Real Roads for Skyrim
Replaces the flat roads with 3D meshes
Intro
Real Roads for Skyrim aims to bring life to the dull roads by using 3D meshes. It covers all road meshes in all variations inc. the shiny Dwemer roads. This is not a Parallax mod! For more information please have a look at Matthiaswagg’s review. You can find a comparison (Vanilla/Parallax/Real Roads) in the images from users section provided by hdshatter
Features
Better look and feel
Better shading due to better geometry
Overlapping road meshes should look slightly better
TexturesPlease note that this mod does not contain textures! For a list of of compatible textures see below (not every listed texture is fully compatible):
Vanilla and the official High Res pack (and everything based on the same pattern)
Skyrim Realistic Texture Overhaul
aMidianBorn Landscape (the rocks on the Snow textures are somewhat smaller)
Serious HD Retexture Skyrim
Better Landscape Skyrim
Alternative Road Textures
CAD25 Landscape Texture Pack exterior
Skyrim HD – 2K Textures (deviates too much from the original pattern and might look weird)
Tamriel Reloaded – Textures and Parallax
Skyrim Realistic Overhaul
Insanity’s Texture Pack (external link)
Not compatible with
Landscape Texture Pack WIP (completely different pattern)
Immersive Roads (semi-compatible, but has some serious seaming issues)
Compatibility / Load orderIf you have any mod (ESP) that adds Parallax mapping to roads, load Real Roads after (i.e. place it below) whatever Parallax mod you have . If it consists of only loose files (NIFs) feel free to ignore (or delete) them.Correct load order:– Random mod.esp– Another random mod.esp– Some Parallax mod that might tamper with roads.esp (keep it above my mod or uncheck it if it only affects roads)– Real Roads.esp– Other random mods.esp
If you are unsure, just place it at the bottom of the load order.
F.A.Q
Does it include bridges?
Static Mesh Improvement Mod covers bridges as you’ll be using SMIM anyways.
Do you plan to cover roads in towns as well?
That’s quite unlikely! Honestly I haven’t even looked into those. It may not even be possible if they are treated as landscape. The main reason, however, is the amount of different patterns and small cobble stones would require even more polygons than the main roads.
Is the ESP really necessary? These are just meshes
Yes, it is! Base and dwemer roads would be OK, but everything else would have the wrong textures. On top of that I’m not using the standard directory structure.
PerformanceI haven’t done any extensive tests, but I see no real decrease in performance. Most users reported no decrease in framerate, a few others had a minor impact.
Known issues / bugs
Blood splatters have been reported to look “wonky”. [Looking into it later]
Installation
Extract into your Skyrim/Data folder or use the NMM
Credits
A big thank you to Percevan for testing
