Hi EthanD78 and welcome to the forum.
class 313 is right - openBVE is, strictly speaking, not a new version of BVE, but a wholly new train simulator, that has been built to run BVE routes.
As a consequence, it will have many new features, but many of them will only apply when the route is run in openBVE. If you try to run a route written for openBVE (and there are few of them), in BVE, you will encounter error messages in BVE.
Hope that's clear...
At the moment, it seems that some developers are trying to ensure that their BVE routes will run in openBVE. Some openBVE versions of routes are in development, but as far as I'm aware, none have been released yet...
I have this feeling that says that trainsimming in 2009 is going to get so much better...
Regards
eezypeazy