FWsim - Fireworks Display Simulator

Released: Nov 3, 2023
Platforms
Last updated: 14 Sep 2026, 02:56 GMT

Updates & announcements

20 posts

08 Sep 2026Developer post
v4.4.2 - Massive Effect Editor Upgrade, plus improved performance
FWsim 4.4.2 is rolling out on Steam now. This one is all about the effect editor, plus a speed boost that everyone gets without touching a single setting. Faster out of the box Accelerated Rendering is now on by default. Same visual quality, noticeably faster, and easier on lapto
FWsim 4.4.2 is rolling out on Steam now. This one is all about the effect editor, plus a speed boost that everyone gets without touching a single setting.
Faster out of the box
Accelerated Rendering is now on by default. Same visual quality, noticeably faster, and easier on laptop batteries. It works on NVidia and AMD dedicated graphics cards, and you can switch it off under Preferences > Graphics if you prefer.
Mortar sparks and launch flames re-tuned: denser, finer mortar sparks, and launch flames that are smaller overall and grow with the caliber.
Effect Editor: build better effects, faster
Stars Editor redesigned. Settings are grouped into clear boxes, so you scroll less and find things faster.
Multi-colour stars. Ctrl+click in the colour grid to give one set of stars several colours at once. The stars are split evenly among the selected colours.
Seven new star shapes: Star, Bow Tie, Snail, Parallel Rings, Circle Diadem, Sphere Diadem and Pillar Mine. The Ring shape gets a new Arc setting for half and quarter rings.
Rotate star shapes in two dimensions (X and Y), so you can cross two copies of a shape.
Camera control. Fly around your effect with the mouse, just like the fly-around camera in the show editor.
Scattering Stars: a new two-star opposite-pair crossette. Crossettes now keep their four-arm cross shape intact.
More control over tails and crackling. New Modify Gravity and Gravity Variance sliders on tail and ascent effect components, crackling inside a tail can be adjusted right where you use it, and custom crackling gets percentage sliders for duration, size, density and speed.
Custom shapes (lancework). Right-click the shape square to load a ready-made shape from an image file (PNG, BMP, GIF, JPG) or recolour the whole shape in one go.
Cake editor: new actions "Change Quantity of selected Effects" and "Fill up to a number of shots". The cake node now shows its duration both ways, from first to last shot and from first shot to burnout.
Fixed: mines with a Farfalle, Tourbillon or Whistle had no launch sparks.
Fixed: motorized star tails on fountains and mines got the wrong spark count.
Fixed: playback did not pause correctly past the end of the animation.
Show editor and video
Video export keeps running while your computer is locked. Locking, Alt+Tab and display mode changes no longer interrupt playback, and FWsim recovers after a graphics driver reset.
Fixed: an effect could stay on screen forever (the "ghost effect") after its cue was moved away from under the stopped playback cursor.
Fixed: a dragged item could get stuck to the mouse when another window took the focus mid-drag.
Effect library: the type filter has a fixed order, and search no longer matches inside links and scripts.
The update installs automatically through Steam. Have fun, and show us what you build!
The full changelog for all editions is at fwsim.com/updates-v4.php.
Original post
15 Jun 2026Developer post
FWsim 4.4 - Motorized Stars, Better Performance, and new effects features
Check out update 4.4! Here's what's new: ⭐ Graphics improvements More realistic appearance of stars Accelerated Rendering (Settings → Graphics) — runs much faster and uses less battery at the same visual quality. Available on NVidia and AMD dedicated graphics cards. Even without
Check out update 4.4! Here's what's new:
⭐ Graphics improvements
More realistic appearance of stars
Accelerated Rendering (Settings → Graphics) — runs much faster and uses less battery at the same visual quality. Available on NVidia and AMD dedicated graphics cards.
Even without accelerated rendering, this new update should be faster on all systems.
More realistic water reflections
✨ Effects Improvements
Stars and Ascent Effects
Motorized Stars (go-getters / bees / fish) now available. Just enable “Motorized” on the stars and play around with the parameters
Star size is now a continuous slider (1–100%) instead of fixed sizes. Old effects are migrated automatically and look the same.
Stars and Sparks are now separate modes
Ascent stars now support all 5 strobe types (Regular, Pulsar, Twinkle, Flash, Fade).
Whistles, Tourbillons & Farfalle
Those are now much richer and more realistic out of the box.
New “Maintain Start Width Until” slider controls how long the spiral stays narrow before widening.
Bugfix: Shells containing only whistles/tourbillons/farfalle now get launch sparks on the way up
Fountains & Bengal Flames
Fountains (built via “Eruption” in the effect editor) got a Cooldown Time slider, mirroring the existing Warmup Time.
Bengal flames got both Warmup and Cooldown sliders, and all strobe types.
Tails & Sparks
Thickness slider now goes up to 1000% (was 200%) for really fat tails.
New “Whistle (sound only)” checkbox — plays a whistle sound timed to the tail.
New “Particle Size” slider (25–400%) on custom tail and ascent-effect components.
Tighter mortar liftoff — the automatic launch sparks for comets and mines are sparser and shorter-lived.
Shell Rotation (Manual)
New “Start Width” and “Maintain Start Width” sliders — ascent tails can start tight and gradually widen.
Effect Editor
Type-to-search in the “Add Component” and “Replace this” dropdowns.
Editing parameters (e.g. color) no longer makes the star pattern jump around.
Cake Editor
New “Change all Pause timings” action — set every pause in a part in one go.
🎬 Show Editor
When you F2-edit a cue, the effect selection window keeps its filters.
Zoom in the music beat configuration popup
Standard Camera removed - its now auto-replaced with the Fly-around-camera.
Removed a rarely used setting on “Automatic heights and delays” in the Preferences. If you previously had this set to “Old model (before June 2025)”, some timings of effects will now be slightly different.
Original post
16 Sep 2025Developer post
Massive Performance Improvement
In this update: Better performance when editing your show, especially on large shows with many cues New option: “Reverse Order on Timeline” (CTRL + SHIFT + R). Use this when you make a stepper out of single cues and you want to reverse the order. The timeline now looks much bette
In this update:

