Frankfurt’s cluster of skyscrapers, the one locals nickname “Mainhattan,” sits just off the final approach to EDDF, and it’s one of the few proper high-rise skylines anywhere in continental Europe. The problem is that the default rendition has never quite done it justice, and the most popular custom option has been sitting untouched since the MSFS 2020 era. So there’s a real gap to be filled here, and a new release is aiming straight at it.
DFFlyer Direct has put out a Frankfurt City Pack for both Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024. The studio says it adds more than 200 handcrafted buildings across the main downtown and the Niederrad district, the office-and-residential quarter south of the Main that holds its own little forest of towers.
According to the developer, the pack also includes night lighting and signage, high-quality PBR textures, and what they describe as performance-optimized models meant to hold frame rates steady over the city. It’s listed as compatible with World Update 18, the free DACH update that already refreshed Frankfurt’s base imagery back in 2024, so the buildings are meant to sit on top of that newer terrain.
A studio making its first big European move
What makes this one interesting is who’s behind it. DFFlyer Direct is a young outfit, founded in 2024 by a flight simmer of two decades, and its catalogue so far reads like a tour of North America: Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Jacksonville, New Orleans, San Antonio, Montreal, Windsor, and Salt Lake City, with Rio de Janeiro as the one big exception. The studio’s pitch across all of them is roughly the same, which is dense handcrafted buildings, color-matched textures, and animated night lighting tuned to each city’s character.
Frankfurt is the first marquee European skyline in that line-up, and it’s an obvious one to pick. Germany’s financial capital is home to the busiest airport in the country and one of Lufthansa’s main hubs, so it’s a destination plenty of simmers fly to regularly. A skyline that actually looks like Frankfurt from the cockpit is the kind of thing that pays off every single approach.
Price and availability
The Frankfurt City Pack is available now through Contrail, where it’s listed at roughly €10, with sales tax added at checkout where applicable. You’ll need Orbx Central to download and install it.
For just over ten euros, this looks great you fly Frankfurt often and want the skyline to hold up on approach, particularly now that the city sits on the newer WU18 imagery.
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