In-Race Systems¶

raycin_races HUD Nitro Pitstops NEW: Quick Rematch

HUD, Nitro, Pitstops, and everything that happens once the race starts.

Pre-Race Briefing¶

When a race is launched, every player sees a 6-second briefing card before the start sequence begins (briefing → countdown → GO).

The card shows track info, mode, lap count, active Race Options and a minimap preview. It auto-dismisses — no input required. The countdown / F1 lights then take over.

If F1 Lights-Out is enabled, the briefing is also force-dismissed by the lights-out sequence so the 5-light strip has a clean centre-screen view.

See Race Creation → Race Start Sequences for the three start modes (Classic, F1 Lights-Out, Staggered) and the jump-start penalty.

In-Race HUD¶

The right-side HUD panel shows during an active race. Nitro bar and AHEAD / BEHIND opponent chips both live inside the HUD panel for a single tidy heads-up area (they used to be scattered around the minimap).

Element	Description
Position	Your current race position (large number at top)
Lap	Current lap / total laps
Checkpoint	Next checkpoint number
Current Lap	Running time of your current lap
Completed lap time	Briefly shown after crossing the lap line — your just-finished lap time plus a +/− delta vs your previous lap (not vs PB)
Time	Total elapsed race time
Speed	Current speed in MPH or KPH (server config)
NOS bar	Remaining nitro charge — only shown when Race Settings Nitro is active
Vehicle	Your current vehicle name
Pit Stops	Completed / required stops — only shown when Race Settings Pitstop is active
▲ AHEAD	Name, vehicle, and gap to the player directly ahead
▼ BEHIND	Name, vehicle, and gap to the player directly behind
🚩 BLUE FLAG	Pulsing blue banner when a lapping driver approaches (see below)
Weather Grip	Grip percentage indicator during degraded-traction weather
PB	Personal Best time for this track with a live +/− delta in green (ahead) or red (behind). Only shown if you have a recorded PB.
⏱ Timed Race Timer	Countdown chip in the top-right corner showing `MM:SS` remaining. Pulses red in the final 30 seconds. Only shown when Race Settings Timed Race is active.
⏱ TIME EXPIRED	Replaces the Timed Race Timer chip when the clock hits zero. Shown for ~8 seconds then fades. Signals the final lap — everyone finishes their current lap and results are shown.

Momentary Overlays¶

These appear briefly on screen during specific events and disappear automatically.

Overlay	When it appears
Position change flash	Whenever your race position changes — ▲ P2 (green, gained) or ▼ P4 (red, lost) — shown in the bottom-left corner
LAP X / FINAL LAP	At the start of each new lap (top of HUD panel)
PERSONAL BEST	When you set a new fastest lap for this track (centre screen, gold)
⚡ FASTEST LAP	When you set the fastest lap of the entire race, shown only to you (gold flash) — requires Race Settings → Fastest Lap tracker to be enabled
FINISHED P1	When you cross the finish line — shows your final position (gold for P1, silver for P2, bronze for P3)
DNF timer	Right-side countdown when you are at risk of being DNF'd; turns red and pulses when ≤ 30 seconds remain
🔀 TRANSFORMING TO [Vehicle]	Banner when a Vehicle Transform event fires, showing the incoming vehicle model name. If a countdown delay is configured a `5→4→3→2→1` counter fires first, then the swap happens. See Vehicle Transform below.
⚠ SWAP WARNING	Banner shown approximately 1 lap before the next vehicle swap in Synchronised Roll mode (with No Repeats ON). Names the incoming vehicle so you're not surprised mid-lap.
JUMP START — HELD 5s	Banner shown at race start when the host enabled F1 Lights-Out and you pressed throttle before the lights extinguished. Your car freezes and fades to a ghost — still visible, and others drive straight through you — while the banner counts down each second. Followed by Penalty served — GO! when released.

Blue Flag¶

When a driver who is ahead of you in race position and on a higher lap comes within 100 metres of your position, a pulsing 🚩 BLUE FLAG banner appears showing their name.

This signals that a lapping driver is approaching — yield when safe so they can pass without losing time. The banner disappears automatically as soon as they move beyond 100 m.

Note: The blue flag only appears on your screen (the backmarker's). The lapping driver sees no indicator.

Sector Splits¶

A sector is a stretch of the lap. Cross the end of one and a banner flashes for a couple of seconds showing the sector number, your time for that stretch, and — once you have raced the track before — how that compares to your own best for that same sector:

SECTOR 2 0:41.336 −0.412

Green with a minus means you are faster through that stretch than you have ever been. Red with a plus means slower. That is the point of it: a lap time tells you the verdict at the end, sector times tell you where you gained or lost it.

The comparison is against your own best, on that track, for that sector. It is not a comparison with anyone else, and nothing you do here affects another racer.

Turning it on¶

It is off by default. Turn it on in raycin_menu → Settings → Sector splits:

Setting	What you get
Off (default)	No banner
Marked tracks only	Sectors only where the track author deliberately placed them — very few tracks have any
All tracks	Plus tracks with none marked, split into three even sectors automatically

All tracks is the one most people want: it gives every race sector timing without anybody having to prepare the track. A track the author did mark up always uses their choices — the automatic version only fills in where there are none.

