Just in case anyone else is having this kind of issue:

I was able to determine that the hosting enviromnent was running VMWare workstation which was contributing to the CPU spikes (possilby through mis-management of process prioritisation).

It has since been replaced with VMWare ESX bare metal and the spikes have gone away. So have the symptoms that were manifesting in LFS.

Thanks to everyone for their help...

Quote from Shadowww :

Oh, wait.
Your OWN car warps around?

Yes each person's own car warps around from their point of view.
if you connect to it you will see the problem on your computer too.

Quote from Shadowww :

Maybe you have low FPS?

No, it pretty much happens to every one who connects no matter what their own PC performance is like.

Quote from Shadowww :

It won't affect clients physics (and it can't).

That's what I thought too...

Quote from bunder9999 :

no, but the server does all the calculations (the client does to some degree, but the server is the one considered to be right), hence the warping... not quite the same as lag, but the end result is close enough.

But from what I can tell so far bunder9999 is spot on..
I just could not find any docs discussing what bunder9999 just stated.

Last edited by bitb, Sun 15 Mar 2009, 12:03.

Actually, I was just investigating that side of it. And It looks like there is a reoccurring cpu spike that coincides with the in game warping...
I'm going to try and locate the process that is causing it...
Hopefully I can stop it and that will fix the problem...

Thanks for your help...

I just tried 3 and it got worse. Also tried 6 but no real improvement.
I doubt it is a connectivity issue as the hosting setup is pretty solid. And Teamspeak works perfectly (btw: we are not running that at the moment becuase we thought it may have been part of the issue)

Also if it were a connectivity issue, I would have thought that would make the time between updates slower or less consistent which would make the other cars appear to jump around a bit more.

But I don't understand why that would make your local view warp around?

Edit: just connect to mondaynightracing.com 2 do a lap and have a look at what happens...

/pps=5

I'm an admin at MNR (monday night racing) we run a league for LFS in Australia.

We have run our servers for a few years without any serious problems (that could not be fixed with a restart)

However recently we have been having a strange problem with our two dedicated LFS servers.

When you connect and race, every 15-60 seconds your own local car warps into slightly a different position on the track.

Note: I am not talking about the normal lag effect you can sometimes get with the other connected cars jumping around.

Also: one interesting quirk is that the random local warping seems to happen less when there are a lot of players connected.

I have read the server config wiki.

I have also searched the net and this forum and read many threads but have not come across any that discuss this particular issue.

Also I am not sure how to analyse or run diagnostics on an LFS server...

The server is windows 2003 (fully patched).
LFS Server Version 0.5z10
(we've also tried 0.5z3)

I have tried:
restarting LFS
restarting the Server
disabling insims apps
reinstalling LFS files
updating LFS files

If you want to see the issue first hand, connect to:
mondaynightracing.com 2

I and the rest of MNR would greatly appreciate any suggestions or help anyone can provide.

Last edited by bitb, Sun 15 Mar 2009, 02:47.

Matrox Parhelia is the only video card that natively support 3 heads and / or report 1 drawing area to DirectX, but unfortunately it is oldish card. Probably will work fine (as stated earlier in this post), but no high resolution and no AA.So the only real altertative if you really want to go immersive, is to get a massive screen (24"+) and then run a SLI system for better performance to taste / budget. Oh and sit really close to it...