This scenery package is included in my new Bay Area Bridges bundle, along with all my other previously released bridge scenery packages for the area and some other extras.
This is a package of night light enhancements for the Bay Bridge, which by default doesn't have any night lighting at all besides vehicle headlights. This scenery does not make any alterations to the default Bay Bridge scenery model, which is otherwise pretty darn good (a few nitpicks aside), just adds hand-placed lights so that the bridge shows up in-sim at night time with something close to its real-life appearance.
This lighting package consists of:
- Roadway lights
- Flashing aircraft beacons on the five bridge towers
- Marine guidance lights on the bridge footings and higher-clearance spans
- 'Necklace' lights along the main suspension cables on both portions of the bridge
- Re-creation of the "Bay Lights" LED lighting installation on the vertical suspension cables of the western span, which was originally added in 2013.
- Some minor cleanup polygons on the SF and Oakland ends of the bridge
Some screenshots include Taburet's San Francisco scenery addon (payware) and possibly some of mistercoffee1's San Francisco and Alameda County water corrections (available for free on flightsim.to).
NOTE: If you've purchased SamScene3D's recent "USA Modern Cities Vol. 2" payware addon, please note that said addon includes their own version of night light enhancements for the Bay Bridge (along with other San Francisco landmarks and those of a few other cities), making my package redundant. As usual, SamScene3D seem to have done a pretty fabulous job with the other included building models as well.
Limitations and notes:
- I've done some messing around with bounding box sizes in hopes of getting lights to start popping in a little further out, but I can't seem to get them to show up until maybe 5 miles away.
- The vertical cable lights only seem to show up well for me when I'm very close or at a very shallow viewing angle to the bridge. They aren't being excluded from the scene, as you can still see them somewhat faintly; I think it's just that the cables themselves are pretty narrow (correctly modeled as four separate, thinner strands) and only show up well at close range. Potentially the cables and my added lighting may show up more consistently on a higher-resolution display.
- For what it's worth, my framerate on a mid-level gaming PC remains quite good in the area, pretty steady at 55-60 fps at 1920x1080. Keep in mind though, there are literally thousands of placed lights here and a lower-end system may struggle.
- As mentioned before, the bridge itself is unchanged from Asobo's default model. There continues to be some weirdness with vehicle traffic behavior on the bridge, particularly on the double-decked sections where traffic doesn't use the lower deck at all. There's nothing that can really be done about that at this time.
One final note, because capitalism. If you enjoy this addon or my other scenery addons, please consider using the PayPal link below or on my profile page to donate. I make scenery addons for the fun of it, not specifically looking to monetize my work, but keep in mind that putting these sceneries together requires a significant investment of time and effort, and every bit helps.
Thanks, and happy flying!
Installation
Download the ZIP file and extract the "whitearcades-baybridgelights" folder to your Community folder:
For the Microsoft Store version: C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_\LocalCache\Packages\Community
For the Steam version: C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community
Other Scenery By Me
(List is getting too long to individually link each one, but you can find them all here on flightsim.to by going to my profile or by doing a search)
San Mateo Bridge
Dumbarton Bridge
Richmond - San Rafael Bridge
Carquinez Bridge
Benicia-Martinez Bridge
Antioch Bridge
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
Six Flags Magic Mountain
Cedar Point
Kings Island
Six Flags Over Texas
Busch Gardens Williamsburg
SUPER!
1 years ago
Tarval
Sweet
1 years ago
FreakyD
Great addon also, where did you get the night lighting for downtown SF?
2 years ago
Thanks!
As for the buildings, they're from Taburet's payware scenery for SF (think I got it on Simmarket). A little bright at night for my taste, but overall a definite improvement on the default scenery.
2 years ago
TheWhiteArcades
Expertise
"Because capitalism..." lol
2 years ago
Honestly I'm just glad some people actually read my notes, lol.
2 years ago
TheWhiteArcades
gryper
Nice, thank you.
2 years ago
fStopper