San Francisco Bay Area Bridges
This is a package of hand-modeled bridges to enhance your flying around the San Francisco Bay Area, adding approximately 25 detailed bridges, viaducts, and interchanges to the area. Asobo has made high-quality versions of the Golden Gate and San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridges available as part of default scenery and/or free World Updates, but many other major bridges in the area are not depicted at all or are rendered only in photogrammetry with all its accompanying downsides (see comparison shot... This is a package of hand-modeled bridges to enhance your flying around the San Francisco Bay Area, adding approximately 25 detailed bridges, viaducts, and interchanges to the area. Asobo has made high-quality versions of the Golden Gate and San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridges available as part of default scenery and/or free World Updates, but many other major bridges in the area are not depicted at all or are rendered only in photogrammetry with all its accompanying downsides (see comparison shots).
The native MSFS scenery presentation, which includes photogrammetry, greatly improves on its predecessors, but the depiction of bridges (and other types of open-frame structures) as solid walls or dams continues to be an annoyance. The only complete solution is to model each bridge individually. This package replaces photogrammetry bridges (or default/extrusion type bridges outside of photogrammetry areas) with detailed high-quality models, as well as enhancing the lighting for the two Asobo-modeled bridges. The following bridges are included in this package:
- Dumbarton Bridge (with adjacent Hetch Hetchy pipeline and old rail trestle)
- San Mateo Bridge (with adjacent high-tension power lines)
- Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
- Carquinez Bridges (double bridge)
- Benicia Bridges (three bridges, includes rail bridge and adjacent I-680/I-780 interchange)
- Antioch Bridge
- US-101/I-80 viaduct (San Francisco Bay Bridge approach)
- I-280 viaduct (inc. "Alemany Maze" interchange w/ US-101)
- Presidio Parkway/Veterans Blvd. bridges (Golden Gate Bridge approach)
- I-80/I-580/I-880 "MacArthur Maze" interchange (Adjacent to Oakland Bay Bridge)
- Coast Guard Island Bridge
- Park Street Bridge
- Miller Sweeney Rail Bridge
- Fruitvale Bridge
- High Street Bridge
- Bay Farm Island Bridge
- CA-37 Mare Island Bridge
- Mare Island Causeway
- 4th Street Bridge
- 3rd Street China Basin Bridge
- 3rd Street Islais Creek Bridge
- Illinois Street Bridge
The package also includes optional lighting enhancements for the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges.
Each bridge is fully hand-modeled to a high degree of accuracy and detail, and includes PBR materials, accurate lighting, accurate road striping, and many other custom details such as custom-modeled light fixtures and toll plazas. All bridges utilize LOD models tuned to balance appearance and performance. Many bridges also include shoreline or terraforming corrections in the vicinity for the best possible appearance. Bridge approaches are modeled where they exist in real life, so photogrammetry should not be needed (though still recommended).
MSFS2024 notes: all models have been recompiled for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 using the current SDK tools. Lighting and LOD models have also been reconfigured.