Putting it where you want it¶

Where the banner sits, how big it is and how see-through it is are set in raycin_menu → Settings → HUD layout — pick Sector split there. It is the same set of controls every race pop-up uses; see HUD Layout below. The default is bottom-centre, large, held for about 4 seconds, with a thick green or red edge so the verdict reads before the digits do.

Automatic sectors need at least 6 checkpoints. Below that the three sectors would be one or two gates each, which times almost nothing.

Things worth knowing¶

Your first time on a track shows no comparison — there is no best yet, so the banner shows the plain sector time, and from your next lap onward you are racing yourself.
Your times are recorded even while the display is off. Switch it on and the comparison works straight away rather than needing a warm-up race.
Best times are saved to your account, not to the PC, so they follow you to another machine.
A track marked up with more than 3 splits (a few imported tracks are) still only shows the first 3.
A respawn inside a sector marks that sector. The banner still shows the time, but labelled RESPAWN, with a grey edge and no comparison — and that time is not recorded as a best. A crash lap cannot pollute your bests, and the clock is deliberately not restarted on respawn: a part-sector time could come out faster than a real one.

HUD Layout¶

Every transient race pop-up can be placed, sized and faded to taste, per PC, in raycin_menu → Settings → HUD layout. It only changes what you see.

Overlay	What it is	Default spot
Lap card	The LAP 2 / 6 roll and the LAP COMPLETE time (with the difference to your previous lap) — one card, so they can never overlap each other	Top centre
Sector split	The sector time banner (switch it on in Sector splits)	Bottom centre
Message of the day	The host's message, shown once at the start of the race	Bottom centre
Personal best	The PERSONAL BEST pop-up when you beat your own lap time	Top right
Qualifying	The time-left / best-lap card during a qualifying session	Top right

How to use it

Choose the overlay with the buttons at the top of the block.
Position — tap one of the nine spots (corners, edges, centre).
Fine-tune — the arrows nudge it 10 px at a time. Reset puts that one overlay back to its default.
Size — 50–200 %. Overlays are already sized to your screen height, so a 1080p and a 1440p screen get the same proportion; this scales that up or down.
Transparency — 30–100 %.
Preview this overlay — shows a sample of the chosen one where you have put it, even outside a race. The menu hides for a few seconds so you can see it.

Things worth knowing

Overlays placed in the same spot stack up with a gap rather than covering each other, in a fixed order (qualifying, lap card, sector, MOTD, personal best), queuing away from the edge.
Bottom-right already holds the race HUD — anything placed there queues above it.
Nothing here moves the main race HUD (bottom-right) or the Live Standings panel; those have their own controls.

Gap Units¶

Gap to other players shown as time (+1.4s) or distance (87m), configured in server settings.

Live Standings Panel (Left Side)¶

Press Z during a race to show an F1-style leaderboard sliding in from the left edge, listing every racer ordered by position with their gap to the leader. Press Z again to hide it.

Three sizes, chosen in raycin_menu → Settings tab → Live Standings panel:

Size	Shows
Compact	Top 5 + your own row (pinned at the bottom if you're outside the top 5)
Medium	Top 10 + your own row (same pinning)
Full	Everyone, scrollable — the only size that shows the extra columns below

Resizing without leaving the race: hold Z for about half a second while the panel is visible — it cycles Compact → Medium → Full → Compact instantly. A quick tap still just shows/hides it; only a sustained hold cycles the size. There's no mouse cursor during a race to click the size label with, so this is the in-race way to resize (the label in the panel's footer still shows the current size, and stays mouse-clickable whenever a cursor is available, e.g. previewing from the Settings tab).

Scrolling in Full size: if the field is too large to fit on screen, use Page Up / Page Down to scroll the list while the panel is visible. (Deliberately not the arrow keys — those are vanilla secondary driving controls, so scrolling with them would tap your brakes mid-race.) Rebindable via F8 → Settings → Key Bindings → "Standings panel — scroll up/down".

Optional extra columns (Full size only — Compact/Medium stay narrow by design): pick up to 2 of Best Lap / Last Lap in Settings. Gap-to-leader is always shown regardless. Full size also shows each human racer's ping and fps, appended under their vehicle name (AI drivers don't have real telemetry, so theirs is hidden).

Finished and DNF racers: once a racer (human or AI) crosses the finish line, their gap is replaced by a green 🏁 + final total race time — the live gap stops meaning anything once they're parked. DNF'd racers show DNF in place of their position and dim out.

Controller: D-pad Down toggles the panel (same physical control as keyboard Z), and holding it resizes, same as holding Z. Scrolling has no default controller binding (Compact/Medium always pin your own row, so scrolling is rarely needed) — bind one via F8 → Settings → Key Bindings if you want it.

Hot Lap Badge¶

When Hot Lap Mode is enabled in Race Settings, a small ⏱ HOT LAP badge appears in the HUD. The race clock shows --:-- until you cross Checkpoint 1, at which point it starts counting.

