Bug Description:
When creating a MSFS 2024 exterior windshield material in 3ds Max using the MSFS SDK, we are unable to reproduce a working result—even when matching the DA62 sample windshield material settings exactly.
Expected behavior:
If we create a 2024 windshield material and match all parameters to the official DA62 sample (including material name, shader/type, settings, and texture assignments), the material should render correctly in-sim with the same windshield appearance/effects.
Actual behavior:
A newly created windshield material (built from scratch) renders incorrectly in-sim and produces a severely degraded/horrendous visual result on the windshield.
We have matched every visible material setting to the DA62 sample and documented this with screenshots of the settings. The materials appear identical in 3ds Max, but the in-sim result is not.
Verification / Repro notes:
If we import/merge the DA62 windshield material from the SDK sample, it works correctly in-sim.
We also tested reassigning our own textures/material assets to the merged DA62 material. It continues to work, indicating the issue is not simply the texture set, but something about the internally created material instance or how it is authored/exported.
At this point we are forced to use the merged DA62 material, because we are effectively unable to author a new functional windshield material from scratch.
Most visible symptom / suspected contributing slot:
The incorrect in-sim appearance strongly correlates with the Detail Normal slot. The texture involved is:
This appears to be an SDK/material-authoring issue where an imported sample material behaves differently than an equivalent material recreated manually, despite matching settings.
=================================================================== NOTE: Use the images to review our material settings. Use the DA62 sample material to verify the settings match.
I have a new project and although I did not create new material I used the old one from like 8 months ago with 2020 textures I updated to 2024 textures and all worked well. But according to this post If I were to create a new material using the latest SDK then I am pretty sure this would happen again. Hope I am not crazy and you get the same result.
Using 3DS Max 2024, I wasn’t able to reproduce this using a new windshield material with cockpit_detailNormal2.png (since cockpit_detailNormal.png doesn’t exist in the MSFS2024 DA62 SDK sample).
Did you try running a diff between the working GLTF and the second GLTF exported with the new windshield material, to see what’s changed beetween those two versions ?
We can also run the test on our side if you’d like. In this case just send us your working GLTF and the 3ds Max file containing the new windshield material you created.
I forgot to turn down Detail Normal Refraction Strength. The default 1.0 is way too strong and will create that distorted windshield look. Setting it to around 0.05 (even 0.1) fixes it immediately.
I was a bit rusty here since my texture artist usually sets that value for me, and I either missed it in the rush or it’s something I don’t touch often enough to remember (and it may be new/changed behavior in 2024).
Suggestion: it would be helpful if the default starting values for this parameter were closer to typical real-world use (around 0.05–0.1) to avoid this kind of false alarm.
Boris — apologies for the noise on this one, and thanks for taking the time to look at it. Please feel free to close this topic.
The funny thing is, I was looking back at my original post above and I did make sure to match every single value as seen in the second image and this included the Detail Normal Refraction Strength. So maybe the sim did not like me that day!
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