Better performance when editing your show, especially on large shows with many cues
New option: “Reverse Order on Timeline” (CTRL + SHIFT + R). Use this when you make a stepper out of single cues and you want to reverse the order.
The timeline now looks much better when you zoom out very far. Your show will look cleaner and it’s easier to make edits even at extreme zoom levels.
Better thumbnail images
Original post
01 Jul 2025Developer post
FWsim 4.1.1 - Show Editing is now much faster
Exciting news! You can now select your favorite effects and then insert them with just one click. This massively speeds up the show design process, so you can focus on your creativity. Furthermore: Press TAB key to jump forwards to the next beat in the music When you move the pla
Exciting news!
You can now select your favorite effects and then insert them with just one click. This massively speeds up the show design process, so you can focus on your creativity.
Furthermore:
Press TAB key to jump forwards to the next beat in the music
When you move the playback cursor, it snaps to beats in the music and to existing cues on the timeline.
You might have two cues overlap in the timeline by accident. If that happens, FWsim will make them transparent.
Effect lines now indicate the actual height of the effect for shells.
Give it a try and let us know how it works for you!
Original post
16 Jun 2025Developer post
FWsim 4.1 with Automatic Beat Detection
Hi everyone! Exciting news: This is FWsim 4.1. Automatic detection of beats Real location downloading is more stable and faster. New star size: XXS
Hi everyone!
Exciting news: This is FWsim 4.1.
Watch on YouTube

