Community Question: What Are You Looking For In A Custom Livery?

Community-Question-Custom-Liveries-McLaren-720S-GT3-Evo-Assetto-Corsa-Competizione.jpg

What type of custom livery do you prefer?

  • Real livery (adapted to different car)

    Votes: 189 62.6%
  • Fictional livery that could/should be real

    Votes: 198 65.6%
  • Absurd, humorous or meme livery

    Votes: 41 13.6%
  • Fictional livery that could not race in real life

    Votes: 42 13.9%
  • Simple editor livery à la ACC

    Votes: 30 9.9%
  • Stock liveries are fine

    Votes: 28 9.3%
  • Other (please specify in comments!)

    Votes: 14 4.6%

  • Total voters
    302
Custom liveries are very popular in sim racing, but there are many different types - and countless designs. We want to know: What are you looking for in a custom livery for your virtual race car?

Header image: Vaillante McLaren 720S Evo for ACC by @Whalenap

Sometimes, stock liveries just are not enough and real-world designs have lost their charm. Of course, there are timeless classics that have appeared on real cars that will likely never get old, but having something different adorning your vehicle can make it feel that much more special.

For some, built-in livery editors like in Assetto Corsa Competizione are enough. A few basic color slots, a few patterns and materials to choose from, no real sponsor decals save for a few pre-defined ones - this can look cool, but is relatively limited when it comes to a full livery.

Other titles like EA Sports WRC sport much more intricate systems, though those tend to take quite some time to fiddle around with to reach an acceptable result. All-custom liveries can be created via templates using programs like Photoshop for almost any title, opening the door to anything you could imagine.

Community-Question-Custom-Liveries-Sauber-Mercedes-C9-Shell-Assetto-Corsa.jpg

This Shell livery never appeared on an actual Sauber-Mercedes C9 - it looks like it could have, though. Image credit: @SebastiaanW33

Real-life liveries from the past or other cars, fictional liveries, custom team designs, humorous alternatives - the creator's imagination is the limit. But what type of livery are you usually looking for?

A real-life livery that is not included for the same car in a certain title? A historic scheme brought back, maybe even for an entirely different type of car? Your own team's design that would not look out of place on a real car? Something absurd or humorous like "plz dont punt I'm slow :(" written on your rear wing? The options are almost endless.

Just for Assetto Corsa, over 18.000 skins have been uploaded to RaceDepartment. In Trading Paints, a bespoke third-party application dedicated to custom liveries and making them work has found tremendous popularity over the years. Thousands of skins for Assetto Corsa Competizione and rFactor 2, as well as hundreds for Automobilista 2 here on RD clearly show the enormous demand.

Community-Question-Custom-Liveries-Porsche-962C-Hesketh-Assetto-Corsa.jpg

The design of 1970s F1 team Hesketh on a 1980s Group C Porsche 962C? Not exactly rooted in reality, but it looks great, if you ask us! Image credit: @nopitch1

In fact, certain liveries have already inspired memes, like the Red Bull Racing design on any car in iRacing meaning that the driver will likely try high-risk manoeuvers at every opportunity they get. Others appear to even use those liveries tactically to make others more cautious around them.

What is your philosophy on custom liveries? Feel free to answer our poll and give your thoughts in the comments below - and to show off your favorite schemes as well!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

To use offline and online.
Packs by car for online and offline drivers skins.
Must have driver and car number match.
Numbers must not be duplicated.
Makes smoother joining servers no download/uploads required.
As well "guest skins" differtent from stock for people that join servers don't have a skin.
In rF2 at least your rfmod can remove the stock skins all together.
Sure you can do same thing in other sims.

49 driver cars ( + 19 Guest cars) I have onlined with most.
When you do a offline race it is nice, well I like it.
Great concept you ask me, I never asked you.


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From 2007 I drive rF online within the league and my own teams. I can't imagine driving for my own team and having someone else's skin. That's why I'm preparing my own skins for our team.
 

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I like realistic liveries for cars in AC, but fictional liveries are fine too, as long as they have realistic sponsors and race numbers ;)
 
Premium
Personally, I *love* seeing adaptations of fictional liveries from popular media adapted to different racing cars, *especially* if the livery goes the extra mile by combining the fantasy sponsors with the real-world contingency logos to make them believable as an entrant in a racing series.
For me, standouts include @Azure Goat's Ridge Racer liveries for Assetto Corsa Competizione and @Mathonner's GRID Legends designs for various car mods in standard AC.
 
Premium
Apart from formal sponsorship liveries Its important that your livery is tailored to you and gives you that boost of confidence when racing. Custom liveries are a good way of expressing yourself on track. Get all these liveries shown free on my rd.
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Premium
I prefere factory painted cars without any stickers or racing number only. Classic liveries are cool tho, like Gulf, Lotus JPS etc.
 
I have to admit that one thing that previous generation of WRC games, most notably WRC Generations that I played did right is livery editor. It is complicated, but once you get hang of it you can make nice liveries. When I started with my career I started with basic black carbon with yellow details which by the end of my play time in that game evolved into an intricate blue-black-grey livery with Croatian red-white checks on top.

Also great thing that their livery editor had is that they had real sponsor logos in the game by default (nice touch is that they had car specific suppliers like for oil etc. sponsors) and that they allowed players to share created logos. I am unable to create a proper looking logo (like Monster for example) but I like the possibility that someone who can make it is able to share that creation.

Helmet editor in recent MotoGP games is on par with that, other than that they removed the ability to share logos. In first year they also broke matte finishes for helmets with one of the game updates and even though I have reported it few times and they reported it back as fixed it is still broken.
 
As someone doing "Isekais" I'd say just let us be creative, especially in Assetto Corsa. I did a lot of fantasy/real liveries on different cars thingy because I want more liveries... and if IRL liveries are not suffice enough, then allow us to create some! Especially if we want 60 Hypercars grid without Duplicate liveries. Why not!
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Yannik Haustein
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