For historical reasons/bandwidth limitations/engine restrictions (probably), we are unable to put more than 2100 objects in layouts and no more than about 40 cars/48 connections can be online on a single server.

I believe those limitations are too restrictive and limits creativity for very complex layout and crowded servers (cruise servers come to mind). Even if having 5000 objects and 100 cars is very intensive task for the LFS client to handle, the server administrators should be the one who decides what those numbers should be, in the cfg.txt file.

It's true that very, very few servers are completely full (actually, only one public). That could make this proposal quite useless for some users; however, I am sure it is more attractive for players to drive alongside many more drivers than to connect on a secondary, empty server. Who keeps spamming the connect button until they can get in a full server? We cannot know for sure until we experiment with this.

I really appreciate that we went from like 500 objects in 0.6B to now 2100 since 0.6R, but instead of increasing the object count to 3000, I think it should be either 65000, 65535 or unlimited, depending on the engine capabilities. Also, the connection/car maximum values should be right around 240/250 so it can fit within a single 8-bit number (to avoid major changes in the InSim protocol). Yes, some of these are very unrealistic numbers, but it costs nothing to not have to worry anymore about those than to change the limits every version.

Thank you for reading through this! I can add a poll if you need one.

No track has a grid big enough to fit so many cars on.
Okay, cruise is a different ball game, but since LFS is mainly designed for racing, each track should have enough grid positions to start a race with.

im just imagining 250 cars in BL3 right now...

It is a fair point that LFS is a race game first and that a very large grid is unrealistic for racing. The current amount of fixed start points shouldn't change. Cruise is nonetheless an important aspect of multiplayer.
Since players can join in at any time if the server allows it, race servers can make sure to keep the player limit to around 30 while cruise servers don't really need to worry about that (even with a limited amount of custom spawn points, cars go away quickly, freeing them for others).

I know it is kind of exaggerated. I'd be surprised if so many players can play at the same time (many don't have the Internet connection for that). But why not making it 240 instead of just 50 when we can do it now? LFS could warn the admin that this might cause issue, but I appreciate having the freedom to choose the restrictions that suits me the best.

EDIT: How would you have react if I just said like 60? Probably more reasonable, of course, and I understand you. I know we won't make sixty five thousand objects layout. The thing is, I've never seen a game other than LFS whose gameplay can be radically changed in a flexible way where it can be a multi-purpose car game. I'm sure that making it even more flexible will allow for situations or events that we could otherwise dream off, making the game even more enjoyable/interesting to buy.

And yes, I'd like to see a 250 car cruise even if LFS would need to be much more popular/optimized for that to happen. I'd like to understand more why some people are not comfortable doing such a move when you don't need to take advantage of it.

I do not talk on the Cruise, but this for rally \ Drift races would make for a great circuit!

It surely will help for continuous lines of barriers and chalks thought I'd be worried about performance since the object count would skyrocket (and even thought this suggestion wants this to happen, the game would be optimized to handle it better).

But while we're at it, a single path object with pattern would be more efficient.

Not that long ago we were restricted to 800 objects!

Current quantity isn't really an issue, although I wouldn't argue if more available. Object colours and types is different.

I managed to make a few long skytracks - having to use concrete base rather than tracks or car parks.

One of these is 5000 m long - https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/88897

Another, at 7000 m long - https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/90755

I wasn't mean in putting details on these, so there's ample objects as you can see.

It depends on how you look at it: you make a good point. I was referring about making full-scale cruise layouts with very fine details everywhere, or bridges which, smoothed out, consume more objects (thought another thread is proposing a better fix for that).

As of the lag and general compute power, I know even a 100 players starts to be a lot, but I think communities should choose the limit of players and layout size instead of the game; I am sure this would expand what's possible.

Maybe warning messages could help with players who aren't sure what to choose, but not errors.