rFactor 2 Deploys Hotfix to Improve AI Racing

rFactor 2 AI Hotfix IndyCar Indianapolis Romain Grosjean.jpg
As the multiplayer aspect of sim racing has become increasingly important, focus on the offline elements of a title has become a rarity - which is why singleplayer-focused racers will likely appreciate the latest rFactor 2 update: A hotfix improves numerous issues concerning AI racing and paves the way for a better offline experience.

Image credit: Studio 397

Getting the AI to behave in a believable manner is not an easy task for racing simulations: They should be predictable enough to be at the same competitive level relative to the player for certain difficulty settings, but not behave like robots on track, instead mimicking the behavior of real pilots. The latter point has received special attention in the rF2 update.

The computer-controlled opposition tended to lift off the throttle in the middle of a corner when shown a blue flag, and running into the rear of players who braked and changed direction also did not contribute to pleasant racing against the AI. Both of these issues have been taken care of, as well as better lapping behavior and the elimination of suicidal overtaking manoeuvers that lead to accidents.

rFactor 2 Ford Focus ST 2023 BTCC Brands Hatch.png

Races against the AI should be a much smoother affair after rFactor 2's most recent patch. Image credit: Studio 397

Emergency Overdrive​

Avoiding crashes via an emergency mode is also on the improvement list: Studio 397 has implemented this feature so the AI will overdrive the car to avoid an obstacle, which may still lead to spins or crashes, but should prevent them from mindlessly running into an avoidable obstacle.

Unrelated to the AI, the patch also fixes an issue that many sims have had over the years, namely that of unrealistic AI lap times when skipping to the end of a session. They are now simulated to prevent ultra-fast, impossible times that leave the player stranded further back in the standings than they should have been.

You can find the full changelog of the update below.

Build: 11731633
Server: 11731638

Change log:​

  • Fixed cars rolling over
  • Introduced behaviour to deal with understeer and oversteer
Fixed various issues related to AI limits:
  • AI no longer ignore walls to attempt an overtake
  • AI won’t deliberately leave the track anymore to overtake
  • AI only leave the track if they get pushed off, rather than going into the grass to keep their safety distance to other cars

  • Fixed AI attempting to overtake when the laws of physics would not allow them to leave their line without crashing
  • Fixed an issue where cars would refuse to pit because other cars already requested a pit stop, causing them to run out of fuel in Qualifying
  • Fixed AI randomly starting to shake and getting confused when overtaking another car, falling back or crashing
  • Fixed cars running off the racing line and sometimes even into walls for a few seconds after spinning
  • Fixed AI sometimes not braking enough for their pit boxes
  • Added a warning to moddev when pit boxes don’t have waypoints, making them inaccessible to AI
  • AI no longer move off the racing line into the middle of the track when shown blue flags, which caused traffic jams
  • In addition to the previous fix, AI no longer lift off in corners when shown the blue flag - They will not fight back and stay predictable, following multiclass rules
  • AI no longer incorrectly interpret player car’s deceleration and change of direction as acceleration - This fixes AI cars rear ending the player
  • Various fixes and improvements for AI pedal inputs, including improved draft behaviour
  • Fixed waypoint lapdist inaccuracies completely disabling AI braking, causing cars to run flat out into walls especially in or near the pits
  • Fixed various issues with obstacle evasion, improving AI behaviour around cars out of control. Known issue: AI still occasionally fail to move off the racing line if they encounter an obstacle on the racing line mid-corner
  • Added emergency state for AI allowing them to overdrive the car if necessary to avoid hitting walls or obstacles
  • Improved safety car physics in wet conditions
  • Fixed AI moving off their lines instantly, causing them to spin frequently if other cars are around - This fixes their behaviour to change lines just enough to get to where they need to be as efficiently as possible
  • Fixed “Finish Session” and “Next Session” to actually finish the session, simulating the rest of it. When the player chooses to skip Qualifying, this will still ensure a reasonable starting grid
Click to expand...

