the second part of my trip around KSAT, and this is focussed on the city and its surrounds.

Heading away from KSAT towards the city

Interesting looking place. Strip mall? Factory outlet store?

This is the sort of thing I really enjoy. When the PG works like this, it's wonderful. The difference compared to hand crafted models is that you get the real grubbiness of a place. Handcrafted POIs and scenery buildings generally are almost always in pristine condition and even when very detailed look like the models they are. With scenery like this, you get all the grime and decades of decay thrown in as well. We need more rust in the sim!

Some sort of indoor stadium?

Some really interesting looking buildings down there. They do get a bit melty if you go much closer though, unfortunately

Decided to head east to Randolph AF Base (KRND) rather than head back to KSAT, just to check it out

Fairly plain though

San Antonio looks like an interesting place, with some fascinating buildings and the sort of level of grubbiness that appeals to me. The quality of the PG is a little disappointing though, especially for being part of a Cities Update package. Salt Lake City, and St Louis, both places I've been to recently in the sim, are way better than this. But even so, it's all relative and we are, after all, getting spoilt by MSFS by now.

Nice shots.

On 7/3/2023 at 3:24 PM, andy1252 said:

San Antonio looks like an interesting place, with some fascinating buildings and the sort of level of grubbiness that appeals to me. The quality of the PG is a little disappointing though, especially for being part of a Cities Update package. Salt Lake City, and St Louis, both places I've been to recently in the sim, are way better than this. But even so, it's all relative and we are, after all, getting spoilt by MSFS by now.

Andy, nice post from your (virtual) visit and (continued) explorations of the (vast) Texas region .... First of all, these far-flung regions and states of U.S., as I recall, have been always left out of the (earlier) SIMs...until now/MSFS ...Only the well-known or/and the mountainous regions (PNW, California etc.) had generally got all the attentions...🙂...

Glad you followed along south from your (earlier) KAUS visit and visited San Antonio. One of my most memorable Christmas vacations was in San Antonio. From my (then) place of residence in Austin, I'd travelled by road (on I-35) to San Antonio. On a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon that entire stretch of the highway between the 2 cities, felt like a parking-lot... 🙂.... what I recall most ....

Had stayed several days, between Christmas and New year, in one of the Downtown hotels (you've great shots of it), very near the famous (historical) San Antonio River Walk ...It was a just few months before the pandemic, the place was so vibrant and magical and lit-up with decorative lights on the trees alongside both edges of that River (did a night boat-cruise too...No Venetian gondola... 🙂... but as you say, "it's all relative" and it felt wonderful). That part of the town, having suffered due to the pandemic, later became deserted and "a ghost town" but I understand it is again being revived to its earlier status ...

Appreciate your curiosity with (and educative visits to) the U.S. cities...oceans apart from the idyllic and beautiful Torquay ...🙂 ... (All thanks to MSFS) ...

Cheers ...!!

On 7/5/2023 at 3:00 PM, Jack_Sawyer said:

Nice shots.

Cheers Jack

7 hours ago, P_7878 said:

Andy, nice post from your (virtual) visit and (continued) explorations of the (vast) Texas region

Cheers P. I enjoy exploring around these places, it's what I love about MSFS. I realise more and more that I do get quite bored with the actual flying stuff. Even if I have what should be an interesting little flight planned, after about 30 minutes in the air if I haven't got where I want to be I'll speed up the sim until I'm there. But the exploring is great. And it is nice that MSFS lets us see a whole bunch of places that were not normally available before, and in such detail. I tend to explore in the US a lot because firstly, there's obviously a lot of basic and addon scenery for it, and secondly because I travelled a lot through the US from 1987 through to around 2001, but I didn't actually get to see much of the place! I was a mainframe software instructor then and was all over the place (I used to buy little lapel badges of the individual states I visited - had 38 of them by the time I stopped) but mostly it was airport-rental-hotel-training site-hotel-rental-airport all the time. Rarely got more than a day to see anywhere properly.

In Texas, I only ever had a couple of trips to Dallas and Houston, so nice for me to see some of these other places now. Absolutely no urge to do it for real, I don't ever want to go to another airport or get on a plane in real life. But the combination of memories of the places I did go to and what I can see in the sim (especially with my setup - big HDR monitor etc) combine to make it feel pretty much like real exploring.

And I get and can sympathise re the I-35. For most of my travelling days we lived in Reading, which was handy for both Heathrow (via coach) and Gatwick (via rail) and the UK office was in Windsor. Approx 22 miles as the crow flies. Worst commute time was 3.5 hours. Average about 90 minutes unless I left in the middle of the night (or so it felt) in which case I'd get to the office over an hour early, and I am SO not a morning person!

And yeah, Torquay's not bad. Another reason why I can't be bothered to go anywhere any more.

Happy simming!