I create a lot of aircraft skins for a WW2 flight sim so have always wanted to see player skins introduced into Elite as well. Over the years making a skin has got increasingly complex as new lighting effects have been introduced into gaming. Apart from the main diffuse skin file there are specularity, power and normal maps to create and sometimes damage maps as well. In some cases these files can be created with a graphics editor like Photoshop but other games now require a normal map generator add on, specialist software like Substance Painter or a purpose-written program used to merge effects files into a proprietary format.



So why might FDev not want to use players to increase the number of skins? As they would be sold by FDev rather than given away free then player-made skins for Elite would each have to be checked carefully for quality and offensive content. Skins might be required to compress down to a fixed texture memory limit preventing complex designs from being allowed. There are lots of subtle ways some comedian might try to sneak some offensive content into a skin (swastikas etc). A player who has paid for editing software and put a month or two into painting a skin only to have it rejected might get upset unless he or she was given a detailed explanation as to why. I can see how from FDev might think that using their existing artists to paint skins and then getting the whole proceeds from the sale is more attractive than employing them or hiring new staff to check player skins, deal with the fallout from rejections while only getting part of the proceeds. For this to be worth their while the total sales of player and FDev skins sold would have to increase by more than the increase in overheads needed to police the system.