Took a late afternoon flight out of EGLL across London and down to my favourite pier. I'd just put on the "Immersive Lights UK" package and was curious to see how it looked. Doesn't cure the weird floating streetlights thing in MSFS but is an improvement over the default lighting, in my eyes at least. Using the AH Hawker Fury - I rather like those old Hawker bi-planes. 

I'm using the free version of Postimage now for hosting, and that seems to reduce the image size so although these were all taken in 4k, they've shrunk a bit for here. Passing over the Hoover factory in the first shot.

PO Tower, as I still think of it, ahead

City

Heading out towards Docklands and EGLC

Heading off dahn the Thames (so dropped the posh City accent and switching to Estuary English, my native Tonge <grin>)

Canvey Island ahead centre, with Sarfend inna distance

Well into dusk now

Swinging out to turn in and buzz the pier

And there it is. I had a bit of a panic the other day as this seemed to have disappeared in my sim, but it turns out that SU4 is known to have installed itself in a lot of cases with the GB and USA POI packages disabled. Turned out to be so for me, so re-enabled and got my pier back. Southend is where I spent childhood and adolescence and the pier played its part in that, so I'm kind of fond of the place. Well, in the sim at least - I did go back there about 20 years ago and still check occasionally on Streetview and it really does look like it's gone way downhill, and I'd have to be honest and say it was never that far up the hill in the first place. But hey, childhood memories and all that.

I've lost track of the various accidents and debacles involving the pier over the years, but I'm pretty sure the original end got flattened a few decades back and this is based on the newer one. It was pretty tacky and a bit rundown in my day (but still a great place to waste a day)

Almost looks like seasonal snow in this pic, but I thing that's just the texture of the modelling

One and one third miles. Longest pleasure pier (maybe longest any pier) in the world.

A nicely done POI, and I'm very grateful to MAsobo for doing it. I certainly don't plan to ever go back down there again for real, so it's really great to have it here in the sim. All I need is a baby bath full of stagnant greasy water by my desk to stick my feet in and I can have the full authentic experience any time I like.

This might seem like a bit of a daft angle to shoot from but actually, if there was a really low tide, it was possible to just walk out (or more likely slip and slide and stagger) on the mud almost to the end of the pier. That's why it was built this big originally, it's only when you get right to the end you're in anything like a permanent river channel. You had to come out to the pier end to be able to board a ship to take you up to London

You'd usually see lots of folk out on the flats in a low tide, digging for ragworm. Lots of 'em out there and a bucketfull of those was worth a few bob. Good way to boost your dole money (and yes, it was very much that sort of place). Had to be aware of the tide though, when it came in, it came in pretty fast. 

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the trip. Now that I know the pier is here still, I might take a walk down it in character mode. Or maybe not, I don't suppose that would be any more interesting than it was in real life!

Edited January 4Jan 4 by andy1252
typo

Nice merger of real life remembrances and sim photo tour. Some great shots along the way.

Lovely set, Andy, of your evocative tour... from the dense cityscape to the beautiful pier...

The Fury looks great too...

Nice shots buddy, thanks for sharing !

Is this with Programetry to on ?

cheers 😉

Thanks folks, glad you enjoyed them.

I'm finding 2024 a mass of contradictions at the moment. It looks absolutely fantastic (apart from the PG tree blobs) but has all sorts of irritations still. GSX won't register on my 2024 system (works fine on my 2020 system), the built-in menu bar is a joke and Flow Pro, which I bought to replace it, suffers from the customary lack of info from P42. Plus I just seem to get all sorts of odd behaviour with 2024 since SU4. I actually find the P3D systems I re-instated recently calmer to use - everytime I fire up 2024 it seems to reveal another aspect that needs dealing with. Very frustrating.

First world problems, eh?