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)