Few buildings on Earth are as easy to recognize from the air as Apple Park. That giant glass ring in Cupertino has become a kind of aerial postcard for Silicon Valley, and for anyone flying around the South Bay in Microsoft Flight Simulator, it’s exactly the sort of landmark you’d want to look down on. Now it has some proper attention, courtesy of Dfflyer Direct’s newest city pack.
San Jose, California went on sale on Contrail on November 9, priced at $9.10. And while the name on the box is San Jose, the pack reaches a little further than city limits, which is a slightly unusual scope for a Dfflyer release.
Dfflyer has been very active this year. We covered the Montreal pack back in March, which the studio called its biggest release to date, followed by Frankfurt’s “Mainhattan” skyline in June and the Cincinnati City & Bridges pack in September. In between, there have been Orlando, Cleveland and more, so Dfflyer Direct has quietly built one of the larger catalogs of affordable city enhancements for both simulators.
San Jose follows the same formula. The developer says the pack includes more than 75 handcrafted buildings, detailed landmarks, enhanced textures and night lighting across the downtown skyline.
Downtown San Jose and Almaden Boulevard
On the San Jose side, Dfflyer Direct lists several named landmarks: San Jose City Hall, the Adobe headquarters, Tower 55 and The 88 residential tower. Buildings along Almaden Boulevard also get dedicated detail, and the developer mentions enhanced night lighting and signage throughout, along with PBR textures.
From the screenshots, the night views look like a good showcase for the pack, with the downtown towers lit against the wider sprawl of the valley. As usual with this kind of product, the developer also says the models are performance-optimized for smooth frame rates.
Apple Park gets its own treatment
The Cupertino portion is where this release stands out. The Apple Park campus is modeled in full, including the ring building, the Steve Jobs Theater, the parking structures and surrounding campus buildings. The landscaped courtyard inside the ring also gets custom terrain, paths and vegetation, which should help the campus look like a park rather than a flat patch of photogrammetry.
For VFR flyers, that makes for a nice little sightseeing loop. The campus sits a short distance west of downtown San Jose, so taking in both in one low-and-slow flight should be easy.
Pairing it with the Bay Area airports
San Jose International sits right next to downtown, and that airport has been in the sim since the early days, with Orbx releasing its KSJC back in 2020. If you’re planning a longer Bay Area session, Flightbeam’s KSFO is a natural starting point up the peninsula, and the run down to San Jose makes for a nice scenic hop.
San Jose, California by Dfflyer Direct is available now on Contrail. At $9.10, the pack sits right in line with Dfflyer’s recent releases. Cincinnati also came in under $10, while Montreal launched at $12.99.
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