This is the home of OpenBVE, a license-free, open source, free of charge train driving simulator.

Screenshots

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:

1.11.2.1 Stable (2025-06-26)

Current News & Updates:

The OpenBVE Project

Significant Changes:

  • New: Implement delay values for the electric brake, which had been missed. Please see the following errata entry: https://github.com/leezer3/OpenBVE/wiki/Errata#electric-brake-delay
  • New: Allow the route map / gradient profile to be exported from the main menu.
  • New: Allow the package install directories to be browsed directly from the main menu.
  • New: Add Malaysian language file.
  • Hacks: Fix some badly formatted Chasanai downloads.
  • Hacks: Fix some object files using an invalid BVE2 relative texture path.
  • Hacks: Handle some route files using a relative train path.
  • Fix: Assorted fixes in the train.xml format.
  • Fix: Improve various stuff in the OBJ parsers.
  • Fix: The readhesion device could be stuck if it was active during a backwards jump.
  • Change: Use a more forceful exit / restart when running under Mono / Linux.

OpenBVE V1.8.3.1 has now been pushed to replace V1.8.3.0 This is a minor maintence release to correct two issues found since release.

Additional Changes

  • Fix: Attempting to customise a control with no action set in-game could crash.
  • Fix: A routefile with an empty train folder set failed to load with hacks enabled. (Introduced in 1,8.3.0)
The OpenBVE Project

Bugfix Release:

The SharpCompress library (internally used to handle package installation) was updated in 1.8.2.2

This unintentionally broke package installation on some machines.

No other interesting changes.

The OpenBVE Project

Significant Changes:

  • New: Implement some more properties into the CarXML format.
  • New: Allow BVE5 motor sounds to be loaded via CarXML.
  • Fix: Handle systems using KP_DECIMAL when using the SDL2 backend.
  • Fix: Improve the camera handling on route reset in Route Viewer.
  • Fix: EmissiveColorAll not working under certain circumstances.
  • Fix: Lighting change event could cause a visibility glitch.
  • Change: Implement various FreeBSD patches into the master tree.
The OpenBVE Project

Significant Changes:

  • New: Support Animated GIFs as textures.
  • Change: Improved behaviour of the AI driver on a steeply falling gradient.
  • Change: Reduced CPU mode removed from Route Viewer.
  • Change: Tune alignment of some in-game menus after introduction of the new GL3 main menu.
  • Fix: Transparency in the GL3 renderer was incorrectly taking into account lighting conditions.
  • Fix: Speed / acceleration incorrectly clamed to integer values in Object Viewer.
The OpenBVE Project

This release implements a new OpenGL menu for systems which cannot run the original Windows Form, such as 64-bit Apple. It also contains significant improvements to screen scaling on Retina displays, and has other internal changes to make the new renderer work correctly using GL3.1 forwards compatible contexts.

Significant Changes:

  • New: OpenGL based main menu for systems unable to run the original Windows Form- Restores compatability with Apple systems running Mojave and above.
  • New: Support Densha DeGo! Zuki controller, improve support for some others (MarcRiera)
  • New: Add Lighting Change events to allow the light model to be altered over the course of a route.
  • New: Add hour, minute and second variables to animated files.
  • Change: GL3 now uses a forward compatible context, and works correctly on Apple.
  • Change: Switch font used on Apple, should give a much better set of Unicode glyphs.
  • Fix: Positional bug in CarXMLConvertor (some converted sounds were being placed incorrectly versus their original hard-coded position).
  • Fix: Improved scaling on Retina displays and others with a non-standard DPI.
  • Fix: Handle the case where a driver reports it supports GL3 features, but crashes when they are requested.
  • Fix: Limit the possible CoefficientOfStaticFriction value when hacks are enabled- Fixes certain BVE2 trains.
  • Fix: Stop certain Win32 plugins crashing when the game is paused for 20+ mins.
  • Fix: Issue with PlayerTrain variable when placed as a FreeObj