[rFactor][Tutorial] Fixing vehicle selection on servers

Reposted from JDMF Forum, written by me:

Okei Dokei,

So since I started playing this game about 5 months ago, this has ALWAYS been a problem: You go to play on the server that everyone has piled into, only to find that you are not able to select the vehicle you want to use. Take for example: SP Mod vs the DriftBox server, or every vehicle in the universe vs the NoLimit Performance server.

This is both a serverside and clientside problem.

• Serverside: The server owners have not kept an up-to-date list of vehicle filters, which is what determines whether or not a certain car can be selected.
• Clientside: Modders often decide to add a unique vehicle filter to their car, instead of grouping their car together with a popular filter, example: Project_D2.0, which if applied to the car would allow it to be selected alongside every other car within the PD mod. Only adding unique vehicle filters on every car creates clutter within server filter lists, and in some cases they reach a filter limit and no new cars will work*.

* I haven't personally tested to see about vehicle filter limits, but by default on a home-hosted server thats linked to an .rfm with an unedited .plr, the vehicle filter limit is reached at around 15.


SO, NOW, THE PART THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS:
How-To Fix the problem on both the server & the individual mods!

For Modders / Players: (using SP mod as an example)

• Open your rFactor directory, example: (C:/Program Files (x86)/rFactor/), then open Gamedata/Vehicles/ and find the name of the mod that contains the vehicle(s) that isn't appearing on the servers selection list. Example: (C:/Program Files (x86)/rFactor/Gamedata/Vehicles/SP Mod/BMW M3 E36/)
  

• Within the vehicles folder, you need to find the .veh file(s). For most car mods, they can be found in the /Teams/ folder.
• Open the .veh file with any text editor / Notepad, and find the "Classes=" line. This is the line that contains all of the vehicle filters.
• Add a new filter to the Classes= list that is also supported by the server, you can figure out which filters are used by the server by playing rFactor, going to the server browser, clicking on the server, and pressing the News/Info button on the bottom-right.
  
  
  All you need to do is add ONE filter thats supported by the server, but it's always best to choose the most popular filter. So for this you should take the Project_D2.0 filter and add it to your .veh file Class= list. Here I've added 2 filters:
  
  

• Save the file, and go play. You'll have to do this to EVERY .veh file for EVERY car you want to use that doesn't currently share vehicle filters with the server.

For Servers: I only know how home-hosted servers work, whether or not a dedicated hosting service will work the same is unknown to me. Hopefully some of the steps will be the same.

• Open your rFactor rFm directory, example: (C:/Program Files (x86)/rFactor/)
• Open the .rfm file which you use to host the server. Seemingly for everybody this will be ONLINEDRIFTING.rfm.

• Modify the "Vehicle Filter = OR:" line, which contains the full list of vehicle filters being used on your server. Add all new vehicle filters used in the mods you want to use on your server, into this line, seperated only by spaces instead of commas. See the For Modders / Players section to learn where / how to collect the vehicle filters. Remember that you only need to use 1 vehicle filter from each .veh file, try to keep vehicle filters to a minimum, as I believe there may be a 'limit' or sorts at around 15.
  In this picture, these filters are enough to support most current public mods, including everything featured in the Starter Pack.
• 
  Filters in Image: S15_SPEC_r Project_D Project_D2.0 PROJECTD_2.0 SP_Tuner SP_Exotic D1GP OBS_TEAMS MERCEDES_190_EURO_DRIFT InitialD ILLEGALSTREET D1 AE86 AE86_N2 ShiftStreet
  
  
• Save the file.
  If you are home-hosting, you can now run the server. You will see that your list of 'Available Vehicle Filters' has now grown, and you can move them all into the 'Selected Vehicle Filters' list.

If you are using a dedicated hosting service, you should still run the rFactor Dedicated.exe, move all the vehicle filters from available to selected, and start the server atleast once. Doing this will automatically update your .plr and .cch files which you will also need to upload to your server files along with your edited .rfm file. These files can be found in the /UserData/WhateverTheFuckYourNameIs/ folder. The .plr file will have the same name as the folder, and the .cch file will have the same name as the .rfm.
****Once again, I do not know all the particulars of a hosting service for this game, info could be inaccurate****