Nitro (NOS)¶

Who can turn nitro on (since 19 September 2026)

Nitro is no longer a free choice for every host. A nitro lap and a clean lap on the same track are not comparable, and before this change nothing in the results said which you were looking at.

The rule

F2F races — anyone may use it, and it is on by default. F2F is a per-checkpoint vehicle-swap action race, not a time trial, so nitro costs nothing there. The host can still switch it off.
Every other category — off, and the setting is locked. The Nitro section still appears in Race Settings, greyed out with the reason, so you can see the rule rather than wonder where the setting went.
Granted hosts may use it anywhere. If an admin has granted you nitro hosting, the section unlocks on every track you host. When you host, everyone in that race gets nitro — it is a hosting right, never one player with NOS against the rest of the grid.

The server decides, not the panel: even a client that somehow sent nitro = true on a locked track has it turned back off, and the corrected value is sent back so your panel shows what will actually happen.

Server owners: the rule lives in Config.NitroPolicy (config/config_server.lua) — see Quick Reference → Nitro hosting policy.

Assisted races are marked on the results

When nitro, slipstream, catch-up or a reversed route was enabled, the results board carries an italic note saying so, and the same fact is saved with every result. Nothing is blocked or hidden — the race counts, the times show as normal, and the note simply means a time can be judged honestly later. See Assisted races.

When the host enables Nitro in the Race Settings:

Hold the nitro button to activate boost while the NOS bar has charge.
The NOS bar in the HUD shows remaining charge — it refills automatically while driving.
Other players see exhaust flame effects when you activate NOS.

Nitro Button¶

Input device	Button	Can you change it?
Keyboard	Left Shift	Yes — rebind "Nitro / NOS Boost" in Esc → Settings → Key Bindings → FiveM
Controller	A (since 15 September 2026 — was R3, the right-stick click)	Yes — same row, same screen. Bind any pad button to it

Both are live at once — you do not have to tell the game which one you are using, and a controller player can still use the keyboard binding if they have a hand free.

Rebinding the pad button. "Nitro / NOS Boost" is registered for the keyboard and the pad, so the Esc → Settings → Key Bindings → FiveM row accepts an Xbox or PlayStation button as well as a key — put it in the SECONDARY column. (Before 15 September 2026 it was registered keyboard-only, which is why that row refused every controller button while every other action on the page took one.)

Why A is safe. On a pad in a vehicle, A's only job is the cinematic camera, which nothing in a race needs. While nitro is armed that button's normal action is suppressed, so A boosts and does not flip your camera. The handbrake is RB and is never touched.

Keyboard side-effect: a GTA control is shared between devices, so the same control A uses on a pad is R on a keyboard — pressing R will also fire nitro. Harmless, but worth knowing if you wonder why the boost went off.

Nitro Settings (Race Settings)¶

Setting	Range	Effect
Boost mode	Standard / Extreme	See below — this is the one that decides how big it feels
Boost Power	1.2× – 10.0×	Engine power while the button is held
Torque Multiplier	1.0× – 10.0×	Pulling power, so the boost bites lower down
Drain Rate	5 – 80 %/s	How quickly the bar empties
Regen Rate	1 – 30 %/s	How quickly it refills while driving
Regen Delay	0 – 10 s	Cooldown before refilling starts
Refill on Lap	on / off	Bar back to 100% at each new lap

Standard or Extreme¶

Standard (default) raises engine power and torque. Every car still stops at its own top speed, because GTA caps that from the vehicle's handling file — so a bigger multiplier gets you there sooner, it does not take you past it. Turn Boost Power up to 10× in Standard and a slow car will leap off the line and then hit exactly the same wall it always did. That is not a bug; that is the ceiling.

Extreme lifts the ceiling for as long as the button is held, and opens the boost with a shove. A car that tops out at 200 km/h will run to roughly 360 while boosting and settle back the moment you let go. This is what other servers are doing when their nitrous feels enormous.

What Extreme costs you, honestly:

Overshot checkpoints. Arriving at a gate 80 km/h faster than the track was designed for means missing it.
Real air over crests, and cars that do not always land the right way up.
At those speeds, collisions between players get less predictable — each game is guessing harder about where everyone else is.

A Race Director speed limit always wins. If a director has limited the field, Extreme will not lift that ceiling, and letting go of the boost never clears the limit either.

Tuning lives in Config.Nitro: extremeSpeedMult (default 1.8× the car's own top speed) and extremeKick (default 6 m/s opening shove — set 0 for the raised ceiling with no kick). Past about 2.5× the handling stops coping.

Where to put the sliders¶

Everything at maximum gives you nitrous that never runs out:

Slider	Max	What it gives you
Boost strength	10.0×	Ten times engine power
Torque multiplier	10.0×	Bites hard from low revs
Drain rate	5 %/s (the minimum)	The bar lasts 20 seconds of holding
Regen rate	30 %/s	Empty to full in 3.3 s
Min speed to regen	0 m/s	Refills even at a standstill
Regen delay	0 s	Starts refilling the instant you let go
Full refill each lap	on	Topped up every lap regardless

Drain 5 against regen 30 with no delay refills six times faster than you can spend it, which is permanent boost in practice.

