I'm currently using a 3rd party service that's hosting my server along with my insim app. I have no experience with lfs.net hosting but because we will have to use it with the 6W version I'm now looking at how it works and to my surprise it seems like lfs.net doesn't host insim apps or am I wrong? If I create a temporary server I can see in the "Your hosts" page that there's a tab that says "Admin app" but that now says "Admin apps are currently disabled for host version 0.6W and above." so I can't really tell what that's for.

You can still connect your InSim app to the server's IP and port (the "Host IP" and "Insim port" columns on the host detail page).

I know but that's not what I'm asking

I was hoping I will still be able to have both server and insim app running on same machine or at least use the same service for both.

Victor made a post about this a few weeks ago:

Quote from Victor :

I would really appreciate it if people think about this a bit. Do you really need to host insim applications on the gaming machine itself? I've thought about this for quite a while - I can make it work of course, using containers for example. But that also opens up a whole other can of worms, if I allow anyone to just run any arbitrary application. For a few euros per month you could rent an ssh host then basically (= the game server in a container with you having SSH access) with which you can do anything. And that is for me not an acceptable situation.

You can always connect your insim application to your game server, but you'll have to host the insim application yourself, either at home or elsewhere.

I'll gladly make other improvements to the hosting system btw. Please note them down and save them for later. We'll probably make a separate thread on this topic later.

Alright, well, I don't really understand any of that stuff but I'm gonna assume Victor knows what he's talking about It's just a bit strange for me as a layman that one service has no problems hosting insim apps while other one does. But whatever, it's not even that big of a deal, I'll just have to get used to it. Thanks

Would be nice to have an option for offline host to test InSim scripts, which is what I used to do via older version 'Local Host' option.

Quote from sinanju :

Would be nice to have an option for offline host to test InSim scripts, which is what I used to do via older version 'Local Host' option.

If you start a host from your LFS client, you get a "free" server on LFS.net. Scawen wrote about this:

Quote from Scawen :

You can start a free server in game, using the "Start new host" button. But now, that starts a host running on one of our servers, instead of locally on your computer. When you leave a free server, it closes down after a few minutes.

open "Your hosts" in lfs.net and use those ip/port to test your insim

Quote from xspeedasx :

If you start a host from your LFS client, you get a "free" server on LFS.net... open "Your hosts" in lfs.net and use those ip/port to test your insim ...

I do get the free server, but there's no ip/port details. And the old description of what is available is still showing when you hit the ? option, of which 2 options have now been removed.



My steps:

Multiplayer -> Start New Host -> Choose track -> Start New Host -> make choices (I chose: S3 / Europe / Visible)
Hit the GO button.
Connects.
Land on normal screen to choose car, etc, but with buttons on bottom left with "leave" and "end host".

After you start a host from in-game, go to https://www.lfs.net/hosting/admin and you should see all the host details including the IP and the port.

Quote from Flame CZE :

After you start a host from in-game, go to https://www.lfs.net/hosting/admin and you should see all the host details including the IP and the port.

Maybe this info should be the text when you want to query visibilty.

Followed your link.

Is an InSim (in my case, LFSLapper) an Admin app?

It says 'Admin apps are currently disabled for host version 0.6W and above.

Would it be that you need to rent a server from LFS before being able to access lapper, etc?

For the public version up to 0.6V, you can select a pre-configured AIRIO or LFSLapper as your "default" admin app in the host config. It is still work in progress for the test patch version. Anyhow, nothing stops you from connecting a custom app (LFSLapper too) running on a remote machine (e.g. from your computer). That should be possible in all cases.

Couple of things.

Maybe the LFS Game Hosting page could be updated with the info on the temp hosting, and how to access the host panel, something like ...

https://www.lfs.net/attachment/240480

Secondly, for most of us, the only thing we know about computing networking, is that its a phrase that we've heard, but have absolutely no idea of how to do it.

My networking expertise lies in connecting a wireless usb dongle to my pc, and adding a user name and password to connect that to a router.

I've had LFS servers from 500Servers days, but they've always been rented from 3rd parties, who've set them up, along with access to lapper.

