I’m having a shader issue in FS24 in the cockpit of my project I can’t really solve.
This affects both the ported 2020 version and the native 2024 version, no difference.
As a reference, here is a shot of the cockpit in FS2020. Sun comes from a forward direction. Lighting, AO, everything as expected.
Now in FS24 - same time of day, same location and aircraft position/sun angle - I get those nasty cold-whitish highlights on the upwards facinf surfaces of the instruments.
Again, no difference wether I use the port or the native FS24 aircraft.
I couldn’t open the image, but from the description this sounds like upwards facing surfaces are reflecting the blue sky of a brown/blue sky environment.
that might mean that your interior is being treated as exterior in terms of reflections in 2024 , which relies on AO values to determine whether to apply an interior reflection environment or an exterior one. if an AO value is 0.5 or less an interior reflection wil be applied, if more an exterior reflection will be used.
you can see this in action by going to devmode options menu => channel display => interior mask , interior surfaces should show as black in this view.
No, doesn’t make a difference, unfortunately.
After darkening the AO to less than RGB100 and with interior mask on, the cockpit is pitch black as expected, the highlights are still there.
other possibility is that the actual reflection cube map is set to open cockpit which reflects a blue sky .
this can be changed from cockpit.cfg cockpit_type , i believe we have 6 choices, so perhaps try changing the index from 1~6 and see if that changes the reflections
Okay, triple-checked and tested normals maps and comp maps, materials in 3ds max and the above mentioned config settings as suggested by MarwanGH7929. No luck, so moving this to the bugs section.
Both the ported and the (WIP) FS24-native versions are affected.
You’ll find some explanations about where this is coming from in this post:
Your AO seems good, and the impacted surfaces are in the darker parts, which means indirect light comes from a composition of the external environment and interior cubemap, determined by the cockpit_type parameter.
It will be set to 0 / Open Cockpit by default for MSFS 2020 piston planes.
This cubemap is based on the C172, and still lets some exterior light bleed through the windows.
So even in the areas with very dark ambient occlusion, you will still see some contribution from exterior environment (blue by clear sky day, gray if you have an overcast, etc…).
The only thing you can do to attenuate this at the moment, is change the value of cockpit_type in your cockpit.cfg file and try to use a more appropriate cubemap, with colors that match the inside of your plane a bit better, and with less window surface.
For example, here’s what using 2-Dome (Left) vs 1-Closed (Right) gives on your fuel valve object:
Thanks for the response, Sylvian.
While the cockpit_type parameter can adjust the overall look of the cockpit, it doesn’t really adress the unfarourable highlights on top of the gauges on the panel, unfortunately.
I look forward to seeing you improve this issue in the future.