Automatic detection of beats
Real location downloading is more stable and faster.
New star size: XXS
Original post
26 Mar 2025Developer post
FWsim - Update 4.0.1.5
Fix: FWsim now always uses your high-performance graphics card (instead of onboard graphics) Several bugfixes Performance improvements Updated Italian, Spanish and French translations. You can contribute to FWsim translations by clicking the Help menu. FWsim now displays a correc
Fix: FWsim now always uses your high-performance graphics card (instead of onboard graphics)
Several bugfixes
Performance improvements
Updated Italian, Spanish and French translations. You can contribute to FWsim translations by clicking the Help menu.
FWsim now displays a correct waveform if you load 24-bit audio files.
Original post
19 Jan 2025Developer post
Announcing FWsim v4
With FWsim v4, planning your shows is now much faster & easier! Show Editor Improvements ➜ Better display of positions, with 3D cylinders - so you can better see where the positions actually are in 3D space ➜ Put steppers through multiple positions (this allows you, for examp
13 Sep 2024Developer post
Create better 3D worlds with the Water Removal Tool
Hi FWsim fans! In 2023, we added a feature to load Google Earth 3D scenery into FWsim (avabile under Show -> Scenery -> "Real Location"). We also added a water system, allowing you to add water to the scenery (available under Show -> Scenery). Usually, this works really
15 May 2024Developer post
New Crackling Types, Strobing Ascent Effects
Popping Flowers (Crackling) can now be adjusted in a much more granular way Ascent Effects can now have strobing 57 different kinds of crackling already included
Popping Flowers (Crackling) can now be adjusted in a much more granular way
Ascent Effects can now have strobing
57 different kinds of crackling already included
Original post
03 Nov 2023Developer post
FWsim Full Release - Available Now
Dear Fireworks Fans, we are excited to announce the full release of FWsim - Fireworks Display Simulator on Steam, today! Since our launch on Early Access back in 2021, FWsim has improved a lot. To celebrate the full release, we are now making it even better with the addition of:
Dear Fireworks Fans,
we are excited to announce the full release of FWsim - Fireworks Display Simulator on Steam, today!
Watch on YouTube
Since our launch on Early Access back in 2021, FWsim has improved a lot. To celebrate the full release, we are now making it even better with the addition of:

Completely new graphics
Load the entire world in 3D, thanks to data from Google Maps*
Water, which you can add to any existing show, and combine with Google Maps data
Multi Color Changes
Mortar Sparks and Explosion Sparks
Microstars
Easier placement of fireworks on buildings
*) Please note, we rely on external data for this feature. There is a risk this might stop working in the future - but we will do our best.
A few words from the developers:
Lukas (Lead Developer): "I am very grateful to everyone who has been using FWsim over the years. I would especially like to thank our users who sent in lots of feedback over the past weeks. Keep creating great shows, you are awesome!"
Marcus (Head of Fireworks Design): "FWsim has been with me for many years and I am therefore very pleased about the development in recent years. We are proud to see such great shows from you every day and are very grateful for your feedback! We want to make FWsim the best fireworks simulator available. Look forwards to our next updates :)"
- The FWsim Team
Original post
29 Oct 2023Developer post
FWsim Full Release: Water, Real Environments, New Graphics, and more
On November 3, we are leaving Early Access and officially launching on Steam. Check out the new trailer: List of new features in this release Completely new graphics Load the entire world in 3D, thanks to data from Google Maps* Water, which you can add to any existing show, and c
On November 3, we are leaving Early Access and officially launching on Steam. Check out the new trailer:
Watch on YouTube
List of new features in this release

