Table of contents
Installing Simutrans
For Simutrans to work, you will need two components: the Application and one or more Graphics Set, which in Simutrans we call “paksets”. Remember this from now on. Without a pakset, Simutrans won’t work, because it is the “visualization” of the game. Recommended Installation
Windows
The recommended installation method is to use the Online installer
Linux
Linux users should be able to find Simutrans on their distribution repositories. The version may be outdated but should still works with the paksets “pak64”, “pak128” & “pak128.britain”. Alternatively, the non-official Simutrans repository, with more recent versions of Simutrans, can be used:- rpm-Repository
(Tested on Fedora 18 & 24)
- deb-Repository (Tested on Ubuntu 16/18/20 & Linux Mint 19.x)
- AUR packages
for Arch Linux & Manjaro users
- /usr/share/simutrans - if you installed it from the official repository (you need to make it writeable for you)
- /usr/share/games/simutrans - in some distributions (you need to make it writeable for you)
- ~/.local/share/simutrans/ - if you installed it from AUR
Note: If after opening a pakset you don’t hear any music, check No MIDI Music (Linux).
Manual installation
The Application
There are 4 possible options to download Simutrans:- Official Homepage: www.simutrans.com
- Forum: Download Simutrans Forum
- Sourceforge: SourceForge Simutrans Download
- Windows file: simuwin
- Mac file: simumac (May require additional files. See below.)
- Linux file: simulinux (May require additional files. See below.)
- Steam: Steam Simutrans
The paksets
There are a lot of different paksets, but you need only one installed to play Simutrans. You can download paksets from the script included in the zip file of from the following sources:- Official Homepage: www.simutrans.com
- Forum: Download Simutrans Forum
(Click on the most recent release to see the paksets download links)
- Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/simutrans/files/
There are different graphic sizes and resolutions available. A higher number means more pixels per tile.
To start with Simutrans, we recommend the basic pakset “pak64” or “pak128.german”. Whereby the former has a slightly “higher” degree of difficulty.
For a full list of paksets, chech the paksets page

Installation
- Unzip the .zip folder. You will get a folder named “simutrans”
- Copy the pakset folder into the simutrans folder or use the included script to get paksets if you haven’t already
- Windows: download-paksets.exe
- Linux: get_pak.sh
- Start the application and select (if you have several installed) the pakset you want to play with.
- Windows: simutrans.exe
- Linux: simutrans (you may need to give execution permissions first with ‘chmod +x simutrans’)
System requirements
Simutrans runs on all computers (x86-64, x86-32, ARM-32, ARM-64) that have been sold since 2004 and run Windows (95 - Windows 10), Linux, BeOS/Zeta, FreeBSD or MAC OS X 10.8 operating systems. Simutrans runs also on Apple with a PowerPC processor. If Simutrans doesn’t offer a compiled binary for your system, you may want to compile Simutrans on your system
Minimum requirements
- CPU step: 500 MHz
- RAM: 512 MB
- Grafic card: 16 Bit SVGA
- Resolution: 800x600
Recommended requirements
- CPU step: 2 GHz (multi-core CPU can improve Simutrans’ performance)
- RAM: 4 GB ( Cards up to 2000x2000 )
- 8 GB ( Cards with more than 2000x2000 )
- Graphics card: 32 Bit True Color
- Resolution: 1280x1024
Required disk space
- 64 paksets
- HD: 50 MB
- 128 paksets
- HD: 120 MB (pak128.cz)
- HD: 280 MB (pak128.german, pak128.japan, pak128.britain)
- HD: 500 MB (pak128)
- 192 paksets (pak192.comic)
- HD: 380 MB
Additional Information
Nightly releases
Nightly releases are Simutrans versions that are compiled everyday from the current Simutrans source code. Nightly versions are avilable at GitHub Nightly Releases
Arch Linux / Manjaro users may also want to install simutrans-nightly

IMPORTANT: Nightly releases are not tested and could contain critical bugs. If you are afraid of losing your savegame, please use a stable version.
No MIDI music (Linux)
It could be the case that Simutrans doesn’t properly play music. If that is happening to you, follow these steps:- Run a Simutrans version compiled with sdl2_mixer. If your distribution doesn’t ship such version, you may compile it yourself
.
- Install fluidsynth and a MIDI soundfont from your package manager.
- Open Simutrans with the SDL_SOUNDFONTS=/path/to/soundfont variable set. Example:
SDL_SOUNDFONTS=/usr/share/soundfonts/FluidR3_GM.sf2 simutrans
Now music should work, but it may slow down the startup significantly.
Running Simutrans on Wayland (Linux)
You will need an SDL2/SDL2_Mixer version of Simutrans (which should be the default, as SDL1 is deprecated). To force Simutrans to run on the Wayland driver instead of the X11 one, run Simutrans as follow:SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland simutrans
Keep in mind that SDL support for Wayland is still in early phase, so it could lead to some unexpected issues
More Information follows later...
-(required Driver for Mac/Linux)
-(Intel/ppc with Mac)
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