Allowing for Plex direct connections across VLAN's without NAT reflection?

[OffstageRoller]

I've had Plex working great for years with pfSense.

I have a NAT port forward to my Plex server which allows outside access to the server.

I use the DNS resolver with this in my custom options:

server: private-domain: "plex.direct"

However, to get my web browser showing a direct connection or my media devices on a different VLAN to see a direct connection to my Plex server, I need to enable NAT reflection (Pure NAT) on the port forward rule I mentioned above.

With that setup, Plex works great on my network and outside of my network. No issues to report.

However, I'd like to see if I can get rid of NAT reflection and instead do this through split DNS.

I tried adding plex.direct to my DNS resolver host overrides with both the IP of my Plex server and also a bogus IP that I've read others have used like 8.8.8.8, but neither worked for me.

Any ideas on what I could be missing?