Mike,
The plastic model builders (including myself in that group)use Future as a base coat to install their water slide decal films on to as well as the canopy coating as you state. This produces a very smooth shiny coating which helps the decal film edges disappear. Over this Future coat any manner of post-decal finishing/weathering materials and techniques are applied. After this a final finishing coat, be it flat or gloss, is applied. I believe it is an Acrylic material. Now, I stated I'm a plastic model builder (when time permits,..currently it doesn't but...)but I've not used Future in my finishing technique. But this link, complements of
www.hyperscale.com is a good place to start perhaps to learn about what Future might do for us. I've not read it myself, but "Swanny" is one of the noted Hyperscale "Future" geeks. FWIW:
http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html He might even have more answers if one were to e-mail him.
edit: The question begs to be asked,..how close to Poly-crylic is Future Floor finish anyway? Maybe some of us have been using it all along. Not sure Poly-crylic is fuel proof but maybe "Zilla's" article in Flying Models could shed some light. Haven't read that yet either. I did read Swannys words (see link above). Very interesting stuff.