Not wanting to photobomb @DJJose's excellent series of shots of LAX with the AA 787....I saw one of his shots that triggered in my brain that I have a good series of LAX and Duarte I need to post....

When I saw the aquaduct in one of his shots (quite the landmark in LA), I remebered I specifically took a pic of the same thing....but 1st, let's tell a story...

MY wife was working at City of Hope hospital in Duarte, Ca (think Pasdina'ish if you're not familiar...just up the 210) for a while and I visited her frequently.

The mountains near Duarte are spectacular, and the general area is very nice.  When MSFS came out...I flew there.. and while the scenery we good...its better with the patch!

I started of at LAX naturally, since I flew into it when I visited...let me tell you that taking a Caravan up to Duarte vs the 105, 610, 210 route is MUCH less stressful. 🙂  OK.....would never get to do this in real life...but hey wanted to show LAX and you can see they even have Proud Bird restaurant there 🙂  (sorry my nose it right over it...but you can still see the DC3 there)

Here is the shot of the aquaduct....I was literally flying IFR (I follow roads)...took 105 to 605, then a short hop on 210.

Here is a quarry you never see when driving on 605....

Coming up on City of Hope....605 to my right, 210 ahead of me...and COH on the left.  The arrow points to the building my wife worked at.  They even have the RC field there!!!  So cool

Here is a hotel she lived at for a while...we frequented the Outback shown by the arrow

After a while...she moved to an apt....here is is..the exact building...with the on-ramp to 605/210 right there....amazing detail for such an obscure part of the world.  I swam in that pool, hehe.

 

General shot of the gorgeous mountains in the early morning....

The Santa Anita race track....and the Mall next to it...

When I finished flying around Durate, I thought...Hmmm...let me go see if Victorville got its planes put back in the patch (spoiler alert because I didn't snap a pic...NO 😞 )   I'm getting her in climb mode because Im going straight over the mountains....

Uhh.....Sir...excuse me....are we going to clear those peaks?

Uhhh...barely (they are a lot higher than I thought!) Notice the altimeter.

After being disappointed at KVCV....I;m thinking....lets go see if they fixed the lighting on the wind generators....

Uhhh....nope.

Which ties me back into a 2 pic screenshot post I did earlier about the shadows and mountains at KPSP.

My ambitious goal is to put together a snappy video and mix it with one of my favorite Jonny Cash songs "I've been everywhere"...and switch the video to each location he rattles off in the lyrics...with screenshots of how they look in MSFS.  I think that would be really cool (and fast) 🙂

As for AA paints in MSFS that @DJJose showed....I would love to bring one of my favorite  (and more complex) paints into MSFS one day, but we need payware devs to get in 1st, and I need to learn to paint in the new sim.

I used a special method to replicate the mica-infused paint AA uses by manipulating the alpha of the albedo, and red and green channels of the metallic map to get this effect:

You can see the metalflake better in this closeup...I purposefully over-exaggerated the effect on this shot because it does not screenshot well...but in the sim, the paint actually shimmers in the right light as you pan around the aircraft.(plus you can see the effect is not on the American text or the logos).  You really can't fully appreciate the effect in a still photo...much like bare metal too) 🙂

Oh well....need to eventually get back into the paint booth...but flying all over the world such is fun too! 🙂

 

Beautiful!

12 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

.... They even have the RC field there!!!  So cool

I wonder if anyone could STOL a Cub into there, just for kicks? 🍻

Love the details about your Duarte days. Hard to keep up with you; your enthusiasm for the new sim is pulling in so many different directions.

John