This is the home of
OpenBVE, a license-free, open source, free of charge train driving simulator.
This program includes detailed per-car simulation of the brake systems, friction, air resistance, toppling and more. In 3D cabs, the driving experience is augmented with forces that shake your simulated body upon acceleration and braking, as well as in curves. Besides that, OpenBVE features a 3D positional sound system best enjoyed with surround speakers, train exteriors and timetables for the current run. Finally, via the main menu, routes and trains be easily selected to start a new session, the controls can be configured to keyboard or joystick devices, and a variety of options can be selected.
Compared to other simulators of the genre, especially compared to commercial games, OpenBVE has its main focus on realism, not necessarily on user-friendliness. You should be willing to study operational manuals for the routes and trains you want to drive, and will in many cases not get along by just memorizing a few keystrokes. If you can identify with this focus, OpenBVE might be the right simulator for you.
Latest Stable Release:
1.13.0.2 Stable (2026-05-14)
Current News & Updates:
g—
layout: post
title: OpenBVE v1.13.0.2
description: “OpenBVE v1.13.0.2”
modified: 2026-05-14
tags: [welcome]
categories: [intro]
—
This release contains a major step forwards in graphics capabilities, thanks to Aditiya Afrizal- Shadow effects.
Shadow effects may currently be controlled globally through a new options page.
Please note that results will vary, depending on the way any given route has been constructed, and the lighting setup it uses.
Significant Changes:
- New: Add shadow effects. (Aditiya Afrizal)
- New: Allow the clip-distance to be configurable. (Aditiya Afrizal)
- New: Add the CameraCar animated instruction.
- New: Handle Intel DVI ADPCM and GSM-610 format WAV files.
- New: Add optional smooth camera transition effects, when switching between views. (Aditiya Afrizal)
- Change: Assorted improvements to the wavefront object parsers.
- Change: Set the specular lighting color from the X object parsers.
- Change: Improved the GL main menu on non-standard DPI.
- Change: Improved the behaviour of menus when the game window is resized.
- Change: Aspect value of 0 is also accepted as a 2-aspect R/G signal in CSV files with hacks enabled. (BVE2 accepts this)
- Change: Implement BVE2 panel.cfg transparency mask- Please see the following errata entry for further details.
- Change: Implement the BVE5 black clear color- Helps with some routes which use this to hide things.
- Change: Improvements to Bve5_Parsing library.
- Change: Bump SharpCompress version
- Compatability: Add UchiboX objects to database.
- Compatability: Update route patch database.
- Fix: XML door sounds missing in cars other than the driver car.
- Fix: XML motor sounds not quite right (again…)
- Fix: XML couplers not parsed right.
- Fix: Physics issue with couplers where Minimum == Maximium
- Fix: Bug with BVE5 routes using interpolation in the first block.
- Fix: Improve handling of some BMP files containing an undeclared color table.
- Fix: Pressing and holding the R key kept toggling the renderer type indefinitely.
- Fix: Typo in TE2 exported coupling behaviour.
- Fix: Route map creation moved to the main GDI Plus lock.
- Fix: The AI driver could get stuck with extremely close signal / station spacing.
Significant Changes:
- New: Impliment an auto-reload feature for Object Viewer (Aditiya Afrizal)
- Change: Textures which declare an unused transparent color will no longer get an unnecessary alpha channel.
- Change: The ACE parser will no longer add an unnecessary alpha channel to textures which don’t contain one.
- Change: File lists in OpenGL menus are deliberately sorted alphabetically.
- Fix: Nighttime textures missing. (Copy + paste error when implementing Loksim transparency bitmaps in 1.12.1.2)
- Fix: Remove a couple of errant return statements from the new CarXML parser.
- Fix: Correct decoding for monochrome bitmaps containing an undeclared color pallette.
- Fix: Camera zoom could get stuck at minimum or maximum (Aditiya Afrizal)
- Fix: CarXMLConvertor duplicating power curves on second conversion.
Significant Changes:
- New: Add input plugin for Kato ECS-1 controller. (MarcRiera)
- Change: Most XML parsers converted to block format.
- Change: Update routefile compatability database.
- Change: Update id-ID translation (Aditiya Afrizal)
- Change: Update se-SE translation. (Daniel Nylander)
- Change: Improve visibility updates for animated objects using translation in the Z-axis.
- Change: Improve error messages for missing objects etc. in BVE5 routes.
- Change: Set BVETSHacks after a BVE5 route is loaded, so that any relevant train specific fixes are used.
- Change: Some improvements to Loksim3D object parsing.
- Fix: Issue with couplers in CarXML Convertor.
- Fix: Some sounds missing in BVE5 routes.
- Fix: Pantograph animations in MSTS models should be case invariant.
Significant Changes:
- New: Add $ElseIf command for CSV routes.
- New: Add MotorBrakeNotch property for XML trains.
- MSTS: Handle Pantograph1 animations with suffix.
- MSTS: Implement some variants on the line voltage display.
- MSTS: Fix some content with the brakes stuck on.
- MSTS: Better handling for some comments and non-standard number formating.
- Compability: Update routefile hacks database.
- Fix: Preserve the compatible transparent mode when extracting a texture clip region. (Fixes handle images on some BVE2 panels)
- Fix: Couple of issues in CarXMLConverter since converting to block format
Significant Changes:
- Fix: BVE5 TFO externals missing.
- Fix: Incorrect Y-axis interpolation in some BVE5 routes.
- Fix: Using the headlights key with no sound defined crashed.
- Change: Speedups and improvements in Wavefront OBJ parsers.
- MSTS: Basic implementation of various panel controls and exterior bits, related to steam engines. (No physics at present)
- MSTS: Fix issue when using two different consists as TFOs.
