Ford Transit: Road Trips in MSFS 2020

[FloodedPuma1298]

UPDATE (3/6/24): Tunis - Tripoli is finished!

Table of Contents:
1. Tunis - Tripoli (8 Days) - Starting Post: This one right here!
2. Augusta, ME - TBA - Starting Post: Click Here!

What can I say? I have too much money and I like cars. How could I not buy a drivable Ford Transit in the Marketplace? A whole world on my fingertips - and I can drive in it, not only fly across it (even though that alone entertained me for more than 1200 hours!)

Well, it isn’t as easy as it seems: This is a flight simulator, not a “driving simulator”, therefore I had to spent the last month learning how to handle the hickups, mishaps and downright terrifying anomalies this little van produces. I learned how to judge which bridge is solid and which is not, so I won’t get launched into the stratosphere as often as before. I learned how to map my throttle and joystick for ease-of-use. And I learned how to drift. Let me say this - drifting in MSFS is fun!

But now it is time to challenge myself - and I want to share it with you! So I embarked on a road trip spanning multiple days, from Tunis to Tripoli, in a wine-red Ford Transit. Perhaps I’ll continue this project afterwards, but for now the capital of Libya is my destination. So put your seatbelts on, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover!

001: From Tunis to Chgarnia

I picked a nice spot on Highway A1 near the City of Culture compound in Tunis as a starting point. Mostly because there weren’t as many bridges in between the city limits and this place. Bridges = enemies, remember this!

Well, the first bridge was quite nice and solid so I could snap a shot of the Ancient Harbour of Tunis while driving across.

As this is a quite new perspective (on the ground instead of above it), I took to experimenting with camera angles during our drive past Mornag, the Djebel Ressas and the area around Grombalia.

Sometimes you spot small things on the side of the road like this house hidden in the trees. A quick Google Maps search revealed it to be a cafe, the “Cafe Nesrine” to be precise.

And this is why bridges are evil - sometimes they just glitch you into the ground, which can be remedied by a quick button press in Slew Mode (which you have to use while driving - as I already said, the sim isn’t a driving sim so there will be some glitches or bugs on the way). Sometimes they decide that gravity is a lie and launch you into the air or across the country. Fun fact - this can be quite nauseating in first person view with a headtracking gear stuck to your headset!

Finally, after more than an hour of driving, I decided to stop for the time being in a quaint little town called Chgarnia. As you can see, even the windows and doors of the van can be opened (beside quite a few other interesting features I’ll probably showcase later!)

All in all a nice little drive with many opportunities for good screenshots. Tbh I feel the urge to just continue, but sadly I have a few other things to do today, so I’ll have to wait for tomorrow. At least I’m on vacation so I can spent a lot of time on this for the next two weeks!

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do!
Until tomorrow

[FloodedPuma1298]

002: From Chgarnia to Malahma

Another day, another step on our way to Tripoli! As I showcased the usual sights and events of a MSFS Road Trip during the first leg of this journey, I will now focus more on special places I found during my travels. Enjoy!

The familiar lag spike of a nearby airport spawning its planes made me leave the highway for a quick detour: I wanted to see if I could see something from the roadside, so I drove up to the Aeroport International Enfidha-Hammamet and voilá - I could just spot the rears of two airliners through my right window! Sadly no one was taking off or landing, but that would have been too perfect.

Further down the road I came across what I thought was a hotel - in reality it was the ATC tower of the airport with a standard highrise skin. But that’s not the important part - as you can see, I am fairly close to the sea. But I had to utilize my drone cam to even see it. During most of yesterdays’ and the first part of today’s trip I was basically driving right along the shoreline without ever spotting it!

Quite the scenic shot of me crossing Oued Essoud, right? What you might not see is that my van is halfway glitched into the bridge. Normal stuff, but it made for an awesome shot the moment I found the right angle!

Onwards we go along Highway A1, passing both M’Saken and Manzel Hayet on our way south. A relaxing drive, but unremarkable. Still I enjoyed it very much.

Having travelled quite far this morning I decided to stop in Malahma, where I used the working reverse gear to park neatly in between these two houses.

