I’m a sucker for details and the autogenerated buildings constantly blow me away! Sure they look weird at street level, and there are plenty of mistakes and oddities, but the fact that my own house is a 3D model in this simulation of the entire earth is simply astonishing!
With every World Update there are updates to something called “building archetypes”. I can’t find a list or overview of new or existing archetypes, and I am very curious about these small but important tweaks.
As a Norwegian, for World Update 5 I took some before-and-after screenshots, and based on this I think I have identified four of the eight new archetypes added for the Nordics. This might be wrong; the new buildings that appeared might be existing archetypes that have been allowed to spawn in the nordics, so take it with a grain of salt.
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Brick church
Like the loading screen teases, churches have received an update. This image shows two different roof and window styles. Usually the spires and towers are way too tall. I spotted another church archetype with more restrained features and concrete walls, but I don’t know if this is a new archetype. -
Brick apartment building with balconies.
A new apartment building with brick walls have appeared. Variants of this archetype can feature white railings and extruding balconies. This archetype is found both in cities and the countryside, but mostly for buildings larger than regular houses. -
Gambrel house/Barn
I am unsure if houses with gambrel roofs were already in the game, they must have been, right? But this update seems to replace many normal houses with this type of house. I mostly found these houses in cities rather than out in the countryside, which is a bit strange as this roof is mostly associated with barns. Variants include different wall textures such as concrete and other types of painted wood, and roof features such as dormers. -
Flat roofed modern house
Modern, square houses with flat roofs seems to have been added. These buildings come in a few different variants with mostly different wood exteriors and simple square features. Unlike the other three archetypes I have seen this archetype being used for commercial buildings of much greater size than residential buildings.
Please feel free to contribute to this thread if you have spotted other archetypes, both from WU5 and previous/future updates, or if you have corrections or comments.