# Third-Party Notices

Specter incorporates the components listed below. **They are licensed to you
under their own terms, not under Specter's End User Licence Agreement**, and
those terms take precedence for those components. See Section 5 of `LICENSE.md`.

This file must be distributed with Specter. Several of the licences below
require it.

---

## 1. 3D models (`3dobjects/`)

**370 of the 630 models shipped with Specter are the work of the Tacview
project and its contributors.**

**Author:** Frantz "Vyrtuoz" Raia
**Project:** Tacview — The Universal Flight Analysis Tool — https://tacview.net
**Repository:** https://github.com/Vyrtuoz/Tacview (`3D Models/Data/Meshes`)
**Licence:** GNU General Public License, version 3.0
**Full text:** `3dobjects/LICENSE`
**Attribution and modification record:** `3dobjects/NOTICE.md`

Specter is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tacview or Frantz Raia. All
credit for that geometry belongs to the Tacview project and its contributors;
Specter uses it under the licence the project publishes it under.

| | Files | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Tacview models | 370 | GPL-3.0, credited above |
| Shapes generated by `specter/src/render/procedural.rs` | 260 | Specter's own work, no third-party obligation |

The GPL-3.0 files are licensed to you under GPL-3.0, which grants rights in
those specific files **broader** than the EULA grants for Specter itself,
including the rights to copy, modify and redistribute them. Nothing in the EULA
restricts or purports to restrict those rights. The `.obj` files as shipped are
their own source form.

> ### ⚠ UNRESOLVED BEFORE COMMERCIAL RELEASE
>
> A previous version of this file described these models as Apache-2.0. That was
> incorrect: the geometry is from the Tacview model set, which is GPL-3.0. The
> licence text and this notice were corrected on 2026-09-09.
>
> One item remains open, recorded in `3dobjects/NOTICE.md`:
>
> **The distribution model needs legal review.** These are data files read at
> runtime by `tobj::load_obj` and are never compiled or linked into
> `specter.exe`. Whether that is mere aggregation under GPL-3.0 § 5 or a
> combined work is a real question with commercial consequences, and should be
> settled by a solicitor rather than assumed.
>
> (Per-file headers were replaced on 2026-08-04, but the upstream files carry no
> per-file copyright notices — what was overwritten was conversion-tool banners.
> Geometry was never altered. The defect was the collection-level
> misdescription, which the files above now correct.)
>
> If the answer to (2) is unfavourable, the fallback is to ship only the
> procedurally generated shapes and the primitives, which carry no third-party
> obligation, and to replace the remainder with models generated from published
> dimensions.

Procedurally generated geometry is **not** derived from the Tacview set and is
not covered by GPL-3.0.

---

## 2. Elevation Data (`data/terrain/`)

The `.terrain` heightmap files are resampled from **public-domain elevation
data** (SRTM / NASADEM and equivalents), which is not subject to copyright.

The resampling, tiling and container format are Specter's own work.

> **Verify before release:** if any theatre was built from a source with
> attribution or share-alike terms rather than a public-domain source, that
> source must be named here. The build tool is
> `tools/terrain/dcs_terrain_downloader.py`; its configured tile sources are the
> authority on what was actually used.

---

## 3. Rust Crate Dependencies

Specter links a number of open-source Rust crates, predominantly under the
**MIT** and **Apache-2.0** licences. Both permit commercial redistribution in
binary form, and both require that their licence text and copyright notices
accompany the distribution.

Principal components include:

| Component | Purpose | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| `wgpu` | Graphics abstraction | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `egui`, `egui-wgpu`, `egui-winit` | User interface | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `winit` | Window and input handling | Apache-2.0 |
| `naga` | Shader compilation | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `nalgebra` | Linear algebra | Apache-2.0 |
| `tokio` | Asynchronous runtime | MIT |
| `flybywireless-simconnect` | Flight Simulator telemetry client | MIT |
| `serde`, `serde_json` | Serialisation | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `ed25519-dalek` | Licence key signatures | BSD-3-Clause |
| `image` | Image decoding | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `flate2` | Terrain decompression | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `rayon` | Data parallelism | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `chrono` | Date and time | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `quick-xml` | Unit catalogue parsing | MIT |
| `memmap2` | Memory-mapped recording access | MIT / Apache-2.0 |
| `rfd` | Native file dialogs | MIT |
| `zip` | Compressed recording support | MIT |

**Generating the complete list.** The table above is a summary, not the full
dependency tree. Produce the authoritative list with:

```
cargo install cargo-about
cargo about generate about.hbs > THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.html
```

Ship the generated file alongside this one. This is the standard way to satisfy
the attribution clauses of MIT and Apache-2.0 across a full dependency graph,
and it stays correct as dependencies change.

---

## 4. Tacview ACMI Format

Specter reads the **ACMI 2.2** flight-recording format. The format specification
is published by Raia Software Inc. for interoperability.

Specter is an independent product. It is **not affiliated with, endorsed by, or
sponsored by** Raia Software Inc. (Tacview) or Eagle Dynamics SA (DCS World).
"Tacview" and "DCS World" are trademarks of their respective owners and are used
here solely to describe compatibility.

---

## 5. Microsoft Flight Simulator

Specter can record telemetry from a running copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator
by speaking the **SimConnect** protocol over a local named pipe. It does this
through `flybywireless-simconnect`, an independent MIT-licensed reimplementation
of that protocol; Specter contains no code, SDK component or redistributable
from Microsoft, and installing Specter neither requires nor modifies any
Flight Simulator file.

Specter is an independent product. It is **not affiliated with, endorsed by, or
sponsored by** Microsoft Corporation, Asobo Studio, or any aircraft add-on
developer. "Microsoft Flight Simulator" is a trademark of Microsoft
Corporation, used here solely to describe compatibility.

Recordings made from Flight Simulator are training aids for personal review.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is not an FAA-approved training device, and data
captured from it must not be presented as flight operational quality assurance
(FOQA) data or used for any regulatory or certification purpose.

---

*Last updated: 10 August 2026*