WATCH: Comparing Sim Racing AI In 2024

Too bad that RF2 wasn't in the test. I had loads of fun with it on Riverside International Raceway in sports cars from the 60s with semi-aggressive AI at 100%. To me, the AI behaved almost human like.

Too bad AC wasn't in the test as it just has reached its peak player record. I don't know about the other sims but how good the AI is in AC is very depending on the AI lines the creator has made for the specific track. On almost most of the tracks I'm faster than the AI at 100% skill level but there are a couple of tracks that I'm not able to set the fastest lap time.

I must say that the AI lines are not customized for a cartype so on most tracks the AI really sucks when in a front wheel drive car.

Something to wish for AC Evo.

Just have to add that 3 crucial factors can make a world of difference, even for bedated sims:

• AIW work as per track
• AI Strength
• AI Aggression

And then a core parameter of which even most modern sims still have room for improvement:

• AI Pit Stop Strategy for endurance events

Must admit I didn't try the offline part in iRacing, but as the Jack of all Trades primarily offline simmer, I've used quite some time in huge various of sims through the years, i.e. apart from the mentioned list, 'real sims' dating long way back, and to me there's more surprises.

Non-surprises are ofc AMS2 and rF2.

AMS2 is still improving, enjoy modern day GTE+GT3 battles @ Campo Grande and Formula Junior (historic German Formula 3) @ Gesamtstrecke as continuated benchmarks for improved AI models, and still think AIW Gesamtstrecke needs some work, while AIW at Campo Grande really feels continuated improvements.

rF2 Callaway Corvette GT3-R events @ Portland have been a thrill right from the box.

But when you as an offline simmer reealy is striving for an all-encompassing experience, theres plenty of possibilities in AC.

Just with std dev tools, but also with the still improving CSP pack by x4fab and here among AI tweak section.
Up to real world Le Mans 24 Hour event I worked a week or so to set together special event of mixed huge 50 grid of unique historic teams up to present, worked a but with the AIW lines, quite alot more with individual AI strength/aggresstion per car/team (and then some CPU/graphics/VR optimizations).

And though my time ran out so had to deal with time accelerated round 40 laps scripted weather event I really had an exhillerationg experience!

Especially when racing a car with blind angles at full speed down the FM7 mod version of Mulsanne Straight...and suddenly out of nowhere in drizzles and puddles and light flares at the middle of the night you experience in your VR world a MUCH faster prototype literally flying by in an instance, where CrewChief crew just warned you blue flag a glimse ago.

This is top notch when the AI's has no hesitation, but still manage not to run over you and crash you.

Older sims with personal honourable mentions speaking close AI battles:

First and foremost: Copa Petrobras de Marcas. Reiza nailed it! AI's just WORKS from the box!

RACE: The WTCC Game and its SimBin ancestors as Race 07, etc.

AMS1

GTR1 (Yes I'm dead serious)

F1C99-02

EDIT: Totally forgot R3E!! And the grumpy gossip about awful VR experience I got around with some OpenXR and OpenComposite tweaks - for a couple of months VR racing the DTM 1992 pack @ Bilsterberg was my go-to! To my experience AI's atr trustworthy and reaction response impressively quick, and still no danger when maxing out AI Strength and Aggressiveness. In fact think I should put this aside Copa Petrobras in my personal top AI performance list.

HF2000 said:

Too bad AC wasn't in the test as it just has reached its peak player record. I don't know about the other sims but how good the AI is in AC is very depending on the AI lines the creator has made for the specific track. On almost most of the tracks I'm faster than the AI at 100% skill level but there are a couple of tracks that I'm not able to set the fastest lap time.

I must say that the AI lines are not customized for a cartype so on most tracks the AI really sucks when in a front wheel drive car.

Something to wish for AC Evo.

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Well, i dont think Emree is the best person to check how realistic the AI traffic is around tokyo, so maybe Overtake should ask Red Eye Warrior to make a video comparing AC with its main competitor, Forza Horizon on that, and throw the new Test Drive in the mix.

