This is an important update and comes along with various website changes. Have a look at any of the mods' own web pages here. You will see some changes there including a comments thread and multiple star ratings.

We now support the concept of "unapproved" and "approved" mods. You can now upload mods in an earlier stage of development and they will be allowed on the system if they are fully legal and reasonable. For example, we won't insist that all the lights work, all texturing is done, animations fit exactly or the shadow mesh is of high quality at this point. You can continue to work on your mod after upload.

If your mod passes initial acceptance then you can now update and publish it without needing reviewers to check the mod each time you do an update.

Such early stage mods will need to receive several good ratings to eventually become approved. Reviewers will need to check the mod thoroughly when the mod has received enough high ratings from community members. There are multiple ratings on each mod's page:

Overall, Technical, Graphical, Physics, Engine Sound

Currently, when at least 60 people have rated your mod and all ratings have at least achieved 4 stars your mod will be eligible to become APPROVED. You do not have to do anything for this, except make improvements to your vehicle mod in order to gain the required level of quality. This is experimental and we expect the number and level of rating required for approval to change over time.

There are filters in game to show unapproved mods (only approved mods are shown by default) and you can select an online host to allow unapproved mods if you like (the default setting is not to show unapproved mods).

We hope this new system allows everyone to use the system for experimentation and online testing, while still making it easy to find high quality mods.


Changes from W46 to W47:

Multiplayer:

New host option "Allow unapproved mods" allows early stage mods
Message "[user name] is connecting..." when someone is joining host

Misc:

New filter to show all mods / approved mods / staff picks only
Removed filter "Include work in progress" on vehicle mods screen
Rating button on vehicle mods screen now links to mod's web page
FIX: Finished refuelling message for EV is now "Finished charging"
FIX: Subobject number plates did not show the correct number plate

Commands:

/unapproved=yes to allow unapproved mods to be used on host
/enforce (and options button) now spectates disallowed mods
/mods=AAAAAA+BBBBBB sets a list of allowed mods (and allows mods)
/mods+=CCCCCC+DDDDDD adds to the list of allowed mods
/mods-=BBBBBB+CCCCCC removes mods from the list
/mods=ALL removes the list of mods and sets /allowmods=yes
/mods=NONE removes the list of mods and sets /allowmods=no
/mods and /cars commands can accept plus or comma as delimiter


Download:

https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/95664

I've now put W47 on the auto update system, so if you have installed any of the new patches (W43 to W46) you can get W47 just by clicking "Display list of hosts" in game.

Does that explains this?

https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1972838#post1972838

No, what you have reported is before I put the auto updater up. An auto patch updater really has nothing to do with the hosting system. But please keep in touch with Victor about the hosting system. They are all on new computers recently and there are many ways things could go wrong. Please report if *anything* goes wrong, as they need to be fully reliable.

The ROSSI mod seems to cause LFS crash.

Take the mod, Westhill, Carpark A variant, start and drive straight through the grass and to the road. LFS crashes about at the spectators stand.

Everything worked Ok earlier today in Aston, in TC City Driving W, where ROSSI isn't allowed.

https://pastebin.com/tjtMw1kK

Hmm, no, it's not ROSSI. Same thing happens in that place of Westhill with other cars. I'll test more, maybe it wast just driver update and I didn't reboot my machine.

I'll be interested to know if you get a crash again. By the way, in that Wine error report, if you scroll up to the top of the report, is there a crash offset and exception code?

Quote from Scawen :

I'll be interested to know if you get a crash again. By the way, in that Wine error report, if you scroll up to the top of the report, is there a crash offset and exception code?

The entire Wine report is in the Pastebin link.

I've rebooted my computer. There was an Nvidia driver update today. And the error is still here, happening on Westhill map. I had a similar thing earlier this year, it happened on WE and Blackwood in some particular places near the middle of the map in Y axis (I mean if we look at the map in fixed mode, the middle between top and bottom parts).

Let me run it again later, I'll post what I see in Wine window and in Linux shell.

Another try with another NVidia driver version, same result. With RB4 it does not crash immediately on the track, but pitting couple of times causes the same error.

Wine crash window: https://pastebin.com/QYG58k2f
Linux shell (where Wine was called): https://pastebin.com/LQfddz1Z
LFS deb.log: https://pastebin.com/4vZC92ex

This is what I see after driving on Westhill now. A sign of upcoming crash.

OK, I have a feeling it's Wine / NVidia / D3D9 related as we haven't heard such a report from a Windows user.

But in saying that, I'm not ruling out the possibility that LFS might be making an assumption that something has been initialised correctly, when it hasn't, due to something that only really happens on Wine.

To give me more of a clue, can you see if it's related to memory usage, by enabling half res textures (Options - Graphics - Textures - low res). That will save a lot of GPU memory at WE and BL. If it doesn't crash then maybe it gives a hint of what type of initialisation failure to look for.

That did the trick, I could not make it crash with whatever car.

BTW, everything is ok with full-size textures on Fern Bay and other old tracks.

My theory on this is that previous winter, nVidia driver got updated, caused crashes, then updated again which fixed the bug (but I didn't reboot for a month, and things got fixed after that). It might be the bug is happening again after the new update. But I may need to try older driver versions to test.

Thanks for the report. My understanding is that when the memory gets quite full, the drivers / D3D can move things around in memory so that the program can keep allocating new items.

It might be with this apparent driver bug that it runs out of memory and fails to allocate when requested. It's possible that LFS assumes that an allocation has worked and goes on using the pointer as if it has worked. If that is the case then LFS could theoretically avoid the crash, but instead there would be missing graphical elements.

I am guessing that if you used a version V (no test patch) you would still get the same problem. I don't think there are any related changes in W47.

Scawen, can you make Formula class tail light functioning like F1 class? I think it is a suitable modification. Nearly all Formula cars in the modern days are just like that.

Ok. Memory, you mean video card memory? I see full-size textures take 257 MB, and I have GeForce GTX 960M (according to the web it has 4GB vram).

I checked what apt has installed today, and it was NVIDIA 470 driver. I upgraded to unstable 495, it crashed too, and downgraded to 460 -- it worked. But after re-upgrading to 470, the crash didn't happen as earlier.

I guess, there must have been a memory leak. I'll be watching the card's vram to see if that might be the cause.

Tried loading the vram as much as possible, but never got above 21%.

Still it's strange that after reboots the system with new drivers kept crashing.

Here's another bug:

1) enter single player. Go to car, choose a mod (let's say UZM 1700). Choose default color #6.



2) Go back to single player screen. The car color is what was chosen.

3) Exit from single player to the entry screen. Go to multiplayer, enter a game.



4) Choose a standard car. Choose default color #2.



5) Click "OK". See the chosen car:



6) Quit multiplayer. Enter single player. The car should be the one chosen before in single player, and the color too.



7) Enter "Car" screen. The color of the car changes. Now it has default color #2, rather than #6. The color leaked here from multiplayer.