What actually races well:

	Boost	Torque	Drain	Regen	Delay
Standard	4.0×	4.0×	15 %/s	15 %/s	1.0 s
Extreme	5.0×	5.0×	20 %/s	12 %/s	1.0 s

Past about 4× in Standard you gain nothing on a straight — you are still stopping at the car's own top speed, just arriving sooner, so the extra only sharpens the launch. In Extreme, 8–10× belongs on something wide and open: on a street circuit you reach gates far faster than the track was drawn for and spend the race reversing back to checkpoints.

Two things that catch people out:

Boost cuts out while airborne. Deliberate — otherwise every crest launches you into orbit. On a bumpy track at high multipliers you leave the ground often enough that the boost keeps dropping out.
Drifting pays. There is a +5 %/s regen bonus while the car is sideways, on top of your regen rate.

And one for the racing rather than the physics: when regen outruns drain, the NOS bar stops being a resource and every race is flat out. Fun once. If you want the boost to be a decision, keep drain at 25–40 %/s against regen 8–12 %/s so people have to pick their moment.

Assisted races and the results note¶

Added 19 September 2026.

Some settings change what lap time is achievable. Four of them are now saved with every result, so a fast time can be judged honestly months later:

Assist	Why it counts
Nitro (NOS)	Every driver had a rechargeable boost
Slipstream	Drivers gained speed while drafting
Catch-up	Trailing drivers were boosted and leaders slowed — it changes finishing positions more than nitro does
Reversed route	The track ran backwards, so the times are not comparable at all

Fair start and ghost on contact are deliberately not recorded: they change the start and the contact rules, not the time you can set.

What you see¶

When any of them was on, the results board gains an italic amber line naming them, with a tooltip explaining each one. The same note appears under the board on the race's page on raycin.com.

It records, it never judges. The race counts. Positions, points, ELO and records all behave exactly as they always have, and the times are shown as normal. The note exists so you can decide, per track and per race, whether a result is official.

Three different answers, on purpose¶

On raycin.com a race result says one of three things, and they do not mean the same thing:

What it says	What it means
Clean race (green)	Recorded, and nothing was on. Directly comparable
Assisted race (amber)	Recorded, and these assists were on
Assists not recorded (grey)	The race ran before 19 September 2026. The settings are genuinely unknown

That last one matters: an old fast lap is not a verified clean lap, and showing it as blank would have implied it was.

Race boards saved as PDF, and the board images posted to Discord, are unchanged — the note is on the in-game board and the website only.

Damage and Death¶

Three separate settings decide what a crash actually costs you, and they produce completely different races.

	Where	The driver	The car
Default	—	Cannot die. Invulnerable, armour and health pinned every frame	Ordinary GTA damage — dents, smoke, engine wear
Natural GTA Death	Race Options → ⚙️ Race	Mortal. GTA's own damage model decides	Ordinary GTA damage
Explode on Impact	Race Options → ⛽ Systems → 💥 Damage	Invulnerable (unless Natural Death is also on)	Pinned perfect, then an instant fireball

What the vanilla GTA equivalent is¶

Natural GTA Death is the vanilla one. It does not add a damage model — it removes the invulnerability the race normally gives you, and GTA's own rules take over from there. A hard head-on, a bad landing from height, an explosion, drowning, being hit by traffic: whatever would kill you in free roam now kills you in a race. There is no speed threshold and no special case. A 40 mph shunt is usually survivable; a heavy frontal at racing speed or a 200 m jump landed badly generally is not. After death a sound plays, and about 3 seconds later the normal respawn picks you up — you are not out of the race.

It is forced off for Sumo modes, where being knocked out is the elimination, and it does not re-enable weapons. This is about crashes, falls and traffic, not turning races into PvP.

Explode on Impact has no vanilla equivalent — it is the opposite of one. Vanilla GTA degrades a car gradually: panels dent, the engine smokes, power fades, and eventually it catches fire. Explode on Impact holds the car at perfect health every single frame — no dents, no smoke, no power loss, ever — and then detonates it in one go when you hit something hard enough. Binary: flawless or fireball.

Speed-loss threshold¶

The slider is how much speed you lose in a single instant, not how fast you are going. Twenty metres per second is roughly 72 km/h scrubbed off in one frame, which is what hitting a solid wall at pace looks like.

Threshold	Roughly	What survives
5–10 m/s	18–36 km/h lost	Almost nothing. Clip a kerb and you are gone
15–25 m/s (20 default)	54–90 km/h lost	Wheel rubs and light contact
30–40 m/s	108–144 km/h lost	Most ordinary racing contact
45–50 m/s	162–180 km/h lost	Only a catastrophic head-on

It also detonates on a hard landing — airborne, then not, while falling faster than 25 m/s. That one is not on the slider, so jump tracks stay dangerous even at a forgiving threshold. There is a half-second cooldown between explosions so one crash cannot chain.

