i know most of this community operates on trust, but i'm suspicious that there are some bad actors.

also, as far as i know, the "no Repo mods" rule is entirely unenforced.

i suggest enforcing players to show their Mods menu at the end of runs- and also on top of that enforce players to show their Vehicle Config menu in Time Trials as well (& other races that allow changing parts). this isn't a perfect solution- as it's pretty easy to modify the files in this game, but it's a start...

i'd also like to bring up maybe showing the tuning tab as well. personally- i'm fine with people keeping tuning secrets as it's supposed to be competitive, but it's also another area that can be abused. (e.g, higher than vanilla Nitrous shots). not sure what can be done here...

the last thing i'd like to suggest is enforcing players to use the Replay feature for runs. however, this would ruin being able to keep tuning secrets, because then any player would be able to download the replay and view the tune. so instead, having it so runners need to share it only by request of a verifier/moderator might be better maybe. however, this opens up the possibility of a scandal of verifiers/mods stealing WR because they can see the tune.

(smth i forgot to mention. it also seems pretty easy to play the game in slowmo and then speeding it back up in video editing software, to pass it off as legit. menu & ui sounds aren't slowed and pitched but everything else is. this is a problem!)

So I'm gonna have to argue against the replay feature - It does sound really good as an idea, however, the second I turn on replay my PC is bogged down. That's without even recording the game. I am 100% with you on the 'bad actors' part, though. More should be done to enforce fair play.

I think the people I run against are fair, real, and honest - and that's probably me trusting too much. I still have recognized quite a few times how easy it is to cheat in Beamng speedruns. Insanely easy. Using mods, editing video, and more. In fact, more than once the idea of a LUA script to edit Garage to Garage runs has come up, and I just don't think it should be allowed to edit the game. I can't even imagine how the time trial or drag strip runs are vetted, when using Agent_Y's mod, or editing files to increase grip by even 1% more is going to be an advantage.

No mean to dis you, but this point "(smth i forgot to mention. it also seems pretty easy to play the game in slowmo and then speeding it back up in video editing software, to pass it off as legit. menu & ui sounds aren't slowed and pitched but everything else is. this is a problem!)"

is a bit bogus, too. If you've ever sped up the slowed down audio, it isn't perfect sounding. Even 2X slow-mo sped back up has some artifacting to it, and the further you go the more noticeable it is. It's like the video editing argument in general - Anyone can edit a video and make something seem more legitimate than it is, like I could slow down Mario 64 in Cheat engine and speed it back up later. If you have real concerns about slow motion gameplay, you should point out suspect videos and why you think they're suspect to the mods. And that's only the video editing aspect - There's of course gameplay tells with slowed down video. Lots of scenarios include player input as UI apps, too.

I think the only way to mostly reduce any possible cheating is Beamng themselves creating a speedrun launcher option, which includes a watermark and certain tells that 'proves' a player is playing fair. What those certain tells are? IDK. But I also think more could still be done by the mod team in rule setting, similar to some of your suggestions, cuz I think cheating is far too easy right now. There might even be one among us, spooky.

You make valid points regarding cheating. A lot of the rules are indeed not possible to enforce unless it's very obvious.

As PlanetXtreme said, minor changes like +2% grip or slightly more nitrous when it would normally blow up the engine could be just enough to gain the advantage and would be almost impossible to tell. Even a Lua script for g2g to get better vehicles can be done and easily passed off as just having amazing RNG.

The issue with displaying the mods menu at the end of the run is that it would be pretty annoying to void your run because you forgot to open the menu. And yes, you can just modify the vehicle files instead which would not be visible from the menu. It is super tedious to scroll through all the parts and tuning tab after a run.

Using a replay can tank fps and the file size is huge. They also tend to break after updates, so I do not think it's a reasonable choice, even though it would give you full information of the run.

Ultimately, I agree that a solution could be some kind of speedrun launcher or a mod that vets the run automatically against the criteria that ensures it is "legit", but this is a much more complex task than it initially seems. Simply adding more and more rules that the player has to follow manually is going to get overwhelming and lead to a lot of false positives because something minor was missed from the rules.

Unless we get a launcher or a repository mod I dont think we can do shit. Everything else we currently can do would just make it a little bit harder for cheaters and a whole lot more annoying for legit players. If you are sussed out by someone please tell us mods so we can investigate.