Explore and drive trains on impressive routes with different environments, speeds, and types of services. Expand your platform with content and mods from the community! Use editors and tools to create new routes, activities, and trains according to your ideas and imagination.

In this simulation game you transport passengers and goods with different types of trains. Get to know different jobs in the railway industry such as long-distance traffic, local traffic, freight traffic, experimental train journeys and work in train formation: in different countries with their local peculiarities.

The application is designed for both beginners and professional users: Various driving modes allow higher and lower levels of realism in operational representation, train technology and physics. Simplified conditions up to automatic vehicle control and assistance with operation are possible. In the Learning Center you can learn how to control a train, its technology and operational procedures in the transport network.

Train Simulator NEXT provides the editors and tools required to create and edit routes, activities and build new trains. There are also video tutorials and a manual for developers. The new Train Simulator NEXT platform offers many functional elements in a fresh, modern environment and allows mods.

More about the simulation and its content can be found on the about the game page.

A new platform for the genre

Train Simulator NEXT uses its own game engine and modern principles in design and layout to polish the overall experience without creating more work for developers. The new platform impresses with high graphics quality, a technical up-to-date platform, super compactness, ease of use and expandability.

Instead of relying on outdated pixel-based solutions, the game engine of Train Simulator NEXT relies on ray tracing. This allows shadows to be calculated geometrically correctly and volumetric calculations to be considered their environment correctly. In the image, you can see a surface without texture or pre-baked auxiliary textures. The visible self-shading (ambient occlusion) is natural and correctly reflects the volumetric depth of the object.

The same applies to reflections, which work correctly for all image areas and viewing angles with ray tracing. Furthermore, light sources also cast shadows. This gives the viewer the full depth of a 3D space.

The loading times for textures and objects are significantly reduced by using DirectStorage technology. The program uses many technological approaches to avoid jerky loading and to enable fast loading times. Technically, around 7000 MB of throughput per second is currently possible.

Train Simulator NEXT can be easily expanded with new routes, trains, and assets. The data structure was designed to be easy to understand. More information about the platform and technology can be found here.

Editors and tools are included

The new platform will launch in 2025 with available editors and tools. Experienced users can use these additional tools for the simulation game to design their own tracks and develop their own vehicles.

The object editor is already available to interested parties: Preview versions for developers are available on Patreon.

Information about the editors and tools can be found on the about the technology page for the program. Additional tools such as the land data and route editor will follow for developers in June and October 2024.

Development plan

The full release is planned for 2025. This is the development roadmap:

Date	Milestone
December 2023	Announcement and access to the object editor.
March 2024	First information about the land data and route editor.
October 2024	First information about the driving simulator and track development. Possible start of an early access phase for those interested.
October 2025	Release of the simulation game with all editors.

As always, the development roadmap can change. We will do our best to keep the schedule.

The system requirements

For the simulation game to work, a computer must meet these requirements:

Component	Requirement	Recommendation
Operating System (OS)	Microsoft Windows 10 19H2 or newer	An up-to-date Microsoft Windows 11
Processor (CPU)	- Intel Processor of 4th Generation, or - AMD Ryzen Processor of 3rd generation	- Intel Core i7 4770K / 6700K is okay - Intel Core i5 11600 / 12600 / 13400 is okay - AMD Ryzen 5 3600X is good - AMD Ryzen 5 5700X / 7600X is good
Graphics Card (GPU)	- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2000 Serie or - AMD Radeon RX 6000 Serie - At least 16 GB video memory (VRAM)	- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB for Full-HD - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 for QHD - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 for 4K - AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT for QHD - AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX for 4K
Main memory (RAM)	- 16 GB or more - 64 GB for special tools	- 16 GB or more - 64 GB for special tools
Data storage	- 10 GB or more	- 10 GB or more
Monitor	Full-HD Monitor	- QHD or 4K Monitor - HDR compatible - Good Rec. 2020 color space support
More	- Mouse - Keyboard - 2.1 Sound system	- PCI Sound card - TrackIR (optional)

Train Simulator NEXT automatically adjusts the graphics quality depending on the hardware. Newer GPU generations are also supported and included in the configuration table. Otherwise, the set quality is based on the flagship model of the latest GPU generation.

To achieve the 16 GB of requested video memory, video memory can be combined with shared memory from the main memory. This is not recommended for performance reasons, but is technically possible.

Please note that these requirements are based on a future release date.