The two settings stack. Explode on Impact alone blows the car up and respawns you. Add Natural GTA Death and the explosion can kill the driver too.

Fun Horns¶

Race Options → ⛽ Systems → Fun Horns → Random horn per racer.

Every racer is given one random horn at race start and keeps it for the whole race. It is cosmetic — it changes nothing about pace, handling or scoring.

The roll happens on the server, so everyone agrees on who has what. Duplicates between racers are allowed.
The pool is 43 of GTA's own horns, hand-picked by ear. GTA's musical single-note scale horns are deliberately left out.
The horn is yours, not your car's. A respawn, a vehicle transform or a mid-race reroll would normally wipe it, so it is re-applied whenever your vehicle changes. That is what makes "same horn all race" actually hold.
You are not told which horn you got, because GTA exposes no names for them. Press the horn and find out.
These are the game's real horns, so other racers hear yours positionally with no extra work.

It is available in every mode, and switches itself on by default when Vehicles Mode is Random (Host Classes) — the mode it suits best.

When it looks like it is not working¶

Horn availability is per vehicle model, and two honest outcomes look identical to a broken feature:

Some models expose no horn mods at all. You keep that car's stock horn. The race-start message says so when this happens.
Your model may not reach the rolled horn. The roll is made against the whole pool, which cannot know what your car supports, so it is clamped down to the highest that model has. On a car with few horns, several racers can end up sharing one.

Run /myhorn in game to settle it. It prints the horn you were assigned, how many that vehicle offers, which one is actually applied and why — then plays it. (/hornagain is a different tool: it replays the /hornnext discovery stepper, not your race horn.)

Smoking Checkpoints¶

An optional look for checkpoints: two coloured smoke columns, one either side of the road, that you drive between. Aimed at Street Race, but purely visual, so it is not restricted by category.

It is a gate, not a decoration — the columns sit square across your direction of travel, and the gap between them is set by the checkpoint's own size. A track built with larger checkpoints automatically gets a wider gate.

Only the checkpoint you are driving toward is ever drawn, so a 200-checkpoint track costs exactly the same as a 20-checkpoint one: two columns live at a time (four on split-gate tracks that span a dual carriageway).

Hiding the ring costs you the direction arrow

The native checkpoint ring also carries the chevron pointing at the next checkpoint. With the ring hidden you have the gate but no in-world cue for which way the route turns, so on a blind corner you are relying on the minimap. Try a corner both ways with /cpfx ring before committing.

Detection is never affected. Whether you pass a checkpoint is a distance test that has nothing to do with the marker, so hiding the ring cannot make a gate impossible to pass.

Turning it on: the "Before you start" card¶

You are asked every race, in one card that appears when the host presses Start:

Before you start
Asked fresh every race — nothing here is remembered.

  [x] 🏁  Post results board
          Saved to raycin.com and posted to Discord.

  [ ] 💨  Smoking checkpoints
          Two smoke columns either side of the road that you drive between.
            smoke | steam | fire | flare
            [ ] Hide the checkpoint ring

              [ Start race ]

Tick Smoking checkpoints and the style picker and ring toggle appear beneath it. Nothing is remembered between races — deliberately, so it is a conscious choice each time rather than a setting you forget is on.

The card is data-driven: adding another per-race question later means adding one entry to PRE_RACE_ITEMS in html_v3/js/vp-panel.js, and the rendering, state and answer payload all follow from it.

Styles¶

Style	Effect	Takes a colour?
smoke	Big diffuse gas cloud. Most presence at distance, but it renders in its own pale green	No
steam	Tight column, and it tints properly — this is the one to use for coloured gates. Red by default	Yes
fire	Fire ring	No
flare	Firework fountain, gold by default	Yes

Colour depends on the asset, not on you

Whether a style responds to a colour is a property of GTA's particle asset. smoke and fire render their own colour and will ignore anything you set — /cpfx info reports this per style, and /cpfx colour warns you when the active style will not respond. If you want a coloured gate, use steam.

Trying it in game¶

Change the style on the checkpoint in front of you without restarting. It tells you how many checkpoints it re-armed, so if nothing happens you know why.

Command	What it does
`/cpfx`	Cycle to the next style
`/cpfx fire`	Jump straight to one — `smoke`, `steam`, `fire`, `flare`
`/cpfx colour 0 200 255`	Set the colour live — `r g b`, each 0–255
`/cpfx colour #00c8ff`	Same, as hex (the `#` is optional)
`/cpfx colour reset`	Back to the style's own colour
`/cpfx ring`	Toggle the native checkpoint ring on/off
`/cpfx off`	Force it off for you
`/cpfx default`	Stop overriding, go back to the race setting

Config settings¶

config/config_client.lua → Config.CheckpointFx

Setting	Default	Effect
`enabled`	`false`	Master default. The per-race host prompt overrides it
`style`	`"smoke"`	Which style to use — `smoke`, `steam`, `fire`, `flare`
`scale`	`1.0`	Multiplier on the style's own size (0.5–3.0 sensible). Lower this first if you ever see a frame-rate cost — the only real cost is the screen area the plume covers
`colour`	`nil`	`{r, g, b}` to force one colour on every style, or `nil` to let each use its own. Find one you like with `/cpfx colour` first, then put it here to make it permanent
`hideRing`	`false`	`true` = smoke only, hiding the native ring (see the warning above)

Performance¶

Very light. There is no per-frame work — the effect is created and destroyed only as you pass checkpoints, roughly once every 10–20 seconds. The particle asset loads once per race.

