I started with a plan to clean up Ireland's iconic Dingle Peninsula... then I got carried away. In the end, this mod covers southwest Ireland along a line running from approximately Banna-Abbeyfeale-Killarney-Skibbereen-Cork, as shown in red on the screenshot. What does it do? Firstly, it removes autogen trees from places where there are no trees in real life, such as cliffs, farm fields, and car parks, as well as places where there is vegetation, but it's in the form of knee-high shrubs. The AI goes way overboard planting trees, and I drove myself to the brink of insanity removing as many as was reasonably possible. Secondly, the AI also goes overboard with large office and industrial buildings. Farm buildings are generally low, flat steel structures that look exactly like hangars, yet get interpreted by the AI as five-plus-story office buildings, so I set about replacing all of those with hangars. The exception to this is in County Cork, where about 95% of farm buildings never got generated at all, and I've done my best to add those. Rows of terrace houses in towns often get turned into long, skinny industrial buildings, so I've replaced those with stock houses. I also added castles, lighthouses, and other appropriate buildings. I'm not particularly good at 3D modeling, and I don't enjoy it whatsoever, so all buildings are stock, so don't expect everything to look exactly as it does in real life. My guiding principle here was to make a fair representation, not an exact recreation: i.e., if there's supposed to be a house, I put a house there; if it's supposed to be a hotel, I used something that looks like a hotel. Just like when the AI gets autogen right, it may not look exactly like the real thing, but at least it looks appropriate. I also added boats wherever I saw boats in the satellite imagery. These come from:
Superspud's Static Boats 3D Model Library
https://flightsim.to/file/27907/static-boat-3d-model-library
Dave's Seaplane Base Object Library
https://flightsim.to/file/5806/fisherman-dave-s-seaplane-base-object-library
and
US Navy - San Diego (I used the Freedom-class LCS to stand in for the Irish Naval Service's patrol boats at Naval Base Haulbowline.)
https://flightsim.to/file/1194/us-navy-san-diego
Lastly, if you want to find Fungie the Dolphin, you'll also need Dave's 3D Animals Library
https://flightsim.to/file/6841/dave-s-3d-animals-library
Besides these libraries, I also used buildings from all World Updates except Japan and Canada.
I've also made photogrammetry of Tralee, because it was such a mess that I couldn't fix it otherwise, so check that out if you're interested. https://flightsim.to/file/32653/tralee-photogrammetry
Update 1.1: Expanded to cover Skibbereen and the surrounding area.
Update 1.2: Expanded north and east of Tralee to cover Banna, Ardfert, Currow, Castleisland, and Abbeyfeale, among others; cleared more ugly vegetation from the area between Tralee and Killarney; and spruced up Whiddy Island oil terminal, which you see from the pattern at EIBN if you have that. https://flightsim.to/file/7804/eibn-bantry
Update 1.3: Expanded east from Skibbereen to Cork City. I didn't do anything with Cork City itself, as vizipok already did a photogrammetry mod for that: https://flightsim.to/file/33472/cork-city I'm aware that there are gaps east and west of Bandon (mostly east), but I'm going away for a few weeks and wanted to post what I've done so far. I plan to resume work and fill in those gaps eventually. Oh, and I removed the freakish glowing airliner that Bing radioactively burned into a hillside in Kerry.
Update 1.4: Minor improvements around Cork city and the area to the west of Bandon, mainly adding and replacing more buildings, and fixing some ugly coastline teraforming.
Update 1.5: More teraforming fixes around Cork city, for which Bing apparently has really garbage elevation data, because it turned beaches and sandbanks into cliffs. There still remain cracks between terrain tiles in places, but this bug appears in many parts of the world, and I hope (perhaps naively) that Asobo will fix it soon. Currently, it's fully compatible with vizipok's Cork photogrammetry, but if you're using EnjoyItFly's version, there will be a gap between the photogrammetry tiles and the surrounding terrain on the northeast edge of the city. That's an issue which EnjoyItFly will have to fix, because I can't override their terraforming.
Very nicely done! Thank you so much for sharing your work!
It's a beautiful rough country. So nice to fly there.
I also like the boats here and there.
10 months ago
Ulrich11
https://imgur.com/BorhY2r
I noticed a huge terrain gap in Cork
10 months ago
Yes, there is a long crack in the terrain running from the coast, through Cork, past Fermoy, to a point near Kilfinane, in southeastern Co. Limerick. It's new, it exists with or without my mod or any others, and I don't know how to fix it completely. I can fix it with terraforming in flat areas, but that just makes a mess of hills, so I've chosen to leave it alone for the time being. There have unfortunately been bugs like this in many parts of the world for quite a while. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/persistent-cracks-in-ground-tiles-not-water-since-su5/439671/40
10 months ago
WWSmith
Maxest
Is there any chance you could fix the trees around Cork Airport? Some are far too big and other areas have trees that aren't there in real life. I tried editing the trees but failed due to an error loading the file in dev mode.
Excellent work on this project! It adds great immersion to the south coast.
1 years ago
Unfortunately I don't know any way to reduce the size of autogen trees. If I place vegetation myself, I can set the height, but that would require excluding all the autogen trees and then manually drawing the new vegetation, which is far, far more work than I'm willing to put into this. What I have done in some areas is to change trees to scrub, which sometimes makes them look more like hedgerows, but some other times the result was uglier than the original trees, and so I changed it back. Honestly, I'm done with this mod at this point. As impressive a technical achievement as it is, Asobo really needs to refine the way their software generates vegetation, because Ireland's not the only part of the world where the vegetation looks unrealistic.
1 years ago
WWSmith
shamrock727
Brilliant work on this. Thank you. I just approached Cork City from the west at about 1500 feet in my DV20. I did notice a slightly oversized castle just east of the airport. Probably about 20km long and maybe 500m tall. Very pretty though 😊
I removed the mod and tried the approach again, this time no castle 😞
2 years ago
This is my first full day back from vacation, so I just checked it out. I did find and correct a couple of oversized buildings which I'd missed before, which will be part of the next update, but I couldn't find a castle east of Cork Airport, let alone one 20km long and 500m tall.
2 years ago
WWSmith
outforaflight
Cool stuff. How did you manage to "break down" the big flat buildings? Did ou have to place custom models for houses or is there a way to force the size of the game-generted buildings?
thanks
2 years ago
Draw a polygon, check "buildings", check "exclude all." Sometimes checking just "OSM buildings" causes the AI to generate something better, but usually not. I replaced them with stock buildings.
2 years ago
WWSmith
mv46
Great improvement, many thanks.
2 years ago
scott8wt334
This is fantastic, thank you for improving beautiful SW Ireland! If you have the time, if possible could Currow village be improved (Esp. the church we pass over on approach to EIKY 26) That would be great.
2 years ago
scott8wt334
Oh man I'm so happy to see this. I haven't downloaded these yet (I'm a strict take-off where I last landed simmer, and I'm currently touring the Inner Hebrides). But once I get back to base (Weston), I know where my next trip will be! Especially now that MK have released Cork airport. Munster getting some love is great. I live in hope that someone will tackle Cork City as well.
Thanks again.
2 years ago
outforaflight
Great Work. Any plans to expand this work into more of Cork and Kerry?
2 years ago
HarryF87
Fantastic work. Thank you! I visited Tralee and Dingle a few years ago. Love the region. People very friendly and welcoming.
2 years ago
tculhane
How does this work with Tralee Photogrammetry https://flightsim.to/file/32653/tralee-photogrammetry
2 years ago
They're both my mods, and were meant to be used together.
2 years ago
WWSmith
imb12