This is a package of hand-made recreations of eight of the most prominent bridges over the Los Angeles River adjacent to downtown Los Angeles. The bridges, most of which were built as part of a city initiative from the late 1920's through the mid 1930's, are a decidedly underappreciated local landmark, but nonetheless have featured in hundreds of commercials, TV shows, video games, and films over the years. The most recently constructed bridge, the new Sixth Street Viaduct, is a strikingly modern concrete arched bridge built to replace the iconic original bridge which had been deemed structurally unsound.
Features
- Eventually I hope to include all the LA River bridges in the vicinity of downtown LA (which by my count is something like 20-30 different crossings) but for the initial release, the following bridges are included (from north to south):
- Cesar Chavez Ave.
- 101 Freeway / El Monte Busway
- 1st St.
- 4th St.
- 6th St.
- 7th St.
- Olympic Blvd.
- Washington St.
- as well as some assorted rail crossings around the Washington St. bridge
- All models are hand-made with custom details and accurate pavement striping, as well as some basic PBR and emissive texturing.
- LOD models used
- POI markers added for the most famous crossings
- Custom night lighting
- Some terraforming at the bridge ends
- New in 1.01: Added separate package which should be compatible with iniBuilds Hooper Heliport. That (payware) scenery already includes detailed models of the Cesar Chavez and 101 freeway bridges, so my compatible package takes out my models and associated terrain adjustments for those two. (Original release package is unchanged.)
NOTE: Some of the DTLA buildings visible in my screenshots are from Taburet's add-on package.
Known Issues
- I've done as well as I can with smoothing out the terrain at the bridge approaches, but there are some buggy bits that are resistant to being flattened out, maybe a product of the native photogrammetry. Mostly these aren't too prominent at least.
- The Sixth Street Bridge doesn't have road traffic yet in MSFS, along either the old or new bridge alignments. Presumably they still need to update the OSM data that generates the traffic. Maybe that's just art imitating life though, given how often the bridge is closed of late.
- The default photogrammetry doesn't include the expansion made to the busway platform at Union Station a few years ago, so unfortunately the El Monte Busway viaduct just kinda cuts off in an awkward way at the moment. Didn't discover this until super late in the modeling process, but I'll try to address in a future update.
- Not an issue per se, but you'll probably notice that I didn't model the I-10 bridge that's pretty much right in the middle of the scenery area. It seemed like the best approach would be to model most of the East LA Interchange along with it instead of having my model cut off at some arbitrary point, so I've opted to save it for a future update.
Installation
Download the ZIP file and extract either the "whitearcades-dtlabridges" or "whitearcades-dtlabridges-inihooper" 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
How To Donate
If you enjoy this addon or my other scenery addons, please consider using the PayPal link 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, effort, and research, and every bit helps.
Thanks, and enjoy!
Other Scenery By Me
Knott's Berry Farm
Six Flags Magic Mountain
Cedar Point
Kings Island
Six Flags Over Texas
Busch Gardens Williamsburg
Globe Life Park
Ambassador Bridge
Coronado Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge Night Lighting Enhancements
Bay Bridge Night Lighting Enhancements
Antioch Bridge
San Mateo Bridge
Dumbarton Bridge
Richmond - San Rafael Bridge
Carquinez Bridge
Benicia-Martinez Bridge
2 months ago
CaptainMoonlight
Have to come back here again to give you 5 stars. Will you going north toward Burbank on that water channel? There are still a few going that way.
1 years ago
Thanks! Heading north is the plan, eventually; probably up to the 5/134 interchange. The bridges get kinda boring north of that. Might do a couple of the bridges south of the current set, but probably not too far. No timeline though on any of that right now though, got some other stuff in the works.
1 years ago
TheWhiteArcades
DC6Pilot
Love it! If possible, could you make a version without Ceasar Chavez? That bridge is included in Inibuilds Hooper Heliport so there is a conflict.
1 years ago
I can put that on my to-do list for sure. Think they modeled the 101 freeway bridges as well, IIRC. Wasn't sure if there would be enough people using the iniBuilds scenery to be worth making/maintaining a modified package.
1 years ago
TheWhiteArcades
VFXSimmer
Modeling bridges is a major chore. Appreciate the work that went into this.
1 years ago
Thanks so much. These can definitely be a pain to model accurately, but the end product is usually worth the trouble at least. Very pleased how this set turned out in particular.
1 years ago
TheWhiteArcades
FreakyD
Now I can go after that blue thunder under these bridges. Love love.
1 years ago
DC6Pilot
dude holy shit! thank you sooooo much. been waiting on this for a while!!
1 years ago
kibblesrawr