How to get ULTRA REALISTIC GRAPHICS in Cities: Skylines | 2023 Guide 

Thanks for the great feedback on this tutorial! A few additional notes - since I was trying to keep the video as short and concise as possible: 1. The collection in the description of the video is complete and contains all of the visual mods you will need, including all necessary requirements of those mods. Do not subscribe to *any* additional mods that affect the visuals in the game. Mods such as Sharp textures, Clouds and Fog Toggler, Post Process FX v1.9.0, etc. are all either incompatible or included with these mods and may cause issues or the game to not load. 2. This includes the recommended mod dependencies of *Relight* - Do not subscribe to Ultimate Eye Candy and Shadow Strength Adjuster. 3. Pittsburgh is a hilly city, if your city is not - lower both your *Horizon Height setting* and *Fog Height* settings gradually in Fog Controller until you see the blue horizon right above your map and fog is at the desired level. 4. You may want to adjust Longitude and Latitude in Theme Mixer. Mine is set for a city in Midwestern/Rust-Belt region of the US. Look up the values to your desired region to adjust for extra realism. 5. Most Cubemaps on the workshop have an ideal Longtitude, Latitude, and time of day to make the sun light the cubemap and skybox correctly. To see the the ideal settings, check the workshop pictures for the cubemap you’ve downloaded on steam. I hope this tutorial was helpful for your city’s visuals and lighting! If you have any additional questions, feel free to comment them below.

This is fantastic! I picked up some great tips in here. Thank you!!

Great tips! Going to implement a lot of this. Your graphics look amazing

my computer just ran away and hid

Great job. I play vanilla-ish gameplay with 81 tyles mod, next to no workshop assets & lifestyle mods on an average pc. Following these tips has enhanced my in game enjoyment 1000%. I had previously stayed away from most of these visual mods for fear that my pc wouldn't be able to handle them & the sim together. Your video gave me the confidence to try them out.

Your default settings might be just perfect for the autumn look I'm going for. Thanks for the guide!

Thanks, your tutorial came just in time, as the recent update has reset my grafic settings

realistic cities skylines graphics? what is this sorccery! Great video, many things have changed since pres's old graphics mod videos! Great work Matty!

Thank you so much, usually these how to videos are unsensically long and stretched out, this is perfect

We have homework for the weekend. 👍🏼

Thank you so much for making this! I really like how mine turned out. Have a nice day

This is great. Would love the mods you use for more realistic/real world building and cars too

I've never gone this deep into the graphics rabbit hole thus far, but this video gave me the inspiration to try it out. What a difference! Compatibility Report cringes a little with some of these mods, but it all works after the latest update. I also installed Relight without Ultimate Eyecandy, Shadow Strength Adjuster, and Ability to Read and it all works just fine.

Thank you! I always wonder how people make their cities skylines look good, Thank you for the tutorial!

Thank You So much :) I really Loved Your Graphics. Your tutorial was straight on point easy to understand and implement for me too :D

Thank you so much! I have wasted so much time trying to find a clean realistic setting. I was getting overwhelmed by the number of buttons and sliders at my disposal. Thank you!

you are a life saver... I've been hunting for mods like this but not knowing the names is cumbersome to say the least... I just hope my City comes out looking as good as yours

Thank you so much, amazing tweaks!

Great video. I also like the background jazz song.

I just got into CS and so glad I found your mod lists... This is going to blow my mind from base vanilla game...

it is always a pleasure! thanks so much for sharing

Wow, I thought the intro was real life. It's crazy how photorealistic you can get this game to be.

One should note that the type of monitor you use has a major impact on visuals overall. It might not turn out how you want it to if you are using lets say a TN Panel, that has very matte colors.

ALREADY 2023 I LOVE IT. HAPPY NEW YEAR GASEOUS STRANGER!

This is insane! Not only do your videos (and cities) look great, but also you're kind enough to give us all a thorough tutorial. I'll definitely check if I have all the listed mods in my collection and tweak the settings as soon as I return to the game.

Great video, very helpful, thank you!

Great video, gonna use these in game soon.

Great tutorial. Very useful and helped me simplify my graphics “workflow.” I understand a lot more about how these mods work with each other.

Theme Mixer alone does quite good job; if color correction is set to relightavarage

Great video! Thank you for sharing this tips.

Thank you so much for making this great guide!

Thanks for this!! this is Awesome!!

Wow as a Pittsburgher and city building game fan, I am in complete awe of your Pittsburgh. So cool to see our fair city recreated here so exactly.

Thank you for this video I’ve been trying to figure out how to download mods for months and this was super helpful👍

Mine didn't really end up looking like your at all. It would be useful to show it start from a 'vanilla' look. Then for each setting showed show what it should look like at that point. Would make it easier to identify and what step it went wrong. I believe it may be due to the menus looking alot different now. Also the LUT will not apply from theme mixer, I had to do it in Render it.

@2:20, the Curtis Building from Evansville, IN. Nice.

this guide was super helpful, thank you!

Great tips!!! Just what I have been looking for in my game!!

Making some of these changes is already a vast improvement on the visuals ... I have been struggling with overly green and too-dark shadows for too long now.

It worked like a charm!! Thank you very much. 👍

Very nice video. I'm so excited to play with these changes. Speaking of excitement, The new trailer Cities Skylines 2 🤩

Hey man, thanks for a great put together tutorial, easy to understand and clearly, precise explained.

This is a very helpful video.Thanks for sharing.

Amazing, very useful!

Your recreation of da 'Burgh is amazing.

Damn! Your Tuts are awesome - simple to the point no BS, thank You ;)

This is the video I needed. Thank you very much :)

Amazing work

Great tutorial. One question what in your opinion are some of best assets do you use for the roads and buildings. Thank you!