Completely new graphics
Load the entire world in 3D, thanks to data from Google Maps*
Water, which you can add to any existing show, and combine with Google Maps data
Multi Color Changes
Microstars
Easier placement of fireworks on buildings
*) Please note, we rely on external data for this feature. There is a risk this might stop working in the future.
Want to try the new update right away?
You can check out the new version right away, even before the official release, by switching FWsim to the beta branch in your Steam client:
Keep in mind we are still working on it, there's a few bugs we still need to fix.
If you try it out, please leave your comments below.
Original post
15 Sep 2023Developer post
The Entire World in 3D - FWsim 3.5 Beta 1
Dear FWsim Community, we are excited to announce this beta update with the following features: Loading the entire World in 3D FWsim could load 3D models in the past. But if you wanted to simulate a real place, you might face challenges. You’d either have to make your own 3D model
Dear FWsim Community,
we are excited to announce this beta update with the following features:
Loading the entire World in 3D
FWsim could load 3D models in the past. But if you wanted to simulate a real place, you might face challenges. You’d either have to make your own 3D models or try to find the desired building models online. Yet, typically, you’d only find isolated buildings, not the entire landscape.
The latest version, FWsim 3.5, solves this problem. Now, you can launch fireworks anywhere in the world, in 3D. It not only provides the location you want, but also includes the entire surrounding area.
Our data is provided by Google and consists of 3D terrain (hills and mountains) for the entire surface of the earth. It also includes 3D buildings for thousands of cities. The data is downloaded on request. Please note, since we rely on an external data provider, there is a risk this feature might stop working in the future.
Here’s how to use it:

Find the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) in decimal degrees, for example 51,503° / 0.00° for a location in London. To get coordinates, simply open Google Maps and right-click on the point you want:
Open an existing show in FWsim or create a new one.
Click Show → Scenery, and select the “Real Location” option.
Enter your coordinates and click “Load”. Please make sure to use the right decimal separators. For example, if your Windows is set to German number format, you need to enter “51,50178” whereas on an English computer you would type “51.50178”.
Depending on the location you load, your camera might be below the terrain. If you don’t see anything, move your camera upwards.
If you would like to preview interesting locations, or find out how good the data is at certain places, please use Google Earth.
Better placement of Fireworks on Buildings
In previous versions of FWsim, it was difficult to place fireworks on buildings. In this version, this is much easier and more intuitive.
How to activate the Beta
Please right-click FWsim in your Steam Library, and select “Properties”. There you can choose to participate in the beta:
Show us your work!
We look forwards to seeing what you do with the new features. You can post your shows here in the discussions, or at the FWsim community forum.
Original post
06 Dec 2022Developer post
FWsim 3.4.1 - Lancework, Better Performance
FWsim 3.4.1 is now available! Here's what's new: Lancework FWsim 3.4.1 comes with a new Lancework effect type. Lanceworks are pieces made from wood, with glowing dots arranged in shapes or letters. You can create Lancework through the Effects Editor, and draw your own shape: Impr
21 Feb 2022Developer post
FWsim 3.4: Dark Mode, Fullscreen, Better Camera Controls, New Effects Samples
FWsim 3.4 is here, and we are excited to tell you about it! New Dark Design (you can go back to the old design by disabling “Dark Mode” in the preferences) Improved Camera Animation System Saving and Loading of camera positions Topdown Camera View Improved “Create New Effect” dia
FWsim 3.4 is here, and we are excited to tell you about it!
Watch on YouTube

New Dark Design (you can go back to the old design by disabling “Dark Mode” in the preferences)
Improved Camera Animation System
Saving and Loading of camera positions
Topdown Camera View
Improved “Create New Effect” dialog with many more sample designs to choose from
Fullscreen Mode available (press ALT+ENTER to go fullscreen)
Preferences are now easier to navigate
When snapping in the timeline, we are now showing indicators to indicate what snapping
Russian Translation
Let us know what you think!
Original post
12 Oct 2021Developer post
New Online Fireworks Database
Starting today, all Steam users will have access to the FWsim online fireworks database. This gives you thousands of new fireworks, made by other users, for free! Simply click Tools -> Online Fireworks Database to access. You can download collections of effects, or upload your
12 Oct 2021Developer post
Online Fireworks Database now available
Starting today, all Steam users will have access to the FWsim online fireworks database. This gives you thousands of new fireworks, made by other users, for free! Simply click Tools -> Online Fireworks Database to access. You can download collections of effects, or upload your
06 May 2021Developer post
FWsim 3.3 Now Available
Thanks everyone for your feature ideas! The latest update, FWsim 3.3, is now ready. New firework selection window with better filters and animated preview. Helping you to understand the different types of firework effects, even if you have never used FWsim before. Effect Editor:
Thanks everyone for your feature ideas! The latest update, FWsim 3.3, is now ready.

