Good news, I've found a way to send packets that can crash a host. It looks like it could be the same method used to crash Chriship's host. I haven't been able to find any other ways to do it and this one does the same kind of thing, so I guess that's it.

I've got a few more fixes to do as well as the packet checking to fix this one so I'm going to estimate a few more days before the incompatible patch, maybe Thursday or Friday.

EDIT : This incompatible patch will be a TEST patch. When the official update is released will depend on the results of the testing.

About the incompatible update, the main thing about it is an improved multiplayer system that will make the host more responsive and reliable.

Physics and all replays are still compatible
Game only needs host packets to continue processing
Quicker joining to host - no waiting for other players
No waiting for packets from players with slow connections
Much longer timeouts - lower probability of disconnection

Also fixes for various bugs and security issues that have been reported.

Quote from Scawen :

About the incompatible update, the main thing about it is an improved multiplayer system that will make the host more responsive and reliable.

Physics and all replays are still compatible
Game only needs host packets to continue processing
Quicker joining to host - no waiting for other players
No waiting for packets from players with slow connections
Much longer timeouts - lower probability of disconnection

Also fixes for various bugs and security issues that have been reported.

Great news

Really thanks scawen.

I will try it as fast as you release it

Will inform you if i found any bugs in the new patch.

Thanks in advance

Best Regards.

That's brilliant news for people with sh*t internet, like me. Thanks, hope it'll prove to be an improvement.

Excellent! These are the updates I like to see.

Sorry for offtop.

Scawen, why blackwood not compressed and have .wld extension
may be u compress this track like other (AS WE FE).

I seem to remember Scawen mentioning that all the demo content is not protected on purpose, he was talking about cars in that case but I guess it's the same for the only demo track then? He even allowed people to convert it over to rFactor.

Quote from Scawen :

Much longer timeouts - lower probability of disconnection

YEEEEAAAAH. Finally i could playthis game when my ISP(T-Mobile) throws my net speed to 10KB/S. Thanks a lot.

As someone who was troubled with pointless bans on the nl server and also years ago when that over-ambitios bannlist-thing was going I find Scawens beging the hacker to tell him how it´s done and bla bla so embarrising!!!

Instead of telling him, that as soon as his indentity is discovered he will be basically banned from LFS and any further developement from your feather FOR EVER instead would be the solidaric solution for a viviand sports-community.

It´s like with those oviously doped Olympic guys, where nobody knows how they do it, so we have to applaude them no matter what. Don´t do that Scawen, it is such a shame!!!

Everybody is regulated here with how to express themselfes and driving and many other aspects of regulation, and after all, when a real criminal (regarding to the LFS system) shows up You suggest he might PLEASE (:really show his trick to save you time [sic].

At least this call should be expressed as a LAST CHANCE to avoid a live time ban, so that at least the impression is kept up, that failing on the sportive and social behaviour that comes with onlinegaming as just another sport WILL be handeled as what it is: Behaviour that will be punished.

Rather should they cargame.nl guys make their statements true and just shut down their servers (on their own) als long (or as soon as) the guy shows up.

Everything else is absolutely hypocritic, isn`t?

Dandy

PS.: Scawen, the server-update features sound great. TNX for that.

I hope you find it so embarrassing that you'll go away and no longer want to associate with LFS in any way.

Quote from Dandy Dust :

As someone who was troubled with pointless bans on the nl server and also years ago when that over-ambitios bannlist-thing was going I find Scawens beging the hacker to tell him how it´s done and bla bla so embarrising!!!...etc...etc..

I disagree. I think that Scawens response has been pragmatic and mature.

If he did what you are suggesting, he will be left with a heap of work that stops him from working on the tyre physics, AND he might end up with a war against some angry hacker. Everybody loses.

Instead he is attempting to make the best of the situation by building a dialog with the hacker(s) and attempting to work with them so they can help fix LFS. That way less of his time is used up finding obscure netcode bugs and they can have some constructive input in the process.
Everybody wins.

Quote from Dandy Dust :

As someone who was troubled with pointless bans on the nl server

Pointless? Ehhrr...
http://www.cargame.nl/forum/post74288.html#p74288

Quote from Bigbob1993 :

YEEEEAAAAH. Finally i could playthis game when my ISP(T-Mobile) throws my net speed to 10KB/S. Thanks a lot.

Eehhh... This is not the right thinking.

I don't want to see people racing on the track and then disappearing for a minute and then suddenly reappear in the middle of a field of cars for 10 seconds...

People with crappy internet connections should play civilization like dandy is doing and shouldn't participate in position/time critical sports like door to door racing. Lag... And to be more specific, jitter... Is one of the top ranking irritations on the servers. Sometimes also people just join with 5 fps or are torrenting some movie in the background and all think this has no influence on racing. Many people do not know what they cause because it all 'looks good' on their screen.

There should appear at least some warning @ low FPS rates/high ping/jitter.

.

Very good post Dandy.
I also wondered about Scawens reaction.