[MajoRVI]

Hahaha this is so cool !
Hopefully the game will be even more beautiful in msfs 2024 for this kind of adventure in car or… boat!
Do you stop at airports to refuel the Van ?

[FloodedPuma1298]

Thank you!

Haha, no, I don’t refuel it. It would be kinda cool, but it would also severely limit my travel routes.

[FloodedPuma1298]

003: From Malahma to Sfax

Today’s trip was a bit shorter as I wedged it into a busy day’s schedule. But as the driving is pretty relaxing, I didn’t want to go a day without it!

We rejoined Highway A1 north of Malahma. It continued pretty much straight down south across flat plains and a few rolling hills. A pleasant drive, all in all.

This was taken after ascending a hill near El Hencha. With such a great view in front of me I just had to take the camera out!

It is funny to witness how the road traffic works in the sim. Cars will move below the ground or through the air whenever they struggle with slight elevation changes (this is at least my impression). Yet this odd behaviour doesn’t take away from the beauty of this area just west of Dokhane.

As I said I had to cut the trip short, so I parked my van just off the highway at an interchange northwest of Sfax. As I am afraid we would encounter a lot of buggy bridges in the city, I’ll skip it for now. There will be other places where I’ll showcase this experience in the future!

[RagingWombat839]

Hey mate I think you’re crazy. And I love it!

Maybe one day I’ll do some virtual road trips, I’ve always wanted to, but I’m personally going to need the ground scenery and the driving experience to improve a lot to make it enjoyable.

I bought the first powerboat ages ago so I could do coastal trips but it just wasn’t working well so I don’t use it.

[FloodedPuma1298]

Haha, I know, I know I don’t really like games with too many preset rules, I’ll rather build my own adventure. If that means driving a Ford Transit through Tunesia in a Flight Sim, so be it!

Well, I can’t really have an opinion on graphics as I am an avid TBS gamer, which means that for me Excel spreadsheets count as high-end graphics, too.

Jokes aside, I don’t mind the current ground textures as they are (for me!) still very immersive and the thought of being able to travel the entire world in realistic scale with these still good-looking textures and only time as a constraint is mind-blowing to me even after 1200 hours. But it also makes me very hyped for MSFS 2024 and how it’ll look!

[FloodedPuma1298]

004: From Sfax to Sidi Mohamed Nouiguez

Do you know what the main difficulty of this trip is? Driving in MSFS is so darn meditative that I often just forget to take pictures along the way. Anyways, let’s drive on!

Another day, another buggy bridge: But colour me impressed - at least 80% of the bridges I’ve encountered along Highway A1 in Tunesia are actually drivable without either launching you into the stratosphere or you sinking through them. By the way, this was still in the vicinity of Sfax, just south of Aine Torkia.

Most of the time we were driving across flat plains, first with a moderate amount of vegetation, which later gave way to sparse shrubbery. But here, near El Khazenet, there was still a lot of greenery surrounding us.

Southwest of Ksar El-Hammem the road quality decreased as asphalt gave way to dust and gravel. I think this was a part that wasn’t completely finished when the base satellite image was taken so the sim couldn’t model it appropriately. In the distance you can also spot the first foothills of the Saharan Atlas!

After an hour of driving we parked our van in the small town of Sidi Mohamed Nouiguez. Here, Highway A1 took a sharp turn south after running straight westerly from Sfax. We are about halfway to Tripoli by now. Let’s see what sights we’ll see tomorrow!

[MajoRVI]

Excellent!
Do you think it would be possible to do this in big cities like Paris?

[Baracus250]

I tried a few Photogrammetry cities with the Juice Goose (not Paris actually) and it is very janky.
The roads are often not smooth, with lumps and half-baked PG cars poking up. And PG bushes and trees (or what remains of them) overhang the road and you get stuck on them. All too annoying! Much better in emptier countryside.

[FloodedPuma1298]

Thank you! Actually I visited a few larger cities with the van and I would say that by now I learned to navigate them pretty well. Of course you’ll need Slew Mode to free yourself when you get stuck (which tends to happen).