Your Thoughts​

What do you think about the focus on the AI for this most recent update? How often do you race offline? Let us know in the comments below!
  • Like
Reactions: GMILTON, Adyl, Maddin71287 and 7 others
About author
Yannik Haustein
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

More in rFactor 2

Comments

S
bozakn said:
Hey mate, how exactly can I reaquire the json file from Steam?
I've done some modifications ages ago, and forgot to backup the original.
Click to expand...
delete it, or move it out of the rF2 folder so there is none anymore. If you then launch the game it should be created for you in the right place. Alternatively verify the game files via steam after deletion of your file, after a short check it should find some (one or more) files missing or bad and replace those/this
 
R
tr1v1um said:
Sorry if my post came across as a bit agressive but some discussions make it just too apparent that the simracing community is completely spoilt and doesn't know how comfy our hobby is. I hope you are aware that this hobby wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't for the great support of any developer out there, and this goes back to the early ISI days. It's no god given garantuee that developers will even allow modding and then I read comments like yours and it reads like a story from uthopia.

I don't think that it is acknowledged often enough but modmanagement and support with the wiki like in rF2 with the workshop integrated into the UI and still having the options to manualy install mods the good old way is not just on the very sharp end for sim racing but gaming in general. It doesn't get much better. Sure, there are a few areas that could be improved but that's whining on a very high level. Not even ArmA III has mod support that goes as far as installing mods ingame via the workshop. What else do you actually need? You go to content management ingame, enter the workshop enter a few keywords, use the filters or tags that were and you have a very good chance to find 3rd party content that actually looks good and works decently. You can even do that while you aren't on your PC. For some people it might sound like a burden but it's very nice to have a choice. You can't demand people to maintain their mods for over ten years with an evolving platform and the studio doing that work isn't possible due to lisencing and finacnial reasons.

As @sbabb allready mentioned, what you are asking for is out of this world. Who is going to pay the modmanagement staff? You can't have sustainable development like that, if your small team is busy enough with keeping official content up to date and creating new one. That even studios like Reiza struggle to support their DLCs for rF2 should give you an idea that content maintainance is a very time consuming task.
Click to expand...
Nothing is out of this world. Everythinf is question of will and communication and for sure, finance. As much I really disliked Slighty Mad Studios's practices against (and I use this word on purprose), we must admit Ian Bell's talent and ability to see the things on a high scale and to find a way to finance he's ambitions (if I'm not wrong he already made a deal with a publisher for he's next game which is just nothing but promises at the moment). So it is largely possible. And The team behind Pista Motorsport is going to work on that aspect. Stagnation won't do anything good for simracing.

I understand your point, we can do something with any piece of bad and disorganized software, we can do everything the developper is not willing or isn't able to do. I personnally don't have the time for that anymore (I used to edit every single modded car in GTR2 to make it have a right position in the grid when ending qualification session in multiclass racing as not any modder had the idea to add just a simple line in a file the had to edit anyway ; at the end we speak about thousands of cars) and modern players want modern softwares. When you see how simple it is to play AMS2 or Raceroom, obviously it is hard to get involved in such a repulsive piece of software.

Comparing Reiza to any rfactor2 modder is unfair as Reiza pays employees to update their content. At the same time, how S397 did not indicate in the contract mandatory updates for the content they allow developers to sell for their plateform? Again, this is borderline business practice from old times that didn't even really exist anywhere. All of this has to be heavily modernized, ambition, process, modding management (paid and unpaid), contracts and legal topics... Most of these games are still 2000 games in their spirit. That's also the limit of independant developpers, the lack of vision and money a publisher can help them to deeply conceptualize.
 
T
roadyroad said:
Nothing is out of this world. Everythinf is question of will and communication and for sure, finance. As much I really disliked Slighty Mad Studios's practices against (and I use this word on purprose), we must admit Ian Bell's talent and ability to see the things on a high scale and to find a way to finance he's ambitions (if I'm not wrong he already made a deal with a publisher for he's next game which is just nothing but promises at the moment). So it is largely possible. And The team behind Pista Motorsport is going to work on that aspect. Stagnation won't do anything good for simracing.

