ELS vs non-ELS vehicles: what is the difference?

Non-ELS vehicles use what the game already has. The model contains siren bones with light meshes on them, a siren setting in carcols.meta defines when each one flashes and in what colour, and carvariations.meta assigns that setting to the car through sirenSettings. Pressing the siren key turns the whole pattern on. The game synchronises it between players itself.

ELS vehicles hand control to a script. The lights are modelled as vehicle extras that the script switches on and off many times a second according to patterns, with separate stages for primary, secondary and warning lights, plus takedowns, scene lights and several siren tones. The configuration for each model lives in a VCF file. ELS began as a single-player mod; on FiveM it is provided by a server resource that reimplements it, the best known being ELS-FiveM.

Download pages on gta5-mods.com and similar sites normally state which kind a vehicle is, often in the title. If nothing is stated, a .xml VCF in the download means ELS, and a carcols.meta with a Sirens block means non-ELS.

For a non-ELS vehicle, install it like any add-on car and make sure the carcols and carvariations metas are loaded:

files {
    'data/vehicles.meta',
    'data/carcols.meta',
    'data/carvariations.meta',
}

data_file 'VEHICLE_METADATA_FILE' 'data/vehicles.meta'
data_file 'CARCOLS_FILE' 'data/carcols.meta'
data_file 'VEHICLE_VARIATION_FILE' 'data/carvariations.meta'

For an ELS vehicle, install the car resource and an ELS resource, then give the ELS resource the car's VCF:

1. Install the vehicle resource and start it as usual.
2. Install an ELS resource and start it in server.cfg.
3. Copy the vehicle's VCF into the ELS resource's VCF folder, named exactly after the spawn name, for example police3.xml.
4. Register the file in the ELS resource's configuration if it keeps a list of VCF files, then restart the ELS resource.

The ELS installation guide covers the full procedure. For vehicles packaged for LSPDFR, start with converting LSPDFR police cars to FiveM.

• ELS car with every light bar and accessory visible at once, and no flashing: the server has no ELS resource running, or no VCF for that model, so nothing is managing the extras.
• ELS lights work for the driver but not for others: an outdated or misconfigured ELS resource; check its own documentation and version.
• Non-ELS car with no flashing lights: sirenSettings is 0, the carcols.meta is not loaded, or its siren ID collides with another vehicle's.
• Non-ELS car flashing another vehicle's pattern: a siren ID conflict. Give the setting an unused ID in carcols.meta and update carvariations.meta to match.
• Renamed vehicle lost its lights: the VCF file name, or the modelName in carvariations.meta, still uses the old name.

Emergency vehicles from gta5-mods.com can be converted from the emergency vehicles page. The conversion produces the vehicle resource; the ELS resource and VCF placement remain a server-side step.