I am a programmer too so I know a little bit how hard it is to get a starting point / idea to find such a problem.
But there are many sorts of hackers. The people hacking LFS are searching for a challenge I guess and invest much time and have a great technical knowledge.
With those people you can often speak and after they got the trick, it bores them and they can/wanna tell how they did it.
But the last examples showed more criminal potential. Many server crashes, destroying fun of many players (and so on).

Scawen please dont set such a symbol and move them in the positive center.

@col: TNX, it is only worth responding to responses that come as arguments in a discussion and are not hate-rant themselves!

Therefore I have to agree, that You have a point there with calling the reaction "pragmatic" and maybe even "mature" (Discussing maturity would be a big thread in a different forum ;-) ). But on the other hand it is quiet desperate as well. I am not pointing this out as some kind of hate-blalba against Devs or the cargame.nl managers. I am pointing it out as someone who feels that giving up authority on handling the sportive/juridical aspect of LFS racing is difficult, to say the least. Because that means that you make a DEAL with someone who wrackes the whole game, cracks the code and what so more, while you hand out bans for revenche fouls and stuff that go for months and months.

Dandy

It's not desperate, he says he found the overflow spot anyway. It's just good practice, stop grasping at straws.

Quote from edge3147 :

Just more crap to delay the important updates, good job stupid hackers.

In fairness, these security holes need to be filled anyway so the fact it's been brought to our attention is, on the whole, a good thing.

Yeah, it's good that some of the holes(let's hope all) will be fixed.

And I don't think this will delay the tyre physics that much.. What's 2 weeks if you are waiting for it for 4 years anyway

Quote from cargame.nl :

I don't want to see people racing on the track and then disappearing for a minute and then suddenly reappear in the middle of a field of cars for 10 seconds...
.

Dont worry(be happy), Im not playing on cargame.nl servers because I dont have a steering wheel anymore and im racing only on demo servers when T-mobile sends my net speed down.

I think that every server should be able to set its own ping limits. Ping limit on some cruise server doesnt have to be a small as on cargame etc...

Quote from Dandy Dust :

But on the other hand it is quiet desperate as well.

What a load of rubbish. Scawens approach of trying to work with the hackers is the smartest and fastest way of solving this issue. Being humble and acknowledging what they have managed to do is much better than going on some attack against them, which often only results backfiring massively. I for one respect Scawens humble approach hugely in that regard.

There's a lot of hackers out there who do it just for the challenge, not to wreak havoc. If they succeed, they just might show you how it was done and help prevent such things from happening again. Obviously this doesn't apply to script kiddies.

Quote from cargame.nl :

I don't want to see people racing on the track and then disappearing for a minute and then suddenly reappear in the middle of a field of cars for 10 seconds...

People with crappy internet connections should play civilization like dandy is doing and shouldn't participate in position/time critical sports like door to door racing. Lag... And to be more specific, jitter... Is one of the top ranking irritations on the servers. Sometimes also people just join with 5 fps or are torrenting some movie in the background and all think this has no influence on racing. Many people do not know what they cause because it all 'looks good' on their screen.

There should appear at least some warning @ low FPS rates/high ping/jitter.

I agree, but I don't know what controls are available to admins to enforce certain amount of network quality to be allowed to race. If the server could detect and spectate cars that are warping around the track, it would help alot.

I.e a limit to how much the server will be allowed to extrapolate car positions when packages are dropping, both in time AND distance on the track. A half second extrapolation of position might be okay for the XFG, but can be devestating for the GTRs when the speeds are higher, and the warping/teleporting distance increases.

Quote from Skagen :

I don't know what controls are available to admins to enforce certain amount of network quality to be allowed to race.

Not something which works reliable. Shift-F8 (network debug) works nice to manually see the quality of connection of racers but those values are not available in the InSim environment.

Airio has some basic form of lag detection but does that (I think) based on carspeed and passing nodes which is not a bad idea but doesn't work on open layouts.

Anyway, I will save my critics for the next patch release. Some things you need to see in practice

Quote from cargame.nl :

Not something which works reliable. Shift-F8 (network debug) works nice to manually see the quality of connection of racers but those values are not available in the InSim environment.

Airio has some basic form of lag detection but does that (I think) based on carspeed and passing nodes which is not a bad idea but doesn't work on open layouts.

Anyway, I will save my critics for the next patch release. Some things you need to see in practice

Not sure when exactly this is sent, but it can be useful.

Hmm Airio is relaying on this then. Well.. Its not enough, it doesn't tackle the problem of jitter. Jumpy ping characteristics, packets are not being missed but are answered with different timings..

Also high ping connections (150-200 ms+) do not get this flag.

Quote from DarkKostas :

@struct CompCar
byte Info; // flags and other info - see below

#define CCI_LAG 32 // this car is lagging (missing or delayed position packets)

Not sure when exactly this is sent, but it can be useful.

From my tests, It's sent whenever a position packet from the player arrives so late (or not at all) that the car is made invisible and the "lag (0.00s)" thing shows in place of the player name above the car.
Every MCI packet that's sent while the player is in that invisible/lag state (or has been since the last MCI) has the CCI_LAG bit set.