Structural Ice Effect Not Displayed

[MSFS 2020] Bug Reports SDK: Tools/Samples/Documentation
1

Using:
MSFS 1.37.19.0
SDK 0.24.3

Hello Microsoft/Asobo,

We’re having a hard time checking our structural ice effects on our latest aircraft model: they simply don’t show no matter which method we select to make them appear (the Icing cursor in the Options menu of the Devmode or flying the aircraft in a cloud at low temperature during a snowstorm).

We can see however the effect of ice on the flight dynamics of the airplane when moving the Icing cursor back and forth from 0.0 to 1.0 (a slight movement of the plane), but the ice mesh (the ice effect) doesn’t appear on the aircraft.

At first, we thought the issue was related to our ice mesh, material and/or textures. So, we’ve made a series of tests, carefully following the instructions provided in the SDK for the ice mesh and ice material, especially regarding the “Note on Vertex Alpha” (re. bug in the Surface Properties panel in 3ds Max - we are using 3ds Max 2021.3.17.98). We tested different Blast Sys and Melt Sys values in the material, set the Alpha Mode to Blend or Opaque, used a Draw Order of 25 or 30.

We also tried different combinations of the VertexPaint modifiers in the stack (vertex alpha and vertex color channels), collapsed and not collapsed, as a workaround for the 3ds Max bug, as suggested by other developers in this forum. We tried painting all the alpha vertices white (or a mix of black, gray and white) for testing purposes. We used the same “frost” texture set used in some of the MSFS aircraft, as suggested in the SDK, and configured the FROST material (GeoDecalFrosted) exactly as instructed in the SDK. We exported the model as usual with the Babylon Exporter.

Nothing worked.

(Note: We also exported the model with a Standard opaque material for the ice mesh, just to make sure that the mesh is exported correctly, and it was. The ice mesh was clearly visible on the fuselage, but totally opaque when viewed in the sim. We then re-applied the FROST GeoDecalFrosted-type material to the mesh to continue our tests.)

We believe that our ice effect mesh, material and textures are correct (unless the painted vertex alphas were not exported properly for an unsuspected reason).

So, to pursue our testing, we’ve merged into our model a fuselage ice mesh (along with its original material and textures) from the MSFS DA62 model example of the SDK. Same issue: No visible ice effect when either moving the Icing cursor or flying the airplane in a cloud.

We finally decided to test some of the MSFS planes in the sim to check their structural ice effect (all de-icing switches set to off), like the DA62 or the TBM930 (used in the SDK example). We were not able to see any ice effect on these airplanes as well by either moving the Devmode Icing cursor or flying in a cloud in low temperature during a snowstorm.

Since we were not able to visualize the ice effect on ANY of the MSFS airplane (and on our own model as well), we concluded that there might be an issue or bug somewhere in the latest iteration of the simulator or in the Devmode of the latest SDK.

(Note: We noticed that the Icing cursor of the Devmode Options menu returns to its 0.000000 initial position when the mouse button is released. It won’t stay in the 1.000000 position when moved completely to the right. Is this normal?)

We could not find any parameter in the General Options menu of the simulator for the display of ice nor any variables or other settings that we might have forgot to set correctly on our testing platform or in our model under development, unless we are missing something.

Adding structural ice effects to an aircraft model using the method described in the SDK should be relatively easy and straightforward. For us, it has become a very long, complicated and frustrating experience, and we’ve been developing add-on aircraft for FS2004, FSX and P3D for the past 18 years!

Anything we missed?

Alain
Producer
Xtreme Prototypes Development Team
Montreal, Canada

Testing Platform Specs:

Using MSFS v1.37.19.0 (latest update), SDK 0.24.3.
3ds Max 2021.3.17.98

Dell Alienware R15 AMD (latest update)
AMD Ryzen 9 7900 12-Core Processor 3.70 GHz
Windows 11 Pro (latest update)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (using NVDIA DLSS Super Resolution mode MSFS graphics options)

1 Like
2

Hello @AlphaReticuli ,

Do you still have the issue ?
Did you try to reset devmode settings ?

The icing slider should return to 0 depending on the current weather conditions, but it should not be immediate.

Regards,
Boris

3

Hi Boris,

Yes, we still have this issue - with DevMode ON or OFF.

No ice visible, all deicing system switches to OFF, very low outside temperature (we tried -30, -50 F, etc.), high humidity, strong precipitations, in a cloud or on the ground, we tried multiple conditions and a mix of those. No ice.

This morning, I tried again our Learjet model under development and your DA62. No ice visible on either model, various weather conditions, DevMode ON or OFF.

By “resetting” the DevMode settings, I guess you mean turning DevMode ON and OFF or something else? (We always use the latest version of the sim and SDK for our development.)

As mentioned above, we see no structural ice on any airplane with or without DevMode active.

(We still need to check the ice on the windshield material. We are in the process of implementing it, so we don’t know if the issue also affects the windshield ice for now.)

And the DevMode icing slider always returns to 0 no matter the weather conditions. No structural ice can be seen when the slider is dragged and maintained to 1.

Thank you for helping us resolve this issue, very much appreciated.

Best,

-Alain

=========

While I have you here:

In our Prepar3D models, we used the alpha property of our ice material (that can be changed in real time for the ice to build or melt). This material feature was very useful to us because it allowed independent spots of ice to be added to the airplane that can be dealt with individually. In our models, we have different deicing systems for the windshield(s), wing, engine nacelles, stabilizer, Pitots, etc. Each system can take care of a particular spot of ice independently, which seems not possible in MSFS unless we are missing something. A similar or better approach for the ice and deicing systems would add even more realism to future versions of the simulator. My 2C.s.

4

UPDATE/SOLUTION:

It would have been nice to have the following note added to the SDK page

https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/mergedProjects/How_To_Make_An_Aircraft/Contents/Modelling/Airframe/Texturing/Ice.htm?rhhlterm=ice&rhsearch=ice

just under “This can be tested in the simulation by using the Visual Icing Option in DevMode”:

=====

IMPORTANT: Please make sure that the ICING EFFECT option in the ASSISTANCE OPTIONS > FAILURE AND DAMAGE panel is set to ON or VISUAL ONLY when testing your ice effect. Setting this to OFF will prevent the effect from being displayed and the Icing slider in DevMode > Options from working correctly.

(By default, it seems that this option is set to OFF.)

=====

This simple note (or a quick answer from the platform developer to my original post) would have saved us many headaches and countless hours trying to solve this simple but not so obvious issue.

Hope our findings will help other developers.

Alain
Producer
Xtreme Prototypes Development Team
Montreal, Canada