Landings are your lifetime counted landings.
Exactly one thing is gated by rating: uploading your own images requires Journeyman (II). Everything else - every finish, every library decal, every airframe - is open at any rating, priced on the bill alone.
What Supporters add
The Workshop itself is free. Supporters buy reach and room, not access:
- Fleet distribution.Your liveries always fly in your own sim; a Supporter's published liveries can also be discovered and installed by other players, so your paint flies in their worlds too.
- 5 extra Hangar Bays on top of the free ladder, at no cost.
- 12 publishes a day instead of 4.
Placing your paint at an airport
A published livery becomes a placeable static aircraft in the builder's object catalogue, gathered on your personal My Liveries shelf. Placing your painted static costs the same as the plain airframe - the paint itself adds nothing at placement, because the Paint Bill already covered it. Park your own colors on your own apron; that is the point of the whole shop.
