This is a late night/morning thought, nothing set in stone or solid of any kind, just some ramblings that me and some othere were storming about a few minutes ago.. it resulted in a question..

Fixed setups.. is an option which doesn't yet exist in LFS, it may never and that is fine and dandy, there are pro's and con's for and against the idea I am sure, but a question to the programming minds out there..

Is there any way of adding some extra marker element to a setup file, which could be read by a program that would identify the setup as the same as one held somewhere else as being true and correct, as in the same and not edited in any way?

Would this corrupt a .set file? Is it even legal to think about?

Or alternativly, via OutGuage or whatever else, is it possible to detect elements of a driver's setup, to check simerlarities?


Just some thoughts and questions

Thanks.

I've not tried adding anything extra to a setup file, but technically you don't need to.

What you could do is generate a hash of the contents of the setup file, and then provide that hash on downloads, along with instructions on how to verify that hash on your computer.

If you're worried about people downloading these files, and redistributing them, you just need to check the hash again to see.

If you wanted to use it to force a setup, you'd have to detect the setup used (in memory), and then make some sort of insim client which connects to their end, and passes some information back to a server program running at the organisers end. Or you could do it over LFS itself, over the chat using /i HASHCHECK. If they dont get one, or get an invalid one, they get kicked..

Thanks for the reply.. It sounds interesting, I will go do some research and see if there is any interest Cheers taa.

Hmm..this sounds like an intresting idea acutally. Although there would be InSim apps client side and server side. Another thing, You would need Async sockets on a system like this, So the server and client can always comunicate. Sounds like a Very intresting project TBH.

E: Tracking the set in memory is another story....

Something that could add a little more security than trusting the other players to drive with the same setup would be useful.

Great that it seems possible

On the modifying a setup front, you can add data into the blank spaces in the LFS setup format without issue. They should be stripped out as soon as you change any value in the setup from within LFS.

Regarding the checking in memory, since LFS now tells you which setup you're using, it would be easiest to grab that string, rather than find the whole setup and hash check that data. If the string is correct and the file is checked to hash correctly, then you know all is good.