Vehicle disappears at a distance

If an add-on car vanishes, or turns into a blurry low-detail block, when you drive a short way off, it is almost always one of two things: its LOD distances are too low, or OneSync has stopped sending it to you. This guide covers both.

Cause 1: LOD distances are too low

Vehicles are drawn in several levels of detail (LODs). Close up you see the full model, further away the game switches to simpler versions, and past the last distance the car isn't drawn at all. These distances are set per vehicle in vehicles.meta.

1. Open the vehicle's data folder and open vehicles.meta.
2. Find the entry whose <modelName> is your vehicle's spawn name.
3. Find the <lodDistances> block. It looks like this:

<lodDistances content="float_array">
  15.000000
  30.000000
  60.000000
  120.000000
  500.000000
  500.000000
</lodDistances>

4. Raise the values, keeping the same number of lines. Each value should be equal to or higher than the one above it. The first values decide how long the full-detail model is kept, the last ones decide when the car stops being drawn.
5. Save and restart your server.

As a starting point for a car that disappears too soon, try:

<lodDistances content="float_array">
  50.000000
  100.000000
  200.000000
  300.000000
  500.000000
  500.000000
</lodDistances>

Why some cars need this more than others

Some add-on cars ship without lower-detail models, so there is nothing to switch to and the car simply disappears at the first distance. Raising the first values keeps the full model for longer, which fixes it. The best fix is a model with proper LODs, which is what we ship with our vehicles.

Players' own graphics settings also matter: a lower Extended Distance Scaling in the game's advanced graphics settings makes every vehicle switch to low detail sooner.

Cause 2: OneSync culling

With OneSync on, the server only sends each player the entities near them. A vehicle outside that range (about 424 metres by default) is removed from your client and appears again when you come closer. This looks just like a LOD problem, but no meta change fixes it, and it happens to every vehicle, not just one model.

Signs it is culling and not LODs:

• It happens to every car, including GTA V's own vehicles.
• The car is gone completely, not shown in low detail first.
• It happens at about the same distance every time.

For a few important vehicles, you can give them a bigger range from a server script with SetEntityDistanceCullingRadius:

-- server side, after the vehicle is created
local vehicle = CreateVehicle(`police`, coords.x, coords.y, coords.z, heading, true, true)
SetEntityDistanceCullingRadius(vehicle, 1000.0)

Use this sparingly. Every entity sent further means more network traffic for every player.

Still disappearing?

• Check you edited the right entry, and that no other resource defines the same <modelName> (the last one to start wins).
• Restart the whole server and reconnect. Meta changes don't always apply on a resource restart.
• Look at the server console for warnings about oversized assets. Files over 16 MB can fail to load at range.