ISSUE DESCRIPTION
Description of the issue:
In VR, the new procedural propeller shader in MSFS 2024 is highly immersion-breaking and causes significant eye strain across all VR headsets. Unlike in real-life aviation, where the human eye perceives a rotating propeller as a nearly transparent blur, the simulator renders it as a prominent, flickering disk.
A major part of the issue is the rendering of shadows: The propeller casts sharp, high-frequency flickering shadows into the cockpit (e.g., on the dashboard and the pilot’s lap). This effect is heavily amplified depending on the sun’s angle relative to the propeller disk. In reality, because the propeller is effectively transparent to the human eye, it does not obstruct the sun in a way that creates these distinct, strobing shadows.
In MSFS 2020, the community solved this via “No Prop Blur” mods by simply replacing .dds textures. Because MSFS 2024 now uses a procedural shader system instead of textures, these mods no longer work. For many VR pilots, these mods were the only way to make propeller aircraft flyable without getting motion sick or suffering from eye strain. We need an official option to drastically reduce or disable propeller visibility and its shadow casting for VR users.
FREQUENCY OF ISSUE
Every time when flying propeller aircraft in VR.
REPRODUCTION STEPS
Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:
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Launch MSFS 2024 on PC and enter VR mode.
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Select any propeller-driven aircraft (e.g., Cessna 172 or Flight Design CTSL).
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Increase engine RPM to cruise levels.
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Position the aircraft so the sun shines through the propeller disk into the cockpit.
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Observe the heavy flickering of the propeller disk and the unrealistic, high-speed strobe shadows on the instrument panel.
YOUR SETTINGS
What VR peripherals are you using: Any VR Headset (Issue is independent of hardware model)
[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it? No
[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use? NVIDIA RTX 4080
[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share? Issue persists regardless of VR runtime (OpenXR/SteamVR) or reprojection settings. Problem is tied to the new procedural shader system.