Texture-theft? Drzewiecki Design against FlyDesign!

Post update 19.08.2018, 14:04 UTC: FlyDesign’s Statement added

In a Facebook post last night, Stanislaw Drzewiecki accuses FlyDesign’s developers of possibly stealing textures. He said that they have been used it in their scenery of Krakow Airport recently published Prepar3D. The concrete accusation on the part of Drzewiecki Design is that these are too similar to their textures to be a coincidence.

The textures were taken from real photos Stanislaw took for his own scenery directly at the airport. Thus it could not be that they in such a way without coming directly from them.

Why didn’t the accusations come until now?

Originally the scenery of Krakow Airport was published by FlyDesign for X-Plane 11. That was already in March this year. Here, too, the allegedly stolen textures must have already been used. Why Drzewiecki Design’s accusation has only now come to light is somewhat surprising.

Drzewiecki Design is also not a blank sheet

In August 2011 John Jenssen of Vidan Design accused Drzewiecki Design of illegally using his textures for their scenery. Here, too, it was an airport that was first implemented and published by a developer (then Vidan Design) and only appeared years later by another development team, in this case Drzewiecki Design.

Texture-theft: Not uncommon in Flight Simulation

Texture theft is not uncommon in flight simulation. In recent years, some cases have come to light in which developers have accused other developers of stealing textures from them and using them in their own sceneries. The last known case occurred in January 2016. A developer under the pseudonym “NDSoft” published a freeware scenery of Constantine Airport. A short time later FlyTampa spoke up and accused that textures from their Payware sceneries had been used illegally here.

FlyDesign’s Statement

As a result of the joint investigation between flightsim.news and flusinews.de, we have received an official statement from FlyDesign dealing with the accusations. However, these are obviously not understandable at all with FlyDesign. Rather, Drzewiecki Design is now being asked to provide concrete proof. If these do not arrive, Caroline from FlyDesign asks Stanislaw Drzewiecki to remove the post immediately. Otherwise, legal action is reserved for oneself. Perhaps this is also the reason why all of Drzewiecki Design’s public statements are kept in the subjunctive.

In any case, this is FlyDesign’s official statement on the subject:

Dear Colleagues,

According to Your question, regarding the improper use of textures in our EPKK scenery, raised by Drzewiecki Design , we would like to publish the following statement. All the textures used in our product are custom made by our team, with the use of either pay ware texture portals, or free accessible pictures from the Internet. None of the textures are taken from any DD product. Good example for this are the roof textures, presented on the DD forum. Those textures are taken directly from Google Maps. If we are presenting a concrete building in our scenery, should we change the texture to wood, to keep the building looking different from the one presented in DD scenery? We, as a team of developers, who are seriously treating our job, although it is our afterhour’s job, would never steal work of other developer team. We have sent a statement to DD, asking to present evidence of improper use of their textures, as we expect the post regarding stealing textures to be removed from DD forum, in other case we will be forced to proceed with legal actions. In this case, we are forced to treat all the posts on DD forum as a commercial act against our product. Should you have any further questions our need any ongoing explanations, please contact us.

Best regards,

Caroline

FD