ACTIVE NCA - bridges in the Delta

[Phred98765]

Hi,

In NCA I was cruising north from C83 towards O88 over the weekend and I guess that I'm seeing buoys in the rivers - great!

 

But I do have a few questions about some bridges in the Delta - the Antioch bridge (VPANT) and the Rio Vista bridge in particular.  In NCA both appear to be regular simulator extrusion bridges, despite the Antioch Bridge being a long arched bridge to allow for ship traffic up the San Joaquin River, and the Rio Vista Bridge being a fairly long vertical lift drawbridge over the Sacramento River (ship traffic too):

 

Antioch bridge from NCA

 

Rio Vista bridge from NCA

 

What follows is the view of the Antioch bridge from Global... I believe this is the FSX object "sanfran antioch bridge" (from bridges.bgl).  The 1.0 Global extrusion bridge can also be seen below the actual one.

 

 

 

Finally, if it would help, here are Google images of the Antioch bridge...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Antioch+bridge&tbm=isch

 

...and of the Rio Vista Bridge:

https://www.google.com/search?q=rio+vista+bridge&tbm=isch

 

I could see the Rio Vista bridge possibly being made into a drawbridge as part of an O88 scenery if that's in the cards one day.  But that aside, would it be possible to get the NCA Antioch Bridge re-placed with the FSX object if not a new custom object?  (There is a vertical lift drawbridge in NCA that's just west of KAPC which would be an almost perfect match for Rio Vista.)

 

(Still though, buoys in the rivers!    )

 

Finally, in my two NCA screens, I've draw yellow boxes around what appear to be some watertower type objects.  Are these water towers from NCA or from some other object library??  I've seen the white/red striped one in my P3D 2.0 version of NCA, which is why I'm asking here.

 

They're nothing like what is actually used in the area, and I'd like to nuke 'em from orbit if you get my drift.

 

Regards,

 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi there,

 

thanks for the heads-up on the Antioch Bridge, I somehow missed that there is a default model for it. We can certainly revert to that model, however there's a major drawback with those FSX default bridges: they don't have hardened platforms meaning they can't carry moving road traffic and we'd have to delete the local traffic vectors. If you guys can live with that tradeoff then I'll put the bridge exchange on our to-do list.

 

I've also made a note regarding the water towers; they are part of the autogen annotations for those suburban landclass sets and it may be easiest to remove them all rather than placing individual excludes. 

 

Cheers, Holger

[Phred98765]

Thank you kindly Holger,

 

The Antioch Bridge is the "forgotten bridge" of the Bay Area Toll Authority set.  Since it is a declared visual reference point, I would personally rather have it appear as it should than to produce traffic - IRL there should be a ground traffic "intersection" just south of the bridge that I'd hope would be a break point.  So even though that would leave the whole of the Sherman Island levee to the north denuded of traffic, it would be a worthy tradeoff in my opinion.

 

There's also a near 500 ft "smokestack" a few hundred feet to the west of the south end of the Antioch Bridge, but I'll wait to see what Team Orbx can do elsewise.

 

--

 

As far as "water tanks" are rendered in this locale, in the areas of the hills public water tanks are more of the white cylindrical "gen_tank01 on a hill" type than of the "cylindrical or oval tank on a stand" that one would find in most of the US.  (In the smaller Sacramento Valley towns, the water tanks would mostly be "short cylindrical on a stalk" rather than oval.)

 

Talking about the white cylindrical water tanks, there is one at roughly N38.0324766 W122.0196488 (IIRC) that for me was an absolute beacon to guide me to align myself for approaches to the 19s at KCCR.  My wife and I still make a game of shouting out "TANK!" whenever we first spot it inbound toward home in either aircraft or in auto.

 

Finally, thinking about KCCR area scenery, there are a couple of large white "dock cranes" at the mostly abandoned Port Chicago dock areas that also serve as visual reference points which I would use to align for approach to the KCCR 19s.  (Their coordinates would roughly be 38.0587015,-122.0134734, and in NCA I can even see the jetty which they would set on.)

 

If those cranes and the hilltop water tank could be included in a service pack release, all of them would go a very long way to enhancing the area reference points!

 

Happy days....