To Asobo Staff:
I prefer not to open this as a bug report because it’s up to you to judge whether this is a ByDesign issue, or a real problem you’ll address (or not). I’m simply going to limit myself to explaining what I’ve observed with examples and images.
Basically, MSFS2024 doesn’t use the Shadow Sphere property (I understand that’s a ByDesign issue, and that it was used in 2020 to correct light bleed problems caused by the sun, taking into account the local occlusion of objects relative to each other). In that sense, I think it’s a step forward.
However, what seems like a complete step backward to me is that the ambient occlusion of PBR textures (or comp textures, or whatever you want to call them) isn’t working. This isn’t a problem I’m only seeing on one or two planes (in fact, I don’t think I’m the only one noticing it), but rather I’m seeing it on all planes (it doesn’t matter if they’re native or compatible, the problem is widespread). MSFS2024 has been on sale for almost a year now, and I don’t see this problem being addressed, although I think everyone is aware of it, to the point that MSFS2020 for the same SimObject produces better lighting results.
Let’s suppose we have the sun directly in front of our cockpit (this is 2020):
I’m not going to limit myself to just one photo of one of my products:
A320:
Cesnna:
DA62:
I could go on, but I think what we see is clear (the ambient occlusion of the Shadow sphere as well as the redchannel of the comps give the expected results, there is no light bleed).
I also want to highlight the photo of this object (Because that’s what will most clearly highlight the problem you have):
Basically, it’s a grid texture that uses ambient occlusion to simulate the holes.
Okay, let’s go to 2024:
In the case of the a320 I will have to use the one from iniBuilds:
I’m 100% sure there’s no problem with either the model or the comp textures; basically, ambient occlusion is being ignored, and there’s light bleed where there shouldn’t be.
Cessna:
Same result, there is light bleeding right where there shouldn’t be.
DA62:
The lighting comes from the sun, which is behind the wall and should not be like that under any circumstances (especially noticeable on metallic objects).
Let’s get to mine:
In the same case, the light is being generated from behind, so the bleeding is evident considering it is an open space:
And now let’s move on to the object I mentioned (the grid cell whose red channel should convert the holes to black):
The curious thing about all this is that I’m trying to migrate the aircraft to 2024 to see if the ambient occlusion improves. The result is the same (but I think this has already been demonstrated by your previous aircraft). And I think there are many of us developers who aren’t encouraged to create native projects in 2024 and continue with backward compatibility (since it’s the fastest method, doesn’t create double the work, and at least our frustration doesn’t increase beyond the fact that we haven’t wasted our time), when the problem is clearly in the game’s graphics engine.
The problem is obvious: you have light bleed issues, and the ambient occlusion channel (red channel) isn’t working as it should or directly is not working at all (even though it does in 2020).
As I said, I’m not going to report this as a bug (since that would just add to the countless reports from other developers that have been labeled as “ByDesign,” or as I’ve seen in some posts, “the lighting is correct in 2024 but incorrect in 2020”).
Seriously, it’s incredibly frustrating to see that a year has passed, we’ve reported it hundreds of times, and nothing is being done about it. If it were our fault and we could implement workarounds, I’d understand, but the fact is, no aircraft is immune to this problem (and I, in particular, am developing using 2020 as the main base and not creating native projects because at least I have a reference point for what a working graphics engine looks like compared to one that doesn’t, or whether my textures or comp RGB levels are correct). And there is absolutely nothing we can do to solve it (not even by migrating the plane or creating 50,000 boxes around the object).
I would like (and I know I’m not the only one) for you to seriously address this issue, as it’s ruining the visual experience we expect (both users and developers) from a product like MSFS2024 compared to MSFS2020.
Thank you for your attention.