The only real cost is GPU fill rate: large plumes cover a lot of screen pixels. If that ever bites, drop scale, or switch from smoke to steam.

Pitstops¶

When the host enables Mandatory Pitstop in the Race Settings, all players must complete one or more timed pit stops. The Pit Stops counter in the HUD shows done / required.

Pitstop Modes¶

Lap Mode (default)¶

The pitstop triggers automatically when the driver completes the configured trigger lap (e.g. lap 3 on a 5-lap race).
The vehicle is frozen in place for the configured freeze duration (seconds), with a ghost effect applied.
The countdown is shown on screen. After the timer expires the driver is released.
One stop per race — once triggered it won't fire again.

Checkpoint Mode¶

The pitstop triggers each time the driver passes through a specific pitstop checkpoint.
The vehicle freezes for the configured duration, ghosts, then releases.
The HUD counter increments each time a stop is completed. Multiple stops per race can be required.

Zone Mode¶

A pit zone (x/y/z + radius) is configured in Race Settings. The driver must enter the zone and remain at ≤ 5 mph for the full freeze duration — a progress bar fills as they dwell.
If the driver speeds up or leaves the zone the progress bar resets and they must dwell again.
Supports per-lap requirements and DQ on Miss (auto-disqualify if per-lap requirement is missed at lap end).

Setting the pit zone coordinates — three methods:

Method A — Save with the track in raycin_creator (recommended)

Open raycin_creator → load or create your track.
Drive to the intended pit location in-world.
Open Race Detail submenu → click 📍 Set Pit Zone (Zone Pitstop mode).
Coordinates are captured from your current position and saved into the track JSON as ptz.
Optionally set the Pit Zone Radius (5–50 m) in the list that appears after setting.
Save/publish normally.

When the host opens this track in raycin_races the Zone fields in Race Settings auto-fill from the saved coordinates. A log line confirms: [PitZone] auto-filled from track: x=... y=... z=... r=...

Method B — Manual coordinate entry in Race Settings

Look up the world coordinates from a map tool or in-game /coords command.
In the race room → Race Settings → Pitstop section → enable Pitstop → set mode to Zone.
Three number inputs labelled X / Y / Z appear.
Enter the coordinates and click Apply.
The status row updates to "✓ Zone set (manual)".

Method C — In-world capture at race time

Travel to the pit location in-world (requires being near the track).
In Race Settings → Pitstop → Zone mode, click "📍 Set zone to my position".
Status updates to "✓ Zone set (in-world)".

Priority: if the track has saved ptz data it auto-fills when the room opens (source = "track"). In-world capture and manual entry override it (source = "live" or "manual") and won't be overwritten by the auto-fill.

Ghost During Stop¶

All three modes ghost the player's vehicle (semi-transparent, no collision) for the duration of the freeze. Prevents other players from being blocked by a stationary car.

Weather-Adjusted Duration¶

If the host changes the weather mid-race, the freeze duration is automatically recalculated from the original configured value:

Weather	Freeze duration multiplier
CLEAR, OVERCAST, CLOUDS, FOGGY, SMOG, NEUTRAL	× 1.0 (no change)
RAIN	× 1.5
THUNDER	× 1.5
BLIZZARD, SNOW, SNOWLIGHT, XMAS	× 1.5

Fuel and Tyre Restore¶

If Fuel System (Race Settings) or Tyre Wear is active, completing a pitstop (any mode) fully refuels the vehicle and restores tyre grip to 100%.

Fuel System¶

When the host enables Fuel System in Race Settings:

Each vehicle has a fuel bar visible in the HUD.
Fuel drains at the configured rate while racing.
A low-fuel notification fires at 20%.
When fuel reaches 0 the engine cuts out — the vehicle slows to a halt.
Fuel is restored to 100% by completing a pitstop (any mode).

Settings: Drain Rate (bar units per second), Start Level (0–100%).

Tyre Wear¶

When the host enables Tyre Wear in Race Settings:

Tyre grip (fTractionCurveMax) degrades by a fixed amount each lap.
A warning notification fires when grip falls below 30%.
Grip is fully restored by completing a pitstop.

Settings: Wear per lap, Minimum grip (floor before undriveable).

Vehicle Transform HUD¶

When the host enables Vehicle Transform in Race Settings, the race periodically swaps everyone into a new vehicle at the configured trigger points (lap boundary, time, checkpoint, etc.). Two on-screen notifications fire for each swap.

Swap notifications¶

1. Announce banner — fires when the trigger condition is met:

🔀 Vehicle Transform!  →  Zentorno

Appears centre-screen. Names the incoming vehicle so you know what you're about to be driving.

