Invisible icing
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I'm very relived it's not just me. So can somebody from the Team of JF confirm, that there is no visible icing (at least in VR haven't tried it on the monitor)? This would explain a lot on some of my last flights. Have had huge Problems climbing in clouds and stalling. since there was no ice to be seen anywhere I thought it would be something else. Thought there was too much wind or spark plug foul or not enogh oil or whatever. I know the icing model on MSFS is a little bit twitchy. But if it's not modeled at all you will just drop out of the sky without knowing what's up. :-D
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@StefanL85 Yep there's no visible icing BUT there will be very soon. It's sorted and included in the new update which will be available in the next day or two. Thanks.
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@Voice-of-Reason Thanks for the confirmation and the heads up!
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I don't think this is only an icing visibility matter... for sure being able to actually see the ice when it is building up in the aircraft is an undoubtful improvement, but that is certainly not the only problem in regards to icing.
In the current state, the Arrow 3 is virtually unflyable anyware cold and high, and I happen to be always flying cold and high (Salt Lake City Area). The problem is that the speed at which the ice accumulates is absolutely unrealistic, in less than a minute the aircraft can go from stable climb/no ice (checked from the dev var since no visible ice in the plane) to dangerous AOA, no climb and stall.
I really think you should be looking at the way icing is affecting the plane's performance, at least until MSFS fixes the icing behavior, which is completely unrealistic, at least in the way and the speed that ice builds up, frequently when there are no direct icing conditions other than low temperatures and some clouds...
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To add up on the icing problems, I've tried different approaches to no avail for the time being...
If I disable the icing effects from the assistance menu of the sim, the Arrow keeps being affected by such element, thus granting me unable to remove the unrealistic icing effects from affecting the aircrafts performance...
If I enable the dev Bar and manually remove the icing using the slider, if icing conditions exists (according to the sim, which is basically into a cloud and with OAT < 0ºC), the icing generation resumes just after I click the slider and there is virtually no way of stopping this annoying process. More impressively, it only takes more less a minute to go from zero icing to max icing value of 1. In real life, I understand this could only happen in some really tough weather conditions...
For now, flying a high altitude leg, the only chances I have to successfully complete the flight without risking stall is to actually change the weather from Live to one of the presets, or define it myself so that the cloud layer remains well above or below my cruise altitude...
I understand the responsibility of this issue is mainly from MSFS, but then again, it is just a shame...
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@RaulKO You're right when you say this is more down to the responsibility of MS than us. In this instance we've done what we can and the icing is now visible. But it's not brilliant and the other aspect of it can't be improved as such as there's no way of controlling the rate of ice build up and affect on flight dynamics. We only have control over the visual appearance of the icing build up. It's really down to MS/Asobo to improve the icing system unfortunately.
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@Voice-of-Reason
Hei, can you confirm that the icing model does always impact the flight dynamics/performance. I have set icing effects to 'visible only' in the menu, but when picking up icing (visually only) I can count the seconds until I run into a stall since the perfomance reduces. -
I have this problem too. Tried flying in the French Alps. But every time I go above ~9000ft (in clear air) the airplane catches ice in a matter of seconds. The windscreen gets completely covered in ice and it looses lift to the point it stalls. Again this happens in a matter of seconds.
I have pitot heat on, full hot air blower on the windscreen and alt air enabled. What else can I do?
I have flown the exact same route in the same conditions in the default C172 and it did ice up a little but but kept flying without issues.
