Moment I pass through thick rain clouds or thunderstorm, I see icing on the nose, fuselage, wings, engines, leading edge of the tail. It goes away on descent after a while when I leave that condition but is that normal?
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/search?q=icing
Edit: Generally speaking, icing is normal under certain conditions like low temperatures plus high moisture. Can’t confirm if it’s too much in MSFS.
Icing can occur while passing through clouds, but I think the current visual representation is WAY over the top. Like many of the effects icing, lightning, etc. are more like arcade effects…
Depends on your altitude and region, but icing is a real thing for sure. Look at the outside air temperature… anything less than 0C and you’re at risk of icing up if you get through moisture (clouds, snow, etc).
Way, way, way over the top.
Additionally, through the weather chaos in some regions with massive clouds and rain I find it quite legit that lots of moisture adds up on my fuselage. Can’t even remember when the last time was I haven’t been through clouds up to FL360 or something.
It’s definitely a bit much.
Just last night I was landing in Alaska and had some icing on my DA-62 and I had to land at 110 kts (versus 90) because I would stall at anything less. Not sure how realistic that is.
Icing is too much. It also seems to immediately drop to 0 once de-icing is properly set regardless of how much was on the airframe.
Can’t confirm. The icing stays. I believe that the actual de-icing (aside from probe tube and windows) only takes place at the fronts of engines and wings anyway rather than the whole aircraft.
Visually, I agree it’s still too much…but it’s better. I’m not certain ice buildup time is realistic but the part about increasing speed is accurate. You’d have more drag, more friction, and more weight with ice.
A pilot on YouTube said that the ice is visually unrealistic. There never is ice on the sides of the airplane since the moving air prevents any water/ice from staying at a position. Also the ice is barely visible in reality.
Out of curiosity: was it a pilot that usually flies down below in a Cesna or one that really goes up high?
Yeah the de-icing is pretty comical…
Nope its not, the icing in FS2020 is overdone. Everytime you enter icing conditions in FS2020 the icing is pretty severe. In real life you could definitely get some ice while in icing conditions, someteimes no ice at all, in very limited cases when SLD (supercooled large droplets) are present, icing can be severe but this only happens intermittently in cumulus clouds, in stratiform clouds the horizontal extend can be large but the vertical extend rarely is. The kind of icing FS2020 represents only happen in very rare cases.
And ice only forms on frontal surfaces, leading edges, nos, engine inlets, spinners etc. never on the fuselage it self, thats just unrealistic.
If you enable developer mode and do the ice reset to get rid of the visual. if you see the slider starting to move fwd again, then it is still in an icing condition, but if slider stays put, then I guess it is safe to say it is a non icing area, but I often use it to reset the visuals. I have it set to visual only, but either way my GA aircraft drop like a brick even with visual only or realistic.
I really hope they enable another option (no icing behavior and no visual)
I am tired of seeing the excessive icing especially on airliners.
I attempted to try deleting the Frost textures… oooh bad idea. It now made the icing look as if the plane got now black goo or some oil spray on it due to missing texture and probably some alpha map backfiring. so I had to restore the frost. I might try again later by replacing with transparent existing textures, but I seem to notice a modeling layer on it, since it is even present in blender and thicker than the regular fuselage though.
There is a slider in the developer menu. Same dropdown for the FPS and timeframe on and off button in the dev menu. Slide it all the way to the left when you think you have an unrealistic amount of ice buildup. By the time it starts to form again, you will usually have broken out of the cloud ceiling.
Icing is completely ridiculous. Turning on snow in weather options will make your windows completely opaque within one minute.
Here is a pilot talking about icing in MSFS vs real world: https://youtu.be/O170fbsUTgU
It think it was mentioned in the last Developer Q&A that the icing effect is exaggerated, so they are aware and will work on it.
It was an A320 Pilot