New firework selection window with better filters and animated preview. Helping you to understand the different types of firework effects, even if you have never used FWsim before.
Effect Editor: Pause, scroll forwards and backwards in time, and see your updates instantly. That way, you can pause on an important moment in the effect, make your changes, and easily understand the changes you make.
Even more performance improvements
Right-click in effect selection window to delete effects you no longer need
Some very old effects were removed from the library, and replaced with new designs. (The old effects are still included as a ZIP file in the FWsim program directory, located in your Steam folder - in case you want to get them back for any reason)
Effect Editor: Special tail components now available. These tail components can be inserted instead of a normal tail, and they represent real types of tails. This is a good way to immediately make your effects more realistic! There are also some components available for realistic ascent effects on shells.
Effect Editor: Stars can be configured to not change color when using the "change color" option in the show editor.
Effect Editor: Ascent Stars can be configured to change color when using the "change color" option in the show editor. (this is off by default)
New option to automatically go back to starting point after playing in the show editor.
Users without a middle mouse button can now use the CTRL key plus left mouse button to move the free camera.
Improved layout on 4K monitors
What's your wishlist for the next updates? Let us know - we look forwards to hearing from you!
Original post
15 Apr 2021Developer post
FWsim 3.3. is coming!
Hi everyone! It’s a pleasure to see on social media how much you’re enjoying FWsim these days. While enjoying some of your breathtaking shows, we’ve been working hard on making FWsim better and easier to use. These upgrades will be included with the FWsim 3.3 update , which is ex
Hi everyone!
It’s a pleasure to see on social media how much you’re enjoying FWsim these days. While enjoying some of your breathtaking shows, we’ve been working hard on making FWsim better and easier to use. These upgrades will be included with the FWsim 3.3 update, which is expected to see the light by the end of May. Here’s a comprehensive list of changes to come:

Improved realism of included effects: We will replace some of the old effects in the database with redesigned versions, to take advantage of all the latest improvements in our fireworks rendering.
Improved performance. FWsim already runs well even on old computers, and with this update we’ll make it even faster to load and run.
Improved effect selection window: Thanks to new icons, new users who are unfamiliar with real fireworks can get a quick sense of the different types available. Animated previews will help you understand how the effect will look like once it’s integrated into the show. And the window will load slightly faster, therefore making your show design process more fun.
Improved camera moves: We plan to add a new camera animation timeline. This will make it easier to animate camera moves. It will also allow new types of camera moves that have not been possible previously.
Improved camera positioning: In FWsim 3.3, you will be able to select from a range of predefined viewpoints, or create your own. That will make it easier to view your show from different angles, and see how your design really looks like.
Improved effect editor with more beautiful tails. As you perhaps know, “tails” are trails of sparks that are pulled behind the stars of a firework. These tails will be highly realistic and have been carefully designed by our pyrotechnics expert. This is a great way to instantly make your effects better: Simply add one of the presets to your effect, and you’ll get amazingly realistic tails.
This image shows the new effect selection window, with easier color selection, nicer filters, and animated previews of each piece of firework.
Now you know what’s coming to FWsim in the near future. Stay tuned to the Announcements section so you don’t miss anything about our next updates. Also, we invite you to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation -- we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about FWsim, and always eager to share your amazing firework displays! We’ll be here again soon to tell you more about the next FWsim Challenge. Until then, have a nice week and stay safe!
Original post
29 Mar 2021Developer post
Lunar New Year Challenge: update
Hello everyone: We hope you're doing well! As many of you know, we started organizing a monthly event called FWsim Challenge after the release of the FWsim: Fireworks Display Simulator Creative Edition. The first edition, focused on Chinese New Year, ended recently, so today we'r
09 Mar 2021Developer post
New Demo show, more effects
Version 3.2.0.16 brings a new demo show - which comes with a couple of new effects. It also includes bugfixes.