I understand your point, we can do something with any piece of bad and disorganized software, we can do everything the developper is not willing or isn't able to do. I personnally don't have the time for that anymore (I used to edit every single modded car in GTR2 to make it have a right position in the grid when ending qualification session in multiclass racing as not any modder had the idea to add just a simple line in a file the had to edit anyway ; at the end we speak about thousands of cars) and modern players want modern softwares. When you see how simple it is to play AMS2 or Raceroom, obviously it is hard to get involved in such a repulsive piece of software.

Comparing Reiza to any rfactor2 modder is unfair as Reiza pays employees to update their content. At the same time, how S397 did not indicate in the contract mandatory updates for the content they allow developers to sell for their plateform? Again, this is borderline business practice from old times that didn't even really exist anywhere. All of this has to be heavily modernized, ambition, process, modding management (paid and unpaid), contracts and legal topics... Most of these games are still 2000 games in their spirit. That's also the limit of independant developpers, the lack of vision and money a publisher can help them to deeply conceptualize.
Click to expand...
Why S397 not forced Reiza and the Kartsim guys contractually to maintain their content eternaly is pretty simple. They aren't holding the paltform rights for where the content is sold. That's Valve with the Steam platform and it would be a pretty wierd strategy if I am honest next to the fact that it isn't "their" content. That would be the same like forcing people to maintain their sold products on Ebay. I also don't think that Ian Bell is a good example for making the right decisions from a consumer perspective, because most of his titles have disappaered by now, wich is even more funny when we remember that all Project Cars titles were released after rF2. You can make out of this what you want, but rF2 had far more support than any Ian Bell title, especialy when it comes to modding.

And how Pista will work is something that needs to be seen. We've seen plenty of promises over the years but when it came to realizing such promises it mostly turned out to be more complex and difficult than expected, even for established studios.
 
R
tr1v1um said:
Why S397 not forced Reiza and the Kartsim guys contractually to maintain their content eternaly is pretty simple. They aren't holding the paltform rights for where the content is sold. That's Valve with the Steam platform and it would be a pretty wierd strategy if I am honest next to the fact that it isn't "their" content. That would be the same like forcing people to maintain their sold products on Ebay. I also don't think that Ian Bell is a good example for making the right decisions from a consumer perspective, because most of his titles have disappaered by now, wich is even more funny when we remember that all Project Cars titles were released after rF2. You can make out of this what you want, but rF2 had far more support than any Ian Bell title, especialy when it comes to modding.

And how Pista will work is something that needs to be seen. We've seen plenty of promises over the years but when it came to realizing such promises it mostly turned out to be more complex and difficult than expected, even for established studios.
Click to expand...
Well, you obviously chose to missunderstand and ignore some facts. You really think anyone can sell content for rfactor2 through steam without any contact with S397 (if ti is the case this is the most incompetent company ever, I doubt Steam would let that happen)? Ian Bell example is about how to finance ambitious projects and get the means of one's ambitions. Distorting one's statements unfortunately just leads to unproductive dIscussion. Anyway, rfactor2 is the best game game and piece of software ever, no need for a improvement for duture racing games, we don't need them, what they could do better than rfactor2, any innovation they could bring, these are just pure illusions or lies. Good luck with explaining that to the current and future simracers.
 
Last edited:

Latest News

Article information

Author
Yannik Haustein
Article read time
2 min read
Views
6,340
Comments
47
Last update

Share this article

How often do you meet up (IRL) with your simracing friends?

  • Weekly

    Votes: 32 8.5%

  • Monthly

    Votes: 19 5.0%

  • Yearly

    Votes: 28 7.4%

  • Weekly at lan events

    Votes: 3 0.8%

  • Monthly at lan events

    Votes: 2 0.5%

  • Yearly at lan events

    Votes: 10 2.7%

  • Never have

    Votes: 291 77.2%
See comments…
Back
Top