Just purchased this add on tonight from Orbx, perfect timing as I’m flying across the UK south coast visiting each of the 11 airfields and airports I bought in the past couple weeks, all 7 of Burning Blue Design’s, and four from Orbx.
Arrived at Southampton airport from Popham last night so today thought it would be fun to sight see Southampton, the Solent and tour the Isle of Wight.
I have to say I really enjoyed this add on, it’s add loads to the scenery and the harbours are all really well done. Playing in VR with my Reverb G2 it had virtually no noticeable impact on performance and the ships when up close flying low look great.
I decided to fly about 100 feet above the water down the estuary in Newport on the Isle of Wight and it was a really spectacular sight to see so many ships.
I can see that Seafront Simulations have had some rough sailing lately with problems with the Xbox release, so I’m pleased to able to report that this is well worth buying if you like to explore the South East coast of England.
Note to the devs, I hope you do get around to doing a UK Southwest too!
Yes, that would be great. Keith Hackett has added the two piers on flightsim.to and Alrocreation has done the Needles and lighthouse. I’d love to see the bulk of it looking handcrafted though. Island projects are quite common, Alderney, Frisian Islands payware, Iceland, Channel Isle, Scilly Isles and Lundy all excellent freeware version so it’s possible we could one at some point.
This is their only addon that I don’t have yet, but plan to pick it up shortly. Great to hear good reports. It’s amazing how much moving boats & ships add to the immersion. I hope they continue to add new models.
I have this too, being a local lad. I’ve only very briefly tested it so far and it’s really good. As you said, the marinas look amazing, particularly the Hamble River with boats moored all along it as you’d expect.
I bought this at the same time as their global shipping and enhanced ai packs. Overall performance has been good but I’ve experienced a couple of pauses since loading these although I’m not yet sure which addon is causing that. I’ll have to do more testing and maybe lower the traffic settings.
I also spotted a ship aground on the beach at Shoreham Airport but I think that was from one of the other’s packs.
Would be even more appropriate if planes could float on the water surface, and respond to waves etc, rather than just sit statically at the water’s MSL.
I too have just got this and wow! What an incredible job they have done. I was expecting the marinas but I don’t think I knew how many boats there actually were in real life for them to add. There are thousands of them.
Flying over them has been fantastic day or night with most having lights. You can just imagine the people holed up with stove on and a few beers
The Solent is perfect, wakes are so much better now and I particularly like those new motorboats with the long wakes that are travelling up and down the coast. Seeing the RNLI out there and Border Force ships near Dover is fun too. The destroyer is intimidating
Highly recommended! I think it’s on a par with the St Martin one personally.
It definitely adds a lot. It will be hard to go back to visiting areas with empty harbours and ports after this. Bijan’s Project Islands, Sunken Boats mod is the next best way to get a smattering of harbours filled around the world, along with some nice island, rock and correct tree placement upgrades, plus he’s so prolific he updates it ever few days.
But I love this super saturation of one area approach. If they do the Southwest Uk I’ll definitely get it.
Yes I’m hoping for that (South West) too as it’s local. I also like Bijans work, especially the corrections to landscapes as they can be very rough in the default. We don’t get the animations or wakes with Bijan or the newer models for that matter but then again he’s not offering it and what we do get is well worth the investment. Staying on topic though this UK South East from Seafront has made a lot of my flights so much more immersive. I’ve set myself up with a new ‘base’ in Bembridge on the IoW
So I’ve now completed my tour of the south east coast, arriving at Andrewsfield tonight. I was a bit disappointed that the ship add on ends at the southern end of the Isle of Shephey. The large expanse of water from Gilingham/St Mary’s Island leading to River Medway, dotted with ports and islands is devoid of ships as is the River Thames around Southend On Sea. This is as important a region as the Solent so to see it completely empty makes it feel unfinished.
I hope they can fill some of these parts in with a future update as it feels incomplete without ships here. Also, once you’ve got used ports and harbours full of ships, its very jarring for the water to be empty.
Still overall, a great add on. I realise it has to end somewhere, but to do the South East coast and not do the River Medway and Thames areas is like doing a Southwest UK and ignoring the Bristol channel.
I emailed them about the lack of ships around the River Medway and Thames. They do actually have more ships to add around Chatham and the Medway so that’s fantastic news. The Thames isn’t technically classed as South East so that’s why they havent’ done that.
They are going to see how sales go but if the region pack is a success they do plan to do a South West UK region pack in the future, including the Bristol channel area, which would be awesome.
Considering how many airfields and airports I’ve purchased in the south of the UK, two or three region packs populating the ports and harbours seems well worth it, for the amount of coverage you get.
Vessels: UK South East will benefit from an update to the Vessels Core model library that is currently with publishers Orbx and Microsoft for release. This update fixes wakes following changes that were introduced to VFX in Sim Update 6.
Following this update will be the addition of the historic dockyard at Chatham as well as a ‘landable’ HMS Queen Elizabeth docked in Portsmouth and some Type 23s Frigates patrolling the coast to complement the existing Type 45 Destroyers.
The UK South East Update will be a few weeks away but here are some screenshots in the meantime.