2. Countdown — if the host configured a Countdown Delay (seconds), a countdown fires after the announce banner before the actual vehicle swap:

  5  →  4  →  3  →  2  →  1  →  [SWAP]

Each digit replaces the last in the same banner position. The swap happens at 0 — you do not have to do anything; the vehicle change is automatic.

Example: Host sets Vehicle Transform → trigger = Every Lap → Countdown Delay = 5 s. At the lap line: "🔀 Vehicle Transform! → Adder" appears. A 5-second countdown fires. At 0 everyone transforms into an Adder simultaneously.

No-countdown variant: if Countdown Delay is set to 0, the announce banner still appears briefly but the swap happens immediately — no countdown.

Tip: If you're near the lap/checkpoint trigger at speed, the announce banner is your warning to straighten up and brace for the transition animation. The vehicle swap is slightly faster than a spawn — expect a brief visual flash.

Slipstream / Drafting Boost¶

When enabled in Race Settings, staying directly behind another vehicle at race speed charges a one-use speed boost.

Visual indicators¶

State	What you see
Drafting	Three green chevrons (›››) appear on screen, pulsing to indicate you are in the draft cone and charging the boost.
Boost ready → fires	A gold "BOOST!" flash appears as the boost triggers automatically.
Draft broken	Chevrons disappear immediately when you leave the draft zone.

The boost fires automatically once fully charged — you do not press a button. The chevrons are only visible to the drafting player, not to the vehicle being drafted.

Settings: Boost power, Minimum speed (m/s), Required draft time (seconds), Boost duration (seconds).

Weather Grip Effects¶

When the Race Settings Weather Event fires (or if rain/thunder was set at race creation):

Weather	Traction	Braking
Clear / Extra Sunny	100%	100%
Rain	75%	85%
Thunder	65%	80%
Blizzard	60%	75%
Snow Light	70%	82%

A Weather Grip percentage indicator appears in the HUD during degraded weather conditions.

Post-Race Rewind / Replay Ghost¶

(Disabled by default — performance impact on large fields)

When enabled by the server admin, every player's position, heading, and speed is recorded every 100 ms during a race into a circular buffer. After the race, the last N seconds can be replayed with ghost vehicles at each player's recorded positions. Recording infrastructure is in place; full playback UI is in development.

Config: Config.ReplayGhost.enabled = true in config/config_client.lua.

Race Points (RP) & Leaderboard¶

Race Points are awarded at the end of each race based on finishing position and accumulate across all races on the server.

Checking your RP¶

Click RP BOARD in the Race Menu (right-side tab) — top-10 leaderboard.
F10 → Player Hub → My Race Points — your personal total.
F10 → Player Hub → Top 10 Leaderboard — global ranking.

Stats Site¶

A web-based stats site shows all-time best times per track, track details, and the global leaderboard. Ask your server admin for the URL.

Fastest Lap Tracking¶

When Fastest Lap is ON in Race Settings, the fastest lap time across all players is tracked in real time. Whenever a new fastest lap is recorded the whole field is notified with the player name and time. A bonus RP amount is awarded if configured by the server admin.

If you set the race's fastest lap, a ⚡ FASTEST LAP gold banner appears on your screen confirming the achievement.

Post-Race Scoreboard¶

The scoreboard appears automatically when you finish or DNF. It shows position, vehicle, total time, best lap, and points for every driver. AI drivers earn the same position-based points as humans on this display (their points are cosmetic — they never enter the career RP leaderboard or ELO). A small Rate this track prompt appears in the top-right corner shortly after the scoreboard — positioned there so it never covers the results.

Finished racers also clear the finish area automatically: human finishers are removed from the world (frozen, invisible, vehicle despawned), and AI finishers drive on past the line for a few seconds before despawning — nobody is left parked across the finish line blocking racers still on track.

Lap Breakdown¶

After finishing a race, your row in the scoreboard has a small ▾ toggle button next to your name. Clicking it expands a row beneath your result showing your individual lap times:

L1  1:23.456   L2  1:22.987   L3  1:24.102

Lap breakdown is shown only for your own row — other players' per-lap times are not tracked client-side so no toggle appears on other rows.
The toggle only appears if you completed more than one lap (it is hidden in P2P / sprint races).
Click ▾ again to collapse the row.

Quick Rematch — ↺ REMATCH Button¶

When the scoreboard appears at the end of a race, the host only sees a ↺ REMATCH button at the bottom. Clicking it re-runs the same race instantly, skipping the lobby entirely. Other players just see the scoreboard.

What it does¶

One click → the server re-fires the race-start sequence on the same room, with everyone still in their seats. Players don't have to: - Return to the race lobby menu - Re-accept an invite - Re-pick a vehicle - Re-tick any race settings - Stand on the start grid manually

The grid loads, the countdown fires, the race begins again — typically in 3–5 seconds from button click to grid teleport.

