DFFlyer Detroit/Windsor City Scenery Package

[Tom Clayton]

Listed at $7.99 US, you wouldn't expect much, but watching the trailer for this, I'm suitably impressed!

MSFS Detroit & Windsor City Pack

Showcase Description Crafted with love by a Detroit native of 25+ years, this pack brings Detroit and Windsor to life with hundreds of handmade buildings, boats, and monuments, immersive night lighting, animations, and ground texture improvements. Features 200+ handcrafted city buildings 15...

dfflyerdirect.com

 

[Fnerg]

Fantastic detail looks like hundreds of hours spent on research and construction. Wow!

 

[Tako_Kichi]

As someone who worked in Windsor for many years I can tell you that those screenshots look uncannily realistic! The river frontage is spot on and it's interesting that they mention the Gordie Howe bridge as that is the new border crossing bridge whose span was completed earlier this year and it's not even open to traffic yet! The aircraft on pedestals are interesting too. They are fiberglass replicas of a Spitfire and a Hurricane mounted in a flower bed in the shape of a Lancaster bomber, however, that location used to have a real Lancaster on a pole but unfortunately the ravages of baking hot summers and freezing cold winters took their toll and it was in danger of literally falling apart. Several years ago it was taken down and moved to a hanger at Windsor airport where it is being restored to museum quality. The fiberglass replicas were put up to maintain the monument to Canada's efforts during WWII.

Brown-John: Lancaster bomber remains prized Windsor possession

A sagging old guy could include me, but that’s not what I am about to make reference.

windsorstar.com

Gordie Howe International Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[K5083]

Nice. I was born and raised in Windsor - my avatar is their hockey team's logo - and it is nice and unusual to see it get a bit of love as part of a Detroit scenery. I will be trying this out tonight. Will be interested to see if they did a good job on the university I attended, at the foot of the Ambassador Bridge.

August

 

[K5083]

Having tried this out, from a Windsorite's perspective, my feelings on it are a little mixed but it is well worth the $7.99. Compared with Orbx's Detroit Landmarks, I think it replaces more photogram Detroit buildings and the detail and accuracy of the modeling is superior. It gets points for having the completed Howe bridge span while Orbx's is under construction, although the ramps in the DFFlyer one just vanish into the ground, there are no toll plazas or anything. On the Windsor side, neither addon models all of the waterfront buildings that would make it immersive to fly down the river. DFFlyer does a better job than Orbx with the central downtown buildings and waterfront around Ouellette Avenue. To the east and west, neither one models the university or the Walker distillery. Orbx pays a bit more attention to the industrial areas of Detroit west of the Ambassador Bridge. Both sides ignore anything about Windsor that is not easily visible from the river, with the one exception of those effigy fighters in Jackson Park - and even there, nothing else about the park is really modeled. Bottom line, I prefer the DFFlyer slightly over the Orbx (itself not a bad deal at $10.99), but both are best understood as limited landmarks packs, not a thorough overhaul of either city.

August

 

[Tom Clayton]

I don't think it's reasonable to expect a fully modelled pair of cities for that price anyway - so I would agree with your "landmark pack" description. But the work put into the animated lighting effects alone, to me, is worth the price of admission. But like others, I'm waiting for 2024 before I pull the trigger on much of anything regarding more addons.

 

[jmig]

While I appreciate the comments of locals (August I thought your Avatar was about the airplane), I think that 98% of us wouldn't know the difference between a real scenery object and a generated placeholder. In real life, unless an airplane is on an approach or most likely in violation of FAA regs for flying too low, they wouldn't be low enough to pick out many of the details a local will know about.

Maybe 2024 will be different. From the early looks it certainly ups the scenery detail. However, when I buy a scenery package of a major city, AI expect to see the major buildings and landmarks. Anything else are extras that I might not even recognize.

 

[Bomber_12th]

MSFS 2024 will still benefit greatly from sceneries like these, with bespoke/custom-modeled buildings, since the photogrammetry in MSFS 2024 still looks the same at all altitudes, including ground-level, as it does in MSFS 2020, and MSFS 2024 generic buildings also looking very similar to '2020s. However, the night lighting of said buildings, both photogrammetric and generic (Asobo-made), appears quite improved in '2024.

 

[K5083]

(August I thought your Avatar was about the airplane).

Well, kind of both. Windsor has a history with Spitfires. During WWII, the city sponsored 417 City of Windsor Squadron, which served mainly in North Africa and Italy. They flew Hurricanes for a while but then mostly Spitfires, unit code AN. The Spitfires hockey team was a nod to this, although there have been times when they did not have the airplane depicted on their uniforms.

In the 1970s and 1980s Windsor was home to the only Spitfires then based in Canada, first Don Plumb's T.9 TE308 and later Cliff Robertson's Mk.IX MK923. Long time residents well remember that beautiful shape overhead. That ended in the early 90s, but luckily other operators elsewhere in Canada picked up the mantle. Nowadays, at least they have that 417-marked effigy in the park.

August