Right, i've read a few threads about how people have nicked a teams / someones skin. Someone nicked me XRR skin (took 3 hours to make) and the guy wouldn't take it off. So i sat thinking about a way that you can have your skins viewed by the public but only YOU can use it.

So here goes.

When you assign a skin to your car and it isnt uploaded to LFSWorld (Lets say im useing a skin called MRT_ROCKBIGDAVE) i haven't got a MRT skin uploaded so when i load into a race, a red notice pops up in the top left saying "skin not found on lfsworld" or something like that. So in my eyes, as soon as i log into a race, lfs looks on its server for my skin. So why not this. When you upload your skin, have an option that allows it to be private. If thats ticked, when its uploaded, that skin name (MRT_ROCKBIGdAVE) is assigned to the username (RoCkBiGdAvE) that uploaded it, and every time you get into a race / leave pits etc, LFS checks if the skin your using is assigned to your username. If it is, then race normaly, if it isnt, it will either instantly put you to the garage or change the skin your using to MRT_DEFAULT.

This way, if someone goes into their skin_x folder, pinch's MRT_ROCKBIGdAVE and puts it in their main skin folder, they cant use if because their username dont match with the skin name.

I know all they have to do is change the name and upload it as another name but, i dont know if this is possible, but is their a way that a check on pixels can be done? Like, randomly pick 512 pixels from all over the skin, and check their RBG values and see if them 512 pixels match the same pixels another skin already uploaded as private? if they match, then its a copy and wont let it be uploaded. If it isnt, its uploaded and only you can use it.

But then if tea mates all have the same skin (as you do) it will come up as a copy. So maybe have an option for Private, and other for "Private Team" so say a teams leader, puts in an allow list of all usernames ALLOWED to use the skin. So say Player1 is the leader and Player2, Player3 and Player4 are members. They will be put in the allowed list and it allows them to use the skin. If Player5 then joins the team somewhere down the line, the leader logs in, addes Player5 to the list and he is also allowd to use the skin.

In my eyes and a few other peoples i knows eyes it seems logical and practical but implimenting them i dont know if its possible.

Anyway, my idea. Dave

hm.. i like this idea alot, im surprised i haven't seen this suggested before, good idea

My argument would be that people would just change the filename to suit. However the idea of picking pixels to check them seems reasonable, if a little complicated.

I'm all for making skins private. I just am not sure there is a viable solution.

I like the idea. Easy to overcome those stupid enough to do it, but it's a good idea. I'm not so sure about the 512 pixel thing though, there is a chance a different skin could have those same 512 pixels.

Hmmm what you're talking about would place a massive strain on the master server, since not only would LFS world have to send all the skins to a player who had just joined the race, but it would then have to check to make sure that each of them wasn't using a restricted file, then it would have to issue a command to the private server to dump that player out of the race. Then it would have to check again when they rejoined to make sure they weren't still being "naughty".

As for checking the RGB values of random pixels, you'd need to map that to ensure that it only checked pixels that were visible on the car and therefore not likely to be a part of the black mask common to the Master Skinnerz kits for instance. Since I've seen plenty of skins which are primarily one colour, it would be almost impossible for an automated pixel checking system to work with any degree of reliability.

At the end of the day I appreciate it's frustrating and annoying to see somebody else wearing your pride and joy, when you wanted to be unique and keep it to yourself, but there just isn't an easy or even viable way to prevent skin stealing, and the whole point of using .jpgs instead of .dds for skins is to make skinning as accesible as possible. The fact that the devs have gone out of their way to make skinning as easy as possible right from the earliest days of LFS is to my mind proof that they want to encourage players to make their own paintjobs, and aren't going to be too keen on anything which will cost them time to code and money to resource in terms of extra load on LFS world.

I'm sorry that my response appears so negative, I've been where you are, my response was merely to remove the skin in question from LFS world, so that the only option the offender had was to double the size of the already poor quality 512 skin they'd got from skins_x and upload it themselves in order to continue using it. That was evidently beyond the person in question since I saw him a few days later driving a white car, and seeing the message "skin_abdcdef.jpg not found on lfsworld" as they repeatedly went in out of the pits, presumably doing some head scratching.

These days when I sit down to make a skin I remind myself that there isn't really a way for me to guarantee nobody else will use it, and ultimately that is the answer.

Some good ideas!

Here's mine.

When you upload the skin to LFSworld you can select which users are able to use the skin. Say 5 other team mates from your team.

When you join a server the image is downloaded to each client as a packaged file. Like DDS for example.

When the client leaves the server, the game automatically wipes the skin (blahblah.dds) from the skins_x directory on the client computer.

So, this means in order for the client to get their own copy for the skin they would have to join the server, go back to windows, open the dds file, extract the image, rename the image to something different, and reload that image to LFSworld themselves under a different name.

Sounds like a bit of a freakin hassle to me.

I'm all for easilly accessable skins, but you only need something like the masterskinnerz pds files to create your own skin and then upload to LFSworld as per usual. You don't need to be able to have easy access to other peoples skins.

That being said, i have copied over a few skins from the skins_x directory. But only ones that i was sure weren't private skins. I would never knowingly use someones private skin if they didn't want me to. But if they made copying skins harder/impossible... would be no skin off my nose (pardon the pun).

Fair dooes Smax. It was only an idea but i do see your point. I thought because it checks all the time when you join, adding another check wouldn't be harmless but the thinking about what master server does and adding that check...

The only ones i ever copy over are the things like the F1 ferrari skin / mclaren / renault etc skins that i know i have seen for public download. if i like them i get the full sized ones.

@shin... sounds like a good idea at first, but that puts alot of strain and bandwidth on the lfsworld server, there would be no need to have to redownload a skin every time you see it; that would just exponentially multiply the amount of bandwidth