What carries over (everything, unchanged)¶

Setting	Carries over?
Track	✓ Same one
Laps	✓ Same count
Vehicles Mode (Default / Specific / Personal / Random / Track Class)	✓ Same
Vehicle Classes / Vehicle Preset / Custom Vehicle List	✓ Same pool
Synchronised Roll, No Repeats, Per-Checkpoint Re-roll	✓ Same
Weather, Time of Day, Traffic, DNF Timer	✓ Same
Special modes — DLP, Hot Lap, Fair Start, Fuel, Tire Wear, Ghost-on-Contact, Explode on Impact, etc.	✓ Same
Roster (every player who finished, DNF'd, or was spectating)	✓ Re-grids together
Track Star Rating already given	✓ Not re-prompted

What gets re-rolled (intentionally)¶

What	Why
Sync rotation sequence (Synchronised Roll ON)	The server re-picks which vehicle each lap/checkpoint gets — same pool, fresh randomised order. So if your Custom List was 12 cars, lap 1 might have been the Adder last race and might be the Zentorno this race.
Random vehicle assignments (Sync OFF)	Each player re-rolls their starting vehicle from the same class pool.
Starting grid positions	Reshuffled (unless Fair Start / handicap-based starting order is enabled, in which case position depends on the previous race's result).
Lap timers, best laps, scoreboard	Wiped clean — it's a fresh race, not a continuation.
Career points (if enabled)	Each race is scored separately, so the rematch awards a new set of points based on its own finish positions.

What it can NOT do¶

Limitation	What to do instead
Add new players who joined the server during the race	Return to lobby → reopen the race room so they can join the normal way
Change track	Return to lobby → pick a new track
Change ANY race setting (laps, weather, VP options, etc.)	Return to lobby → adjust settings → start a new race
Drop a specific player from the roster	They must leave themselves (or you kick them in lobby) before rematch
Bring back a player who quit during the race	They must rejoin via the race browser before the rematch grid loads

Who can click it¶

Only the race host (the original room owner) sees the button.
If the host leaves before clicking, the button vanishes — host transfer doesn't carry it over. Anyone wanting another race must reopen the race room from the lobby.

Worked example — "Rapid-fire stunt session"¶

Scenario: 4 players, stunt-45 track, 6 laps, Custom Vehicle List of 6 bikes, Sync ON + No Repeats ON. Race ends. Everyone wants another go but with the SAME setup — just to see if anyone can beat their best lap.

Old workflow (without Rematch): 1. Host clicks "Back to Lobby" on scoreboard → lobby opens 2. All 4 players returned to lobby 3. Host re-opens the race room (same track) → 4 invites fire 4. 3 other players have to accept the invite again 5. Host re-applies all VP settings (or trusts they're still cached — depends on server) 6. Host clicks Start 7. ~30–60 seconds wasted between races, easy for someone to wander off

New workflow (with Rematch): 1. Scoreboard fades in → host sees ↺ REMATCH button 2. Host clicks it 3. ~3 seconds later — grid loads, countdown fires, race 2 starts. Same 4 players, same bikes pool, fresh rotation order. Best laps to beat are still in your head from a minute ago.

Why this matters: rematch keeps a session's momentum. Five quick rematches in a row = 5 short races with the same friends instead of 5 trips back to the lobby with people drifting off between them.

Common pitfalls¶

"I clicked Rematch but nothing happened." → You're not the host (or you were and lost host before clicking). Only the room owner can trigger it.
"Same race re-ran but the vehicles are different from last time." → Intentional. Sync rotation is re-rolled from the same pool each race so consecutive rematches don't feel identical.
"I want to tweak the laps before the next race." → Rematch can't change settings. Return to the lobby for any change.
"My friend joined the server mid-race — Rematch didn't include them." → Rematch only re-grids players who were in the room at the time. New arrivals need to wait for you to return to lobby.
"The Rematch button disappeared from my scoreboard." → Scoreboard auto-hides ~20 seconds after the race ends. The button goes with it. If you waited too long, return to lobby for the next race.

Recently Played Indicator¶

The race browser marks tracks that have been raced during the current session with a green ✓ PLAYED badge in the top-left corner of the card, helping hosts avoid repeating the same track.

Track Record Holder¶

Each track card in the race browser shows the current record holder's name and time (e.g. ⏱ 1:23.456 Alan) so you can see who holds the fastest lap before selecting a track.

Spectator Mode¶

When you DNF, are eliminated, or use quit_race during a race, you enter Spectator Mode — you stay in the world and can watch the remaining drivers without being teleported away.

Camera Modes¶

Cycle through camera modes using the spectator key bindings:

Mode	Description
Follow Cam	Attached behind the spectated vehicle, smooth trailing camera
Cinematic Cam	Rotating orbit camera — slowly circles the spectated vehicle for a broadcast-style view
Free Cam	Full manual camera control — WASD/left stick to move, mouse/right stick to look
Helicopter Cam	Fixed overhead looking straight down at the spectated vehicle

Switching Between Players¶

Next player → / Previous player ← — cycle through all remaining active drivers

Exiting Spectator¶

Use the quit_race key binding to leave spectator mode completely and return to freemode.
The race results screen appears automatically when the last driver finishes — you will see the full scoreboard even from spectator mode.