Hello

I rent a server for my/our team.

I noticed that in the Web UI under "Extended settings" only 1-3 cars per guest can be set (values in brackets), but you can set values up to 15 with the arrows. After the server start, however, only 3 vehicles are allowed. And yes, as soon as the server is online you can increase the value again via LFS. However, it would be great if you could define that right away in the web UI and it would also be adopted.

I also find it strange that there are "only" 15 cars. According to the specification in version 0.6V (https://www.lfs.net/patch-6v) it should actually be up to 32 cars.

Is this adjustment still to come? It would also be great if you could use more than just 3 vehicles right at the start of the server without having to make manual adjustments. Is this still related to the old version 0.6U, which is also available in the Web UI as a server version?

Thanks

You have to set the server in any other than "demo mode", to have more than 15 connections available. In S2 mode, you can have 47 connections. Note that the cost of renting demo server (15 connections) and S2 (47 connections) is very different for a reason. Which one did you rent?

Guest cars are reserved for AI players from a single connection (user). For safety reasons, 3 is more than enough.

That's why the option is called "per guest" and not "per server" - if you're not aiming to host some AI racing,then leaving it at 1 is more than enough as guest can drive only 1 car. Each of max possible 47 guests.

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You have to set the server in any other than "demo mode",

Nop, I have selected "S3". I doesn't matter, if I select S2 or S3. The maximum is 15 cars per guest (in the Web UI; NOT in LFS itself). In LFS itself I can set the value up to 32; but it will be reset back to 3 cars per host after starting the server. It doesn't make sense to set such values, if the server sets the value back to the (old) max value. Perhaps simply a bug?

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Guest cars are reserved for AI players from a single connection (user). For safety reasons, 3 is more than enough.

Of course - But we want more AI on the track and not only 2 per host. One likes to race against AI, the other wants to drift... it's a matter of interest/preference. Technically it is possible. I don't know what do you mean with "safety reasons". The current AI is sometimes "special" but real drivers are sometimes "special" too.

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That's why the option is called "per guest" and not "per server" - if you're not aiming to host some AI racing

I don't know what you mean. If we are only 2-3 drivers, we want to improve the race with AI drivers. Merely 4 - 6 AI-controlled cars are not enough for me. As already written, this is technically possible since version 0.6V. I don't want to debate whether it makes sense for anyone else. When I was able to run the server myself, I had a direct control on it. I just want to use the features/options that already exists.

And no, going online on other servers is not an option. We drive too seldom for that and wouldn't have a chance. That's no fun either.

But thanks for your answers anyway

Yeah, I see what you mean. Unfortunately, at the moment LFS is not the simulator to drive against many AI's online with your friend/friends. For safety reasons, I mean that each AI takes some PC resources and 3 AI's is safe to calculate on most older CPU's. This is not really an issue on modern ones, so I guess that it is a reasonable request to allow "max guests" to a higher number like 10 or more.

Quote from rane_nbg :

Yeah, I see what you mean. Unfortunately, at the moment LFS is not the simulator to drive against many AI's online with your friend/friends.

I don't agree - We drive since years against AI drivers... but yes, it can be quite frustrating at times.
As Scawen already mentioned "somewhere", the behavior of the AI should have improved with the "big" update. We will see...

Quote from rane_nbg :

For safety reasons, I mean that each AI takes some PC resources and 3 AI's is safe to calculate on most older CPU's.

Ah! OK, I understand you too - But there are really enough CPU resources available to use much more AIs. At least 10 cars per guest would be a "beginning".

It's an interesting question of how much AI can be rendered in an online race. Imagine a lag spike, how would that reflect to your 10 AI cars + 1 you as a human driver as seen by other human+AI drivers. I think this would be a pure mess quite quickly, again 3 is quite a safe value Internet connections for all drivers would have to be close to perfection for this to work good.

Will be testet soon... I let you know.

Edit:
Oh, I completely forgot. I even have a stream with version 0.7D10 and 8 AI vehicles. I had the server created directly from LFS. I use a second PC (for streaming) which also houses the AI. At least it doesn't look that bad to me.

You will find the stream on YT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybP1NR4YtmM

Yesterday I was on the track with a friend with a total of 18 (!) AIs (9 each on my PC and 9 on the streaming PC). I also have the utilization display tool integrated in LFS active on the streaming PC. The fact is: The system is "bored to death" with an active refresh rate of 60 Hz (because more makes no sense for YT)! But there are always ugly stutters (but that in turn has to do with the current physics calculation of 100 Hz; if I understood Scawen correctly). So it's not because of the system performance. The streaming PC "only" has a 6 core AMD processor (5600 series); so not a high-end system. The used GPU is an RTX 2060. That's the cool thing about the LFS graphics engine!

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The "Sleep" column is the sleep milliseconds that are used for frame rate limitation. This takes place at the start of the game loop, before the physics updates. Also if "Sleep every frame" is set and there is no other Sleep or Wait then there will be 1 ms Sleep shown in this column. If you use frame rate limiting then you will normally see something in this column. Sleep is time deliberately given up to the operating system each frame because LFS doesn't need to do anything.

The "Phys" column shows the number of physics steps calculated in the frame, before moving onto drawing the visible representation of the game state. These are the physics steps that represent 0.01 seconds of game time. So if you have frame rate limited to 100 Hz and you are not paused then you should see one physics step per frame, which will look like a solid vertical orange line. (This column does *not* show milliseconds)

The "Wait" column is the number of milliseconds of Sleep while LFS is waiting for the GPU to finish rendering. If you do not limit frame rate then you may see something in this column. In that case you are more likely to see something if you set "Maximum buffered frames" to zero. LFS is then waiting for the GPU to finish before starting to render a new frame. If you use buffered frames then it may be you do not see anything in the Wait column. You should not add more buffered frames if there is no waiting, because it that case you would just be adding lag. If you use full screen vertical sync and you are in full screen mode then you will see Wait. In this case you are waiting for the GPU to present the image to the screen, just in time for the monitor refresh.

The race was ugly. But it shows that it works with so many AIs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPMBuO9J7go

The AI is sometimes simply "blind" or does not know your own vehicle size. At least that is the impression of their behavior. But that's another topic.