Train Sim World® VR: New York Arrives On Meta Quest Today

This is a Harlem-bound express train. Next stop, Train Sim World® VR: New York.

Yes, the beloved Train Sim World series makes its debut in VR today. Drive the famed Harlem Line from Grand Central Station in the heart of Manhattan to the outskirts of New York City in this one-to-one recreation of the world-famous commuter line. Work your way through the Career mode to perfect your conductor skills (and get a chance to blow the horn at people), or kick back and relax in Journey mode to explore stations on foot and admire the love and care that developers Dovetail Games and Just Add Water put into each and every detail.

We caught up with Train Sim World® VR: New York Executive Producer Matt Peddlesden to chat about working with New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), what makes the Harlem Line a perfect debut for VR, and what's involved in recreating a route faithfully.

Head on over to the Meta Horizon Store to pick up Train Sim World® VR: New York or read on for the full interview.

Matt Peddlesden: We work with a lot of real-world train operators and are constantly reaching out to organizations to see what they think about their brands being represented in the games we make. We have had an excellent partnership with MTA now for many years and through this produced several products in our Train Sim Classic and Train Sim World simulators and now in our new Train Sim World VR title. Across those various sims, we’ve covered several different MTA railroads including the Hudson Line and Long Island Railroad, as well as the Harlem Line.

I do want to take this opportunity to shout out our amazing licensing department, who look after our partners and make sure they are represented in our internal discussions as well as sharing what our goals are with them. Getting approvals can be a challenging and time-consuming process but it’s what allows us to recreate the real-world in the simulators!

MTA have also been brilliant throughout this process, providing feedback along the way and helping make sure that Train Sim World VR works as well for them as it does for us and our players.

MP: When we were considering the possible routes to make, we looked at the country first and decided very early on that the best place for our first VR sim on Quest had to be a US route because of how many VR players are in the US. We then spent time considering the gameplay experiences that best fit on the Quest. The benefits of not having any cables are amazing, but it does mean that you need to pay attention to battery life.

The challenge then is that often US rail routes end up being long, winding freight routes that are multiple hours in length from end to end. We wanted players to have as comfortable a gaming experience as possible while wearing a headset, so many might not be happy wearing it for hours at a time! This type of route also requires huge amounts of processing power to manage all the physics, so we needed to make sure to avoid that.

We settled on the route needing to be an urban commuter line and MTA’s New York commuter routes like the Harlem Line, Hudson Line and Long Island Railroad lend themselves to these requirements.

Of those, we have always really liked the experience you get on the Harlem Line. You go from the underground Grand Central Terminal to an elevated line, cut through the center of New York in the middle of all those huge, towering buildings, and then a bit later you’re essentially out in the countryside. It’s great variety, and at around 29 miles it felt like a good first map to try and create on Quest. We also have the advantage of having already built it on Unreal Engine for our Train Sim World franchise, so all the reference and research was already done.

MP: Harlem Line is created at a 1:1 scale size, meaning if the journey takes 30 minutes in real life, it takes 30 minutes to do in the game at the same speeds. While the scenery is of course somewhat simplified to allow it to all fit and run at a good framerate, you will find all the key landmarks there—bridges, rivers, key buildings, and so forth. The stations are where they should be and modeled quite closely to the real places along with the surrounding scenery. All the track is set out close to, if not identical, to the real track as well.

MP: This is just for fun. Train Sim World VR is designed from the outset to be an entertaining game with many key systems not simulated because they are complex and require a lot of training to use.

Our goal is to create a fun experience that lets everyone enjoy it, whether they’re an existing Train Sim World player, a hardcore enthusiast, or completely new to train simulations. We’ve added some fun extra mechanics such as getting points for sounding your horn at maintenance workers on the track nearby, and trying to manage your speed carefully within speed gates—things that aren’t true to reality, but make the experience a lot more entertaining.

MP: As you go through the Career mode, you’re going to drive two different trains along various stretches of the Harlem Line. Sometimes you might only have to make a couple of stops, sometimes more. You’ll be trying to get the best score and get an overall grade at the end. Did you react quickly enough to blowing your horn at the engineers? Did you give the railfans a blast of the horn too? How efficient were your stops and time keeping?

There are lots of things to keep you on your toes when aiming to get the best scores. You’ll be encouraged to go back and replay sections and improve those scores too because, let’s be honest, who wants a few As when most of their scores are graded S? And don’t even talk to me about that one B on my card…

There’s so much more beyond the Career mode, too. As you progress through the Career you’ll unlock more things to do in the Journey mode—a different set of driving challenges that are a bit more relaxed, some of which are much longer. You’ll unlock stations to spawn at on-foot and explore, riding trains as a passenger, taking photographs for your photo album, and finding collectables that you can show off in the apartment that you return to between challenges.

There’s lots to do and explore on the Harlem Line.

MP: This is very much about getting feedback from players. It’s our first launch on VR and we have spent a lot of time trying to come up with the experience we think will work best on Quest, so we want to hear from players to find out what they liked and what they want us to do differently or improve on in any future releases.

We don’t have any specific plans at the moment—there are a number of directions it could go in the future, but the most important thing is to make sure we’re listening to the players and bringing them along for the ride.

MP: I’ve been an absolute avid fan of VR since the early days of the Oculus DK1 and almost every headset that’s released since then, so for me, personally, I’m incredibly proud that we’ve been able to get our first VR release out to players and bring a VR train simulation to the Quest platform.

Lastly, thank you to all those who give the game a go, I hope you have a great time!

Stand clear of the closing doors, please! Train Sim World® VR: New York is available now on the Meta Horizon Store.