I remember making my way through the entirety of Istanbul (west to east) without using Slew Mode once, just backing out of blocked streets in reverse gear and looking for another way.

[SwiftTugboat430]

@RagingWombat839

I bought the first powerboat ages ago so I could do coastal trips

So did I. I’ve done the UK coastline tour, and a trip up the River Thames. The bridges were…challenging, but doable.

[Ramduck66]

sure forza horizon world will sort all those problems out

[Baracus250]

Yes but not using photogrammetry and covering the entire globe. That would take an endless amount of time to hand model to the quality of Forza graphics!

[Ramduck66]

Thats what A.I is for

[Baracus250]

Yeah, right lol

[ImmersiveVR]

Welcome to the club😁

Cruising Las Vegas in 1970 Dodge Charger

Kawasaki Ninja H2R Through Hong Kong

[FloodedPuma1298]

005: From Sidi Mohamed Nouiguez to Zerig El-Ghandri

First of all let me thank you for your lovely comments and the engaging discussions! You guys make this little project feel even more worthwile!

The benefit of travelling in Tunesia is the great weather, the slightly vexing thing about it is the continuous great weather which makes it hard to spice things up as I am used to do. But it also provides me with the challenge of finding and showcasing new sights, which is very engaging for me! This (pretty basic) shot was taken shortly after rejoining Highway A1 near Sohani.

Passing the border between Sfax and Gabes Province almost all vegetation has been replaced with barren land. Somehow, despite the houses and the cars it feels very solitary to drive in this area!

To the northwest of Akarit the scenery changed again, now with palm trees sprouting out of the ground and the grasslands returning. The remainder of this drive may so far be my favourite part of our journey!

Quite shocking but the road went missing while passing Gabes at Garaat El-Makki! After some research I found out that this part wasn’t finished until recently so it doesn’t really exist in the sim. I am currently debating if I should switch to the nearby Route Nationale 1 or continue using the map to navigate Schroedinger’s highway towards the Libyan border! The rallye experience is great nevertheless!

I stopped at Zerig El-Ghandri to think about my options. I enjoy the semi-cross-country driving along Highway A1 in this region, yet I don’t know if it will provide many good shots. I could also switch to the nearby Route Nationale 1, which will take longer, but provides a more “classical” road trip experience…

Well, I’ll leave that decision for future-me!

[RagingWombat839]

@FloodedPuma1298

Schroedinger’s highway

Well there’s your problem!

I mean, if you don’t keep watch on it all of the time you’ve no idea if the highway is still there or not. I’m fact, it’s really both there and not there in a superposition until you boot the game and check.

[FloodedPuma1298]

006: From Zerig El-Ghandri to Mesarf

I believe I made the right decision by choosing Route Nationale 1 over Highway A1: During today’s drive we crossed the Highway multiple times and it was always just empty land without any sign of a road. Meanwhile RN1 turned out to be quite scenic!

To reach our new motorway we had to cross Zerig El-Ghandri and drive along the northern bank of Oued el-Hachchane to Kettana. It was a lush green oasis full of palm trees, which proved to be quite the contrast to the northern and central parts of Tunisia we visited before!

Crossing Oued el-Hachchane, RN1 provided us with a nice first view of the distant mountain ranges to the southwest.

We talked quite a lot about driving in cities (in MSFS) so I thought a city shot would be quite appropriate. Here you’ll see the main road in Mareth, namesake of the famous Mareth Line in World War 2. I did not properly explore the town but so far most streets on the roadside seemed to be wide enough for my van and clear of obstacles.

Of course we can’t miss the obligatory drone cam shot, can we! For a random scene I shot because I felt like it, this looks quite well composed if I may say so. It was taken a bit south of Arram.

Passing the Carriere de Tejra quarry we drove through a narrow valley, which may have been to closest we’ve come to encountering actual mountains / larger hills on our way to Tripoli.

Finally I parked the van in a small village near Mesarf after about an hour of driving. The Libyan border isn’t very far off and I think we’ll need about 2-3 days to reach our (first?) destination - the capital of Tripoli.