Freeside's one of the saddest examples of "what could have been" in New Vegas. A ton was planned, but there just wasn't enough time. While there's a lot of mods out there that overhaul Freeside, I've found them to be buggy, often gamebreaking, and even the stable ones sometimes go too far with what they do or conflict with numerous other mods. I decided to make a lightweight makeover for Freeside, one that keeps to the vanilla aesthetic and doesn't do anything drastic, but makes the city feel more alive, like it really is an expanding oasis in the Mojave.

I've added a variety of new buildings, billboards, and signs to give life to Freeside. It'd make sense the first and best development would be the area closest to the Strip: on the street to the Strip gate, two highrise complexes dominate both sides of the boulevard, windows lighting up at night. Offices and apartments before the War, they now serve as major housing units for Freeside's booming population. Though their rooms, always a work in progress of reconstructing, are packed, it's nothing compared to the shantytown on the overpass, congested with broke travelers, squatters, and refugees. Various other buildings now have window lights, some door barricades have been removed, and signs have been added to give a sense of other shops and homes being present through the ever-rebuilding Freeside.

Additionally, I've added new fluff NPCs to Freeside's two cells, a total of 43 divided between them. I've spread them out to keep any area from feeling too crowded, and there's a load of new idle markers and furniture they'll use as they walk the streets and go about their day-to-day lives in the background. There's Freeside locals, destitute squatters, and impoverished drunks.

I've made no navmesh changes, no cellspace changes, very few vanilla changes, and used no scripts. With only a few custom assets, courtesy of prodlimen, it's about as lightweight as you could get with this kind of mod.

Currently there are no new interiors. I'm not good enough with the GECK yet to pull them off. However, this mod is completely free to use and build off of by anyone else. I'll be making my own additions, but if anyone's good with interiors and wants to add them, or make any other changes, go for it.

Needless to say this is almost guaranteed to be incompatible with any Freeside overhaul, like Freeside Open, Freeside Redone, or FLVJOD Freeside. Smaller mods may or may not work. I've made this to be as compatible as possible with some popular or minor mods though, so at worst nothing should break, it'll just look out of place. A list of fully compatible mods I use is down below.

Freeside Facelift - Viva Las Vegas
Inspired by other Strip mods, this is my attempt at fleshing out the Strip and its worldspace myself. A lot of mods doing the same thing, in my opinion, go too far, crowding the Strip with way too many buildings and props, and usually come with landscape edits, low-res texture work, and other problems.

Using some custom assets, but again keeping almost everything vanilla, I've added to the Strip in a way that I feel stays lore-friendly and unintrusive, but adds to the atmosphere. In the unused section of the Strip near Vault 21, new high-rise hotels can now be seen, as well as a cocktail and gambling lounge, all serving as cheaper but nevertheless quality entertainment for the Strip's patrons. The destroyed section of the Tops' tower now has some construction work going on as repairs get underway, and outside the Strip, the Wrangler's gotten a height boost and slight interior change to make the extra floors fit. The extra "hotel district" is also visible from outside the Strip, IE at the El Rey Motel.

No new interiors have been added, and the landscape, navmeshes, scripts, etc. of the Strip have been completely untouched. This'll conflict with anything that puts stuff in the same place, but otherwise, there should be no problems or bugs at all. It's still a work in progress though.

Known Issues:

• Depending on your hardware and mod setup, especially textures, you may get a performance drop in Freeside. With NMC's pack I got a 10-ish frame drop when looking at all the new stuff in one angle, but I didn't notice any real difference when looking around at things individually. If you can run NV at 60 FPS with no dips, you should be totally fine.
• Sometimes the new fluff NPCs might go to an idle marker another NPC normally uses; for example, someone might go stand in the spot where the Wrangler crier is and push her slightly. This is rare, brief, and doesn't actually break anything when it happens.
• Vast majority of props and buildings I've added are in unreachable or out-of-the-way places, so navigation issues are minimal - only noticed three happen in several hours of testing. If NPCs get stuck on a pole or something, they'll usually fix themselves very quickly.

Recommended/Compatible Mods:
Uncut Wasteland (and Uncut Extra Collection): Completely compatible. I recommend using VNV's merged version.
The Living Desert: Completely compatible and highly recommended.
Freeside East West Shortcut: Completely compatible and recommended if you don't use Freeside Open or an equivalent.
Extra Freeside Gates: Completely compatible and recommended if you don't use Freeside Open or an equivalent.
Functional Post-Game Ending: Probably compatible. I use it myself, but I've not actually beaten the game with it before, so I don't know firsthand all the changes it makes to Freeside. At worst there could be aesthetic conflicts and things will seem out of place (NPCs that shouldn't be there, object clipping, etc.), but functionally, it should work fine.
Mojave NPCs - Another Population Mod - Completely compatible and highly recommended if you have good specs.
Enhanced Vegas Ruins or Gutted Enhanced Vegas Ruins - Completely compatible and highly recommended. I use the full Enhanced Vegas Ruins version.


Other:
Simple Open Freeside: Compatible version available.
Outside Bets (and Rotface to Riches): Completely compatible, but make sure to get YUP's Outside Bets patch on its main download page. I recommend using just RtR.
Tammer's Vendors: Completely compatible, but I've run into a few bugs with the weapon/armor packs themselves.

Credits:
prodlimen - FLVJOD assets, used with permission.
SpeedyB64 - Speedy Resources (Viva Las Vegas addon)
Bobio567 - Old Vegas Resources (Viva Las Vegas addon)
augusto44417 - Freeside Review, which inspired me to make this.