This is something I'd really, REALLY like to see included in LFS sometime in the near future. The rate at which other player's cars are refreshed is pretty good, but it could be better, and there really is no need to update another car's path just as often as the guy right next to you if the other car is on the other side of the track...

...unless LFS does this already, but I'm pretty certain it does not.

With dynamic throttling the replay quality would suffer because you could no longer watch replays fro other car's perspective (especially bad for leagues).

And why add dynamic throttling? LFS is not really using much bandwidth anyway so there is really no performance boost either...?

Well, then what about simply increasing the update rate for all cars? They do jump around a bit. I'd love to see them running a bit smoother.

Yep, the server could have a max bandwidth setting and it would dynamically lower the refresh rate (To a logical minimum) when the bandwidth demands get too big.

really good idea!
+1 from me

Like automatically starting the server at 6pps and reducing it down to 5, then 4, to prevent the bandwidth breaching the specified server maximum? Sounds handy tbh.

You couldn't receive packets based on proximity to other cars as the client would need to upload at one rate, so everyone would have to receive them at that rate.

Quote from Hyperactive :

With dynamic throttling the replay quality would suffer because you could no longer watch replays fro other car's perspective (especially bad for leagues).

Well, actually, that problem could be easily solved. When you save a replay from an online race, the replay file should be downloaded from the server on which it is hosted. THAT replay file would have ALL the cars paths updated and the same high frequency. That solves that issue... I think?

Sounds like a waste of bandwidth (to stream most of a file, then have to wipe what you've got to download the whole thing).

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Well, then what about simply increasing the update rate for all cars? They do jump around a bit. I'd love to see them running a bit smoother.

For some reason you can use a higher rate in a LAN game which indeed is much better to race with, especially with the faster cars. With a simple VPN setup it works fine over the internet too, just no master server etc.

I concur on the higher LAN update point. The bandwidth is probably needed to be restricted going via the master.

Something I've observed is that replay files, and presumably net data, are action based not time based. To prove my point. Monitor the file size of the temp.mpr file while a car is standing idle on track for a while. Then watch it grow as distance is covered. It might not be whether the update period should be increased, but the distance travelled (or whatever method is used) could be finer grained. In the days of dial up, every b/s counted. On higher bandwidth connections there is a little more headroom to include more position info.

A throttling of the position granularity based on available bandwidth would be nice. It doesn't necessarily need to be dynamic, but obviously the more cars on track the more is required...... Just my two penneth.