How long have you been using BVE?

I now feel quite old...

I've just worked out that I've been using BVE on and off for around 12 years, I discovered it a couple of years before leaving School 10 years ago. 

The community has had it's ups and downs, websites, developers and forums have come and gone but BVE is still here.

I'm now 27 work full time and have a 15 month old son, so I'm lucky if I get a hour every couple of weeks to have a play with BVE!

Here's to the next 12 years!

How long have you been using BVE?

Hard to tell... About six to eight years. I got a laptop as a present for my A levels in 2009 and LokSim3D didn't run on it (about 3 FPS, it was an Acer with onboard graphics and LS3D didn't like that). I stumbled upon OpenBVE relatively quickly after that (which ran rather smoothely), but don't pin me down on what "relatively quickly" means... Could be two weeks, could be two years. Though I'm rather sure it was less than a year.

I think I'm probably one of the last remaining who was there at the beginning....

First PC-based sim was Mechanik under DOS, and I remember the original versions of BVE and the original logo:


Original board was (probably) Crotrainz, although I might have been somewhere else on email prior to that 
I feel old......

May be you are not the only one...

Next Christmas 17 years will be for me...

Review of BVE downloaded by me from Vern's Rail Pages on 12/18/2000.
http://web.tiscali.it/lcartello/misc/BVE-review.doc
BVE version 1.225 was been released 14 days before, on 11/28/2000.
Although still with the Japanese interface, this had been the first version of BVE that could be installed and work without a Japanese version of Windows.

I think 12 years and 6 months. I started with Polish Mechanik.

2005 I think.  Over tea break at work....

I found OpenBVE late in 2012 after using OpenTTD for a while. So it has been almost 5 years for myself which is relatively recent but has felt it been quite a while. Very soon after finding the sim I fiddled with route building and made a very basic route. For the last 2 years I been working on my WIP route though I have often too been short on time to make as much progress as I would have liked.

tof63 wrote:May be you are not the only one...

Next Christmas 17 years will be for me...

Review of BVE downloaded by me from Vern's Rail Pages on 12/18/2000.
http://web.tiscali.it/lcartello/misc/BVE-review.doc
BVE version 1.225 was been released 14 days before, on 11/28/2000.
Although still with the Japanese interface, this had been the first version of BVE that could be installed and work without a Japanese version of Windows.

 Old names, not seen you about here so much lately 

Incidentally, thanks:
I've just been digging through some of my really old stuff after you linked that document (Oh, the memories.....), and whilst the original Uchibo route for BVE1 runs near perfectly under openBVE, some BVE1 train.dat files seem to be very marginally different.

Will investigate and fix that little issue.
https://github.com/leezer3/OpenBVE/issues/199

Edit:
And another one, many of the 2000 era routes are referring to the Uchibo V1 objects. Will add these to the compatibility manager.
https://github.com/leezer3/OpenBVE/issues/200

I didn't know BVE had been around for so long!

I found BVE after stumbling across Coxsters site while.

I think I first noticed references to it on the web around early 2008. The PC I used back then wouldn't run "OpenBVE", only BVE4 - because the graphics weren't up to the job. I probably obtained OpenBVE by the end of 2009 and began making my own material by 2010, so that's approximately ten years of BVE experience.

leezer3 wrote:I think I'm probably one of the last remaining who was there at the beginning....

First PC-based sim was Mechanik under DOS, and I remember the original versions of BVE and the original logo:


Original board was (probably) Crotrainz, although I might have been somewhere else on email prior to that 
I feel old......

  I wish i was old enough to experience the beginning, probably was fun. (although I have a line dated march '01 that I made myself, including the train)

'05'er here, 12 years ago... From a CD full of freeware simulators... It actually shaped me a little bit (I'm 19 right now), steering me towards Japan, and the oh the Chuo Line, the Ginza Line, the Hanzomon Line, the Keikyu + Toei Asakusa + Keisei lines... Nothern Line, the DLR, the classic Tanigumi Line and Iida Line, Bve Brasil's line...
It hurts to see us the focus so hard on Open, LS3D, TS201X and the like that are huge, sandbox-y, and/or unnecessarily complex simulators but deep down in the heart, it feels good that BVE is thriving in its homeland.

I've been in BVE since about 2004, so that's more than 13 years. As a train fan, I tried to find a good game and found MSTS, which was quite troublesome, so I moved on to BVE. Then a Hungarian guy, IST started an online BVE routebuilding course and I joined in. Then I started building objects and routes, and later the bveklub.hu website. Then came OpenBVE and it was a lot of work to fix all the routes and trains on the site (transparency issues, low resolution textures, and the like). Then routes started to be better and better with higher resolution textures and more details and I started to make sort-of one and a half new routes that look okay in this modern world too, but haven't got as far as releasing them as of yet, just a couple of pictures and videos. I haven't stopped working on them, of course!

By the way, good to see you here again, Luigi!

I've been involved with BVE for 15 years or so, and i can run all versions on my computer. still making routes.

I started playing 15 years ago and developing 11 years ago.