As the winter season approaches it would be nice to have good ice simulation in the simulator. As it currently stands the ice simulation is so bad that it’s better to not use it at all. The speed and location on the plane where the icing builds up seems completely unrealistic and static. If I had my left wing anti ice on but not my right wing there would be no visible difference. And flying wise I feel like the surfaces that have the ice don’t lose lift but the whole plane has degraded performance. I think this is a MUST have feature and I hope this gets implemented before the next winter season.
I turn on the ice function in the Dev menu. I know its not the same but it will simulate ice increasing and decreasing with the relevant weather variables… DC3 has quite an effective ice clearing system from the windshield
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I never said it does not increase but there is no logic to where the ice is placed.
I would say that there is logic where the ice is placed but the accumulation of ice is way to slow, unrealistic.
When we fly through cloud layer in icing conditions in real life, leading edge of the wing can be covered in ice within few seconds! Any aircraft without de-ice, anti-ice protection can fall due to the accumulated weight of ice and disturbed laminar airflow.
Icing realism in this sim needs a lot of improvement in this, FSX had better icing simulation.
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Uuuuuuuuuf,
I want to say that in these cold times around my home, with my Carenado Seneca is all perfect. Really I see accumulation of ice, starting as thin maps on wings to some more ‘low rocks profiles’. After set DEICE of surfaces, all started gone but very good implemented in my opinion. What I can say, I’m satisfied but really don’t see performance hit in case of accumulation on wings and leading edges, better say never seen changes on speed in case of do flight and no throttle movement, to check gauges, performance. If I see your pitot freezed screenshot, I have this on Seneca’s heating small window device on front window.
One thing is to see ice and another if it really affects the aircraft.
I remember that during release of msfs, ICING was visually exaggerated but it actually affected the performance of the aircraft’s. Speed was decreasing so you had to add performance.
Nowadays from what I have tested, it have very small effect if any on the aircraft’s in this sim. It seems to me like Asobo dumped it down together with visual representation.
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Voted!!
Indeed Icing conditions don’t really affect the performance of the aircraftt, hopefully Asobo will take a look at this important feature!
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I could be wrong, but wasn’t the icing effect reduced at one point because of ‘‘it’s overdone!’’ complaints?
I found this from SimUpdate 4, don’t know if they changed anything afterwards
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I think the complaints were related to the visual icing effect on the aircraft that was overdone and they reduced it. I don’t think the impact on the flight physics has ever been implemented and that is what this topic is about.
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Yes but the complains were about exagerated visual representation of icing which is now somewhat OK.
If Im not wrong, Asobo reduced also acumlation of ice to be 10x slower, so not only visuals.
It could be a nice idea to re-open this topic once again, if people really do care about realism.
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They could also take the optional approach, just like with the turbulence update.
Realistic, Medium, Low / No icing.
Therefore this topic needs more recognition / votes.
But on the other hand, looking at Realistic Dangerous Weather - Physics Simulation with over 300 votes, there are certainly a few people interested in realism in that category.
They want realistic turbulence in storms / big clouds, but realistic icing is as much important and can bring some extra thrill into the simulation when picking the flight route and avoiding certain clouds and conditions because of real life consequences 
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Exactly! and lets not forget about altimiters erros due to the cold temperatures aswell. It is still not implemented either.
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27 votes, it’s growing up… step by step
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yes, step by step but by this rate, it never ever gonna get more attention
Just voted. Would like to see icing as realistic as possible.
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This is how Icing looked and afected the aircraft before SU4.
You can see that it was difficult to maintain altitude and eventually the aicrraft stalled.
This effect is now gone, it is no longer possible to stall the aircraft like this, which is a pitty.
For me personally I would rather have wrong visual representation and realistic icing physics instead what We have now.
There is no need to turn anti-ice, de-ice, on the aircraft at all, you can ignore those switiches.
I really like how Asobo listen the community but people asked only to fix icing visuals not to dump down icing physics.
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Has anyone done some flight testing in Dev mode? You can set the icing level as desired. Any loss in aerodynamic performance should be observable. As with all these things, it takes some empirical data to show if there is an issue, or not.
I’ve just tested it, icing set to 1.0 (which is maximum) in dev mode.
Aircraft which I used for this test was DA40TDI, aircraft performance was affected.
However at full power, you can still maintain 90kts and keep the horizon without a problem. It is even possible to start climbing by 100ft/min with aircraft fully contaminated by ice.
So this test does confirmed that icing affects the aircraft performance but nothing significant.
Ice acumulation should be faster and disturbed laminar flow should affect the aircraft more + weight of the ice
Simply said, you cannot die due to the icing in MSFS 2020.
I managed to die after flying into ice rain just north of the Antarctic coast on my way from Punta Arenas, Chile, to Rothera Point in a Kodiak last week. 
Engine power diminished rappidly. Slowly lost altitude until i stalled just above the water surface. Brrrr. Refreshing swimming temperature, despite the antarctic summer.
But honestly, I’m not experienced enough to say exactly what I did wrong. Failures are OFF and I think even icing was set to “Visual only”.
But the Kodiak managed to kill me anyway…yet again. I love that bird. Keeps teaching me lessons every so often, it being power-on stalls on final approach or now engine loss over pinguin land.
When the icing was set to “visuals only” it was not the cause of your accident…