Is there a way to make existing Airio free version a full version thats on lfs.net hosting? Presuming you have a license key for full version.

See Post https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1967929#post1967929

Quote from Victor :

Hi, I'm afraid it's not possible to have the paid version of Airio running on our rented game servers. Iirc you needed a private download for that, issued per purchase. But because support for Airio seems to have been dropped, the free version is the only one we can offer.

Airio hasn't been supported for about 10 years now, and EQ Worry, the developer, doesn't want to have anything to do with LFS now.

So we can:
1.) Host full airio on other server and connect to lfs hosted server. That means more costs for hosting.
2.) Run free airio and lose some functionality

Or;

1) Would it be possible to run InSim of choice on home pc?

I know nothing about networking, but might be an issue if your internet provider doesn't provide a static IP?

2) Run LFSLapper, which is still being maintained and updated, although as I've never used Airio, no idea of what functions are there in free and paid versions.

Quote from sinanju :

Or;

1) Would it be possible to run InSim of choice on home pc?

I know nothing about networking, but might be an issue if your internet provider doesn't provide a static IP?

2) Run LFSLapper, which is still being maintained and updated, although as I've never used Airio, no idea of what functions are there in free and paid versions.

1) Running an InSim app from your home PC should be possible, that's what I was trying to say. Having a dynamic IP shouldn't matter, what matters is the host IP that is static. So in your InSim configuration, you enter the LFS host's IP and InSim port and it should get connected.

I don't want to run home pc all the time.

Guess it comes to us having to continue renting a rackservice server just to use airio. Because then we get benefits of full airio, plus all FM servers on same airio.

We will however trim from 3 lfs servers to 2, to offset the cost.

Yeah, we at AirAttack will probably do something similar, continue to rent only 1 demo server to run airio from Rack Service and other game servers from lfs.net. But without updating airio for new bytes required for mods and new inSim it will be very tricky to manage servers..

Ok now I'm confused. So lfs.net does host Airio and Lapper. Why do these 2 apps get the privilege? It's understandable for Lapper since that's open-source.. What if we provide (privately) source codes for our apps, can they be hosted then?

Quote from LakynVonLegendaus :

Ok now I'm confused. So lfs.net does host Airio and Lapper. Why do these 2 apps get the privilege? It's understandable for Lapper since that's open-source.. What if we provide (privately) source codes for our apps, can they be hosted then?

It is most likely because those apps are pretty limiting and can't be used maliciously to break the hosting server or data in it.
Other libs (like insim.net) are just tools for interfacing with insim, but the app is full executable that can do anything on the host.

It is technically possible to limit the app behavior by strictly configuring containers, but I guess the work needed outweighs benefits.

As Victor said before the best solution for both sides is renting a cheap linux VPS and connect from there. There are plenty libraries that work on linux now. For example insim.Net has .NET 6 version that can be built into linux-executable app. There's also prism (php), pyinsim (python), I've seen java version of insim and possibly many others.

Quote from xspeedasx :

As Victor said before the best solution for both sides is renting a cheap linux VPS and connect from there.

What is considered a cheap VPS? I currently pay 1.33€ for DCON (32 slots) + insim per month (semi annually). With lfs.net hosting that would be cca 1.16€ only for server without insim app. So even if I find VPS for 1€/month (after a quick google search I doubt I will find one that cheap) then I will still pay almost twice the price I'm paying now for server+insim. When does the "best solution for both sides" part come in?

Quote from LakynVonLegendaus :

When does the "best solution for both sides" part come in?

Becasue without these changes, the piracy that's happening would end up killing LFS, and then there'd be no more master server anyway.

Well, we all have different opinions on what is killing LFS

Quote from LakynVonLegendaus :

... With lfs.net hosting that would be cca 1.16€ only for server without insim app...

According to the Live for Speed Game Hosting info page "InSim is always enabled on your host".



Just you have to configure it yourself, rather than (as in my case) the 3rd party host doing this for you.

Would be good if someone who actually rents a host from LFS could confirm this, and how easy it is to set up.