First of three posts from an exploration around Sydney. YRAY is the Sydney Seaplanes package from Pyramid8Studios via Orbx, plus FlyTampa's YSSY and Orbx's Sydney cityscape. ALtogether they make up a pretty impressive environment. Unfortunately, a lot of the MS/Asobo PG around here is pretty poor, or at least it was today. I still never know if particular areas are just badly done or if it's just that the servers are having a bad day/hour/week or whatever. I spent the whole afternoon just pootling around, took literally hundreds of shots, but I've pulled out a few to share.

Basic trip starts at the Sydney Seaplanes setup, which is very nicely done. Lots of animations and detail, and just my kind of thing. Then off to the harbour, and a tour round the Luna Park, which is also upgraded with the YRAY package. Again, some nice detail and animations but unfortunately backdropped by some of the worst PG I've ever seen in the sim. Impossible to get the sort of images I wanted without showing masses of truly awful c*ap in the background.

Then off around Sydney itself, again, the modelled stuff in the Orbx package is ok but some of the PG doesn't bear close inspection, and then on to YSSY. By this time the sun is going down and the lights coming on. So at that point, once it was dark, I took a quick drone visit back to YRAY and the harbour to grab some night time shots.

So spread over three posts, but hopefully some of you will enjoy the trip. I certainly did, and will be back there in a boat at some point.

Anyway, starting at YRAY -

Looks like a nice place to chill with a cold one (or two)

I'll spare you any more shots of the crowd, so let's head off

Didn't actually spot any sharks around here, but there is one later . . .

Head under the bridge, and parked in front of the worst PG you'll ever see, is Luna Park amusment park

I have a real soft spot for this sort of place, and the tackier the better. All down to being raised as a kid in Southend-on-Sea (a complete misnomer as it's actually on the mouth of the Thames, one of the grubbiest, muddiest, most industrialised (back then) and polluted rivers in the UK) where candy floss is considered a gourmet delight.

So now, let's head off to the big city!

One for any sports fans. Nice touch here is the changing display on the big screen in the cricket ground

And to finish part one, off to YSSY

Edited April 18, 20242 yr by andy1252
incomplete post

Fine set, i bought this aswell but didn't look at it yet, but i have to do your pics are stunning..

cheers 😉

Wonderful trip, Andy. Thanks for taking us along. I have the same add-ons you have and flying around here low and slow brings back many fond memories of past travels in rl. Today I don't see myself anymore spending 14 to 15 hours in an airplane, disregarding the class you travel in.  

5 hours ago, pmplayer said:

Fine set, i bought this aswell but didn't look at it yet, but i have to do your pics are stunning..

cheers 😉

Cheers PMP! Take a visit - it's well worth it. I spent 3 or 4 hours pootling around on this jaunt, and took loads of shots that I'll never post here (just various nothing special ground level shots). Even with dodgy PG it's a tremendously fine area to explore.

50 minutes ago, bernd1151 said:

Wonderful trip, Andy. Thanks for taking us along. I have the same add-ons you have and flying around here low and slow brings back many fond memories of past travels in rl. Today I don't see myself anymore spending 14 to 15 hours in an airplane, disregarding the class you travel in.  

Thanks Bernd! Never did make it dahn under in real life, and that certainly won't be happening now (unless they come up with the whole "beam me up Scotty" thing in the next couple of years). It might sound sad to some folk, but with this sim and my setup I really do feel like I'm actually visiting these places. I had plenty of real travel time back in the day, but wild horses couldn't drag me to a real airport and on to a real plane nowadays. Been there, done way too much of that. Sitting on a plane is just no fun and not interesting, and I find that to be true in the sim as well. I have just been building a sort of "cockpit" setup using my previous sim PC and a load of spare/unused bits and pieces, but I'm not actually convinced it will get that much use. Sitting in the cockpit in the sim is close to as boring as sitting in cattle class in real life for me, but we'll see. I had 95% of what I needed to build it so I figured I might as well. But trips like this are what do it for me, sim-wise. As you can tell, I just love to explore down at pixel ground level, and there are ever more bits of scenery coming along that make that ever more rewarding.

Each of your pictures is packed with details, Andy...quite an impressive tour of these places...!

[BTW, I was curious to note the red "Westfield" sign on the Tower Eye...the reason is there was a local mall called "Westfield" with the same (red) logo, but the sign disappeared during the Covid...but has since re-appeared when I visited the mall recently... Must be the same Westfield Shopping Center chain ...]