Amazing work! Glad to see the video got the attention it deserves!

Thank you , you saved my patience to this game

You actually did a good job and I’m on 14 secs in i though it was real, I was like “wait is this real or the game” good work 💗

Just wanted to say thanks for this video! I thought my city was ugly… turns out it was just my mod settings. It’s like night and day and there are moments where I caught myself saying “wow” at parts of my city I’d seen dozens of times before

Nice tips man, a lot of those settings in RenderIt don't really mean much to a lot, helpful to see how someone tweaks things :)

Thank you so much for this quick mod list. I should buy you a coffee :). Now all I need is a list of building assets to diversify the limited building types the game has to offer.

Wow ! Thanks for the vidéo That's all I needed to enjoy playing this game again !

Thanks for the information

I am gonna try some of them!

This is a great tutorial!

great tutorial, thank you!

Only person who could convince me to switch to render it! Thanks for the great vid

this is amazeballs !!

Chef's Kiss! It's the video I've been waiting for!

Thank you!!!!!

omg this tutroial is now realistc thank you gaseous stranger! And also i use neptune

Great work, thank you for this tutorial video! It's probably the best one on YT!

Love this video, your city looks absolutely beautiful. I have one problem tho: i have downloaded all the visual mods you have and set everything with precise numbers as you did in this video, except for the dinamic resolution (had to keep it at 150%, or max at 200 or I have too low fps), and my game doesn't really look like your. I gotta say that I got this game just a few days ago, played for just a few hours spent mostly struggling with the damn roundabout exits, built some houses etc, and that's almost basically it. After that I closed the game and looked for some mods to help me with the nodes, marking tools etc.. Well..All this is beside the point, but I've looked for some nice graphic mods too like in this video and I can't figure out why my game still looks bad. Now I've started a new city where I didn't build much, but I can already see, for example from the trees, that the graphic is still kinda grainy even after I've installed everything in your visual mod collection. Do you have any suggestion? My pc specs are: CPU - Intel I7-8700 GPU - RTX 2060 RAM - 16GB

Looks amazing. Graphics are excellent!

Thank you!

nice work！

Thank you soo much :D

Thanks for this, I've just copied your settings to use as a base to slightly tweak, other than the coordinates which are correct for my city. I don't get the clouds looking as good as yours, I must have another mod conflicting with it, coz I've been playing around trying to sort this for years. Will have to go through and workout which mods are conflicting tomorrow. Cheers

I am from Pittsburgh and that looks amazing wow

Thank u. Very helpful

Thanks for the tutorial! What are your exact settings in renderit? What did you select for LUT there? Or are they off and you select your LUT in theme mixer 2? Thanks!

This is the best visual mod guide so far.

Nicely done. Looks like I will start on this tomorrow and see how much better ,y graphics get. I usually just set everything in the game to max and just leave it at that. Thanks for taking the time to walk us all through these settings.

Thank you very much for your video that has helped me very much that my graphics in the game finally comes across brilliantly. Finally this pixelated image and edges is gone

that is impressive, im excited to see city skyline with a new way.

Thank you so much for this video! My game looks a million times better now.

I just want to thank you, after seeing all the videos with realistic views, I can finally create something that looks and feels real. Again thank you for the pointers.

I just ordered a gaming laptop and I CANT wait to use these 😩

Wow, I flew over from the UK to visit Pittsburgh only six weeks ago, and its uncanny how closely you've nailed it! Wish I could zip back and have another pint in Satalio's pub overlooking the city from Mt. Washington, while watching videos of your build. :)

Bro nice work even in 2024! Imagine C:S creators made those graphic settings in vanilla game... this would be so good. Thanks! 😊

Bro you did my home city justice! Looks just like the BURGH!!!

Thank you so much for this! It's been so hard to find a list for these kinds of mods. It's mostly gameplay mods to get when you search for a list, and not graphics.

You are a hero

Always had trouble understanding which mods to combine and how to set them up, this video cleared everything up and made my game look amazing like I always wanted to, big help thank you!

I had completely messed up my graphics with the neutral white and black in out stuff and other values and I am still so upset but this tutorial seems very promising and I am going to give it a shot. Thank you for making this tutorial. Feedback: Timestamps with the mod names in the video description would be great for navigating the video 🙂

Very helpful, will definitely implement your tips!

I'd be interested in a video addressing the mods that are compatible with the new DLC's that just came out. Really wish Steam had a feature were outdated mods are thrown out and we wouldn't be going through thousands of pages.. Awesome vid though. Will see implement these into the game and try them out!

Thinking about returning to the game after 2 years absence, and this video is a great place to start! Thank you!

Great work

Dope!

Great, now i doubled my modlist. 😂 Thanks for the tips. Now i have a lot settings to do. Follow dropped! ;)

Thanks for that Video - I was close to my city looking good but I´ve not gotten it to that level! Now it looks just gorgeous :D

Hey, this is a brilliant tutorial! Was wondering if you could do an updated version with the Relight and Daylight Classic settings converted to the Render It! mod?

The easiest yet most thorough tutorial to follow so far. Thank you for all the work in this! Question though, at 2:54, "Classic Fog (Enable Cubemap)" is unchecked. On my side when its left unchecked, the sky is left pure blue with only some of the AD clouds in place. Shouldn't it be checked to enable use of the Cubemap Replacer? When I checked Classic Fog (Enable Cubemap), the entire sky populated with the cubemap I selected.

Nice tutorial, thank you.

Hey, I’m having trouble with the Advanced setting option using the mod render it. It shows nothing besides Options between “Next profile” and “Previous profile”