Cork City has been lovingly recreated in this video game

Originally from Southern Spain, Antonio Bernal has lived in Cork for nine years and has spent "countless hours" recreating his new hometown in city-building simulator Cities: Skylines.

Antonio has shared images and videos of his work that showcases his attention to detail in areas around the city.

"I do love Cork and that is the main reason I started building this," he said.

He is most proud of Morrison's Island and, in particular, St Patrick's Street - which even has the real streetlights from Cork, designed by another player.

Other fantastically recreated areas include the Port and Marina and Cork Airport.

"I also love how the Dunkettle Interchange and the Jack Lynch tunnel turned out," he added.

Antonio, who works for Amazon in the city, said he has no formal background in architecture or design.

"It's all a hobby, a pure labour of art. I've enjoyed city building games for a long time," he said.

He also cited his love of city-building games for tackling the project.

He has been playing Cities: Skylines since it came out three years ago, but also has experience with another city building franchise called Sim City.

Antonio started work on this project earlier this year and has put in "countless hours".

"I really couldn't tell you in hours, I've been working on this recreation of Cork since the beginning of the year," he said.

He said he used a terrain map already available on video game service Steam but also refers to Google Maps while he builds.

Playing on the PC has enabled Antonio and other gamers to add user-made modifications to the game to more realistically replicate real-life buildings.

"One I saw enough mods and custom assets for the game to make this possible I went for it," he said.

He has used over 90 mods and 2800 custom assets.

"It's been a challenge too but I'd say the results are way better than I anticipated when I started the project," he added.

Antonio has said the game is already starting to struggle with the size of the map and the project takes quite a while to load.

Posting under his online handle vokepasa21, Antonio said he sees potential in the project for commercial or urban planning and hopes the City Council takes notice.

"The game simulates traffic pretty well and all roads have the real number of lanes and directions. I will also be creating all bus lanes as in real life," he said.

However, he said the traffic jams for his digital denizens are not as bad as real life.

Areas such as Carrigaline, Blackpool and Mayfield are not yet complete but Antonio plans to share updates as the build progresses.

The talented digital city planner has also played the uilleann pipes and bouzouki so regularly plays Irish trad sessions in the city.

He said his love for the city is also captured in some of his watercolour paintings.

Antonio said he would like to collaborate with anybody who wants to 3D model other buildings in the city, as he does not do any modelling himself.

He pointed out that the project is still a work in progress, but anyone interested in more info can contact him directly at themaninthehatart@gmail.com.