Hello programmers.

The InSim relay is currently down due to the loss of one of our small servers that hosted email, InSim relay and the Torrent support. Email is up and running again on a separate server.

My son just laughs when I mention Torrent, it seems a bit last century. Personally I think we can do without it.

About the InSim relay, as far as I understand it was never updated properly for the InSim update a few years ago (the one that allow larger packets) and Victor doesn't want to maintain it, as he has a full time job and doesn't really want to work on LFS if not necessary (why I've taken over the website development).

So it would all be down to me to keep the InSim relay maintained and running, which I could do without. I don't see a real need for it, but thought I should ask here if I am missing some important uses for it, to the extent that I should spend less time developing LFS and more time maintaining the InSim relay?

I'd also be interested to know of any of our other services that could be wound down. For instance, does anyone use the LFS API? I mean this: https://www.lfs.net/account/api [ EDIT: it's clear from replies below that this is one to keep ]

Hi Scawen, we use the API for the LFS Discord Bot (https://simbroadcasts.tv/lfsdiscordbot) which is used on the LFS Discord server and a number of other servers for user verification with the LFS OAuth API. We also use it for authenticating users on our new broadcast software which we'd like to keep available. A lot of community work has gone into making the small number of API features usable, e.g. https://github.com/simbroadcasts/lfs-api. A number of other people use the LFS API, not least [TC].

Regarding relay, as you know, we began recreating LFS remote but progress stalled and I believe you had a conversation with Flame a couple of years ago about that (2023) where you mentioned something that might replace it. On our side, we can use InSim for everything one way or another, and ending relay may simplify things for newcomers who find it difficult to distinguish between the purpose of Relay and InSim.

How open would you be to opening the development/maintenance of those "auxiliary" tools to the community? I'm not volunteering, but I'm sure some people would be interested. This would probably be best handled by giving access to a select few trusted people, and only disclosing relevant parts of the codebase.

While I'm honestly not certain about the Relay (but I do know it has a different handling of packet size ), the REST API seems to be quite popular: I was told that's what is used to authenticate people on the LFS Discord server, and it's also very handy for fetching data about existing mods.

On the mods side, there are even a few things that I, and most likely the rest of the community (cruise server InSim devs in particular), would like to see:

• the ability to fetch multiple mods per request: currently, we can get the mod list in a single request, but only a single mod with full details, which means we have to perform thousands of requests to update data for all mods; including the full details in the whole list, or fetching multiple skinIDs would help both ends.
  
• there seem to be missing fields: for instance, we cannot get the Approved status of a mod from the API.
  

If Victor is not interested in maintaining those anymore, and to avoid distracting you even more from your own tasks, maybe it would be a good option to let some of us help in those areas?

Just for reference, I made a REST API demo for Godot InSim, fetching the mod list and then details about a select few mods - cruise server InSim devs are actually feeding entire vehicle databases from those requests.

Thanks for the feedback. OK, good to see the API has some use and at some point I'll try to have a look and see what it's about. I'm becoming more competent with php and database access. I don't want to work on trying to outsource it or update it at the moment. On the contrary, I'm trying to reduce workload for myself in the short term so I can get a bit more done to release this new version.

I don't know of any problem with the LFS API so it's not under threat, just wanted to know if anyone used it.


About InSim relay, I'll assume for now that might be coming to an end. If anyone knows where that is set up or information is displayed on the website, please let me know so I can perhaps comment out some code or add a message instead of some stuff describing how to use it, although you can't.

Relay won't spit a single tear once it will be gone, but OAuth and REST API is a must to be upkeeped! I mean, even if the last two get shutted down, it won't prevent their use-cases, it will just lead to a much worse version of it; that is, LFSW password storing by external services, and web scraping to get mod / user info, downsides of which don't even need explaining.

Never used InSim relay really.
I do use the LFS API for all my LFSLapper projects.
Probably other LFSLapper users use it aswell, because it fairly easy to set-up.

I whould like to see other parameters within the API, like server/player information

Quote from Bokujishin :

there seem to be missing fields: for instance, we cannot get the Approved status of a mod from the API.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but i think that field is called "staff pick" in the REST API.

As for the API, we use it quite a lot, as we limit car usage on certain parts of a track based on the specifications of the car.

Quote from kipieslim :

Correct me if I'm wrong, but i think that field is called "staff pick" in the REST API.

"Staff pick" is not the same as "approved".

Quote from Scawen :

If anyone knows where that is set up or information is displayed on the website, please let me know so I can perhaps comment out some code or add a message instead of some stuff describing how to use it, although you can't.

LFSWorld - Racers & Hosts online - InSim relay tab: https://www.lfsworld.net/?win=hosts&whichTab=insim_relay

(it takes a few seconds to load the tab due to the outage)

I realise that I'm probably in a minority here, but I've found using the LFSW Relay helpful over the years to test insim scenarios and inspect packet data/behaviours that would be hard to test locally or without more test users.

However, I understand from a maintenance/business point of view that it's not right to keep it running, so do bin it off.

At risk of proposing Yet Another Thing I'll Totally Finish(TM) would the wider programming community be interested in a third-party service to add their servers to, and provide something (mostly) compatible?

Kill it we dont need this relay thingy delete it remove it , we want graphics and tyres meeeeen

Seems pretty clear what the community wants

I'd like to just mention the torrent briefly, as someone that plays around with torrent files quite frequently. They're genius, great tool to download more efficiently. Though it is only efficient when there's a fair share of seeders, which i can already assume there's not for LFS.

OK, InSim relay is removed from the LFS World tab Flame linked to, and from "Basic settings" tab in the hosting system.

Pubstat is not in consideration to be removed, right?

Quote from kristofferandersen :

Seems pretty clear what the community wants

I'd like to just mention the torrent briefly, as someone that plays around with torrent files quite frequently. They're genius, great tool to download more efficiently. Though it is only efficient when there's a fair share of seeders, which i can already assume there's not for LFS.

Yeah I am seeding thousands of torrents these days.

Things have changed a bit because getting media legally is easier, but at the same time the rights for that media is more in flux than it ever has been so no longer is the "legal" option for many things the best path.

Plus I really love Linux ISOs

Quote from mcmustang :

Pubstat is not in consideration to be removed, right?

I have only a vague memory of that name.

Is it common use? I assume you aren't nominating it for culling.

Victor developed that and the main purpose for it is to retrieve LFSW stats that you can display on your website. You can find more information about it here: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/14480

A lot of InSims (LFSStat, LFS Lapper, Airio etc.) also have ability to use it as well. Also, LFS Companion had an update this year related to that, so we can assume it is still in commom use. I don't see any reason why it should be deleted, especially as the system itself shouldn't be able to cause any issues for the game or InSims/websites that use it

For what it's worth, https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/94301 also accesses LFSW through Pubstat to retrieve data

Quote from Scawen :

I have only a vague memory of that name...

Is commonly used to retrieve lfsw data.
No, it is not nominated for culling.