RE: planes in the works.
Just wanted to put in my 2 cents on the whole copyright issue, There is NONE! we at the W3 Group have recently put a copyright attorney on payrole because of some things we have coming down the road for Reflex. You can copy any plane you want, as long as you are building them from scratch. There is no copyright law keeping you from artistic cg rendering of another model. If you want to get down to the nitty gritty, there is no way you are building it EXACTLY to the same deminsions as another model that it resembles. People are way to quick to yell copyright when they have no idea what they are talking about. The only problems you run into is using trademarked names , like Tensor, Eflite, Greatplanes, Katana mini....etc. But only if you are selling the end product, not if it is for free. There are no trademarks on paint scheems either...You could trademark one if you really wanted to go through the trouble, but no one in the sim world or RC world has. thats like saying no one can use the color blue with a red stripe down the side because I saw a plane like that before. Full scale planes like the red bull racing team and such do have trademarks on paint scheems but that is very rare. So build away.... And any time you can get permission to use a trademarked name, do it. It's just a nice thing to do. Or at least give credit to the design its based on. If your selling a model and can't get permission, leave the name off. The CG model is yours, even if it is based on another one.
And "STL pilot" is not a trademarked name so stick it on the side of your model with a big thumbs down next to it. He can't do a thing about it.
Chris
W3 Group