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▪ openBVE Help and Information

This section of the site is designed to help you get started with the realistic openBVE train simulator in Windows (XP, Vista, 7) and Ubuntu 10.04, as well as guide you through the installation and first use of the Birmingham Cross-City South route to enable you to start driving. Some parts of this guide are geared towards novice users.

▪ Contents

Windows Users: [Click here to select a different operating system]

Page 1:

• Preparing folders for your openBVE installation and add-ons →
• Working with archive files →
• Downloading and extracting openBVE →
• Installing OpenGL graphics drivers →
• Installing East Asian Language Support and Unicode Fonts (optional, but recommended) →

Page 2: (Current Page)

• Installing the Birmingham Cross-City South and Class 323 EMU ↓
• Starting openBVE ↓
• The in-game interface ↓
• Keyboard Commands (openBVE defaults, and class 323 specific) ↓
• openBVE options and recommended settings ↓
• Driving the Cross-City South ↓

Page 3:

• Display quality - Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering →
• Setting Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering Options - NVIDIA Users →
• Setting Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering Opttions - ATI Users →

▪ Installing the Birmingham Cross-City South and Class 323 EMU

You're now ready to download the Birmingham Cross-City South route from this site, along with the class 323 EMU from Trainsimcentral.

Open this link to the Cross-City South download page in a new tab, so you can continue reading this page in this tab.



Next, locate the two files you've just downloaded, and follow these steps to extract them to your openBVE content folder:



Next, we need to install the Unrefurbished Class 323 EMU:



And finally...

▪ Starting openBVE

You're now ready to launch the program. Double click the desktop shortcut you created earlier, and you'll be presented with with openBVE 'Start new game' window:



Next, double click the "Up one level" icon ('..') in the route selection Browse tab. You'll see the contents of the parent directory. If you've followed all the instructions and my recommendations so far, then you'll see your "openBVE Content" folder; double click this, and then the 'Railway', 'Route', 'Birmingham_Cross-City_South_openBVE', 'Day' folders in turn.

Note: If your 'openBVE' folder and your 'openBVE Content' folder reside on seperate partitions or hard disks, you'll need to manually type in the drive letter where your content is stored, in order to change drives; e.g. 'C:\'.

You should be presented with a list of *.csv files; single-click on one of them, and you should see the following:



If you click on a route which doesn't also have it's default train installed, then you may see an error in the Train section, stating that a train this route uses, cannot be found. If this happens, then in the Train section of the form, click the Browse tab, and a second file and folder browser is revealed--repeat the process you went through to locate a route file before, but this time, select the 'openBVE Content' folder, then the 'Train' folder instead. You'll see available trains listed here. Single click on a train you wish to drive:


Note the "Mode of driving" drop-down box at the bottom of the screen, in the Start section. Here, you can select between Arcade, Normal or Expert modes. Each mode offers differing levels of on-screen assistance and information, and for most users, I'd recommend the Normal mode be chosen. Please see the Driving Modes section of the openBVE website for more information.

At this stage, you can also optionally review the route you're about to drive, by clicking the Map and Gradient Profile tabs:


You can now choose to start openBVE by clicking the Start button at the bottom right of openBVE's window, and the openBVE loading window will appear. After a few seconds, you should find yourself sitting in the cab of the class 323 EMU, waiting for departure at Redditch... If you don't know what to do now, please read on.

▪ The in-game interface

openBVE includes various in-game elements which relay information to the user, which are shown in the screenshot below (please note, that the door indicators and stopping indicator wouldn't normally be visible simultaneously, and the security system indicators which can appear in the lower right of the window, are only displayed when using trains which don't use a plugin DLL):


Note: Some interface elements are only shown in certain driving modes, known as Arcade, Normal, and Expert. Please see this page on the openBVE website for more information.



openBVE's in-game menu can be accessed by pressing the Escape key:


Here, you can jump to other stations en-route, exit the current game and return to the main menu to load another route and train, or quit openBVE. To choose a menu item, use the 'Up' and 'Down Arrow' keys. To select an option, press the 'Enter' key. To go back up a level in the menu hierarchy, press the 'Escape' key.

▪ Keyboard Commands (openBVE defaults, and class 323 specific)

For a full list of keyboard commands, please see the Default Keyboard Assignments page on the openBVE website:http://openbve.trainsimcentral.co.uk/use/keyboard.html. But to get you started, here are the key's you will use most often when using openBVE with the Class 323 EMU:


Train Controls (including combined power/brake handle):



Power Handle:

Reverser:

Door Controls:

Horn Controls:


Camera and View Controls



Camera view selection:

Points of Interest:

Camera positioning and zooming:


Security System and Miscellaneous Controls (via plugin DLL):



Main in-cab system controls (via plugin DLL):

Miscellaneous Controls (via plugin DLL):


Other openBVE Keyboard Assignments:



In-game Menu Navigation:

Miscellaneous openBVE Simulator Commands:
Other Commands:

▪ openBVE options and recommended settings

There are various options you can set, to alter openBVE's rendering quality, sound capabilities, control configuration, and simulation features. Clicking the Options button on the left, brings up the following view:



Most of the settings should be self-explanatory, but here are a few tips:

In openBVE, you can set any arbitrary display resolution, which can be handy, especially in Windowed mode. However, for fullscreen mode, and if you use a TFT monitor in particular, you'll probably just want openBVE to run at the native resolution of your monitor. Some common display resolutions in use today are as follows (please check the capabilities of your monitor to determine which are suitable for your hardware though):



openBVE features various options for image quality. Personally, I recommend the following:



If your computer or graphics card is too slow for Smooth transparency to be used, then Bilinear interpolation is good for routes which rely heavily on transparent textures, such as routes with texture-based catenary, fencing, or lots of trees and vegetation. However, you may find the graphical quality to be a little too "noisy" or "grainy", which will be particularly visible on the track and ballast. If this bothers you, then you can select one of the mipmapping options instead. The Trilinear and Anisotropic Filtering options in particular, will produce some very nicely smoothed textures, however you may find that catenary, chain-link fences, and other such transparency-based objects, don't become visible until they're quite close to the camera. You'll just need to decide whether good looking track and scenery textures, or better looking transparent textures, are more important to you. Setting the Transparency option to Smooth resolves this issue.

The Motion blur option is simply good fun, so give it a try and enjoy. :)

I personally recommend you leave the Viewing Distance set to 600 metres. Some routes, like my own, may be designed with this viewing distance in mind, for performance reasons for example. If you have a slower computer, then reducing the viewing distance may yield higher framerates. As ever, just experiment. :)

I set the Sound Effective Range option to High, and the Number of allowed sounds to 32. If you find that some sounds aren't being played while in-game, you might want to lower these settings and see if an improvement is noticed.

▪ Driving the Cross-City South

Now that openBVE, the Cross-City South and the class 323 are installed, and you're more familiar with openBVE's interface and options, you might want to learn a little about how to drive the route; for example, interpreting lineside signs correctly, responding to safety system warnings, or recreating a realistic driving experience. Please read the Class 323 and Cross-City South Tutorial for openBVE if this is the case, or you can continue to the next page and read about setting anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering via your graphics card's drivers.