Now take a deep breath and relax, this is just a little tease

I would say only few racing games i played in the last 4 years have really great AI - F1 22 and 23, GRID Legends, SRX The Game and World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing. The opposite, bottom of the barel worst AI is in Assetto Corsa.

Strange as a choice RF2 2013 - AC 2014 are old RRE 2013 - IRacing 2015 are not old.

TomLehockySVK said:

really great AI - F1 22 and 23, GRID Legends, SRX The Game and World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing

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TomLehockySVK said:

bottom of the barel worst AI is in Assetto Corsa.

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Reading this post, puts the light on why nobody needs anyone else to tell them which AI is best, or worst.
Every one can decide for themselves.
At least, in this example above, I know this player taste in AI is a polar opposite to my taste, but that is not much and who cares.

TomLehockySVK said:

The opposite, bottom of the barel worst AI is in Assetto Corsa.

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I don't remember when was the last time I raced standard AC Kunos content without tweaks of the sim, but for this I remember ditto experience testing the beta-version and at release date.

I think this sim reach its high popularity still as of 2024 is not due to Kunos out of the box, but because of CM online lobbies/series features, CSP, SOL, Pure, Python app mods...and car mods of higher quality and speaking AI behavior track mods with thorough AI work.

Basically the CSP AI Tweak section as well as CM's easy feature of finetuning individual teams on the grid has to me made a world of difference for this sim.
Then adding x4fab's continuated CSP VR Tweaks, it's very good reasons for me still racing AC as one of my primary choices as of 2024...

My personal AI rating (of my sims currently played )

1.Raceroom (very good, sometimes too agressive)
2.AMS2 (good but bit schematic)
3. AC (good enough too have fun with, if you know how to set up and handle "them" on track. But does nothing special)
4. LeMans solid (sometimes too careless with the player)
5. rF2 only avarage -> (could be second or even best, if they would recognize the player on track and stop ramming him off the track unfortunately)

All in all all playable and nothing really bad or really great. Sometimes depending on car/track combo. So sometimes i even concider rF2 AI as best.

GT7 Sophy AI - I did a race against "her" on hard difficulty around Road Atlanta, I think either just 3 or 5 laps, myself using an Audi R8 LMS '15 - it was the most infuriating racing experience I've ever had, and probably ever will have...

In order to win (which I eventually did after many many attempts) I had to drive extremely aggressively, basically fully committing to every overtake with a win-it-or-bin-it approach, barging my way through which would've gotten me a black flag IRL due to extreme unsportsmanship behaviour. When not racing like a maniac against the AI I had to absolutely nail every apex - just one bad corner required a complete restart. It basically demanded perfection, and I very much got the impression that the game was massively rubberbanding the AI to match my performance, so the better I did the harder it became - to the extent that when I was racing practically absolutely perfectly the challenge therefore became almost impossible!

TLDR: GT7's Sophy feels like you're driving against their self-proclaimed "super AI" which is inhumanly perfect. That's great for a hardcore gaming challenge and I guess breaks new ground for "simracing" AI, but in its current implementation that doesn't make for a realistic experience whatsoever. I don't know if Sophy is supposed to be realistic, but if it is then I call massive BS on that. Regardless of Sophy or not though, they never make mistakes and it's just a race through a relatively slow procession, so there's definitely room for improvement there.

As for the others:

ACC: Terrible race-start AI, remaining in dual formation going into T1 so you can basically skip qualy, start from the back, and pass half the field (hoofing right between them) every single time before reaching T2. After that, they're well balanced if unspectacular performance at 100%.

F1 23 (don't have 24) - Either I'm rubbish or this game is made for the e-sport pro / alien racer scene as I sometimes have to have the AI very low (I think around 70) and I also find their pace inconsistent as on one track they'll demolish me and at another it'll be vice versa. I've also found their pace even more inconsistent between sessions, again when I'd get whooped in one session then I'd kick bottom myself the next. I hate having to set the difficulty below 100 on any game as I then feel inferior and inadequate, but 100 in the F1 games is just mental so I set it lower and try to forget. Besides, it's the only way I can get a Merc to win a race from last year (ouch).

AMS2 - Generally very solid and decent at 100% and I've had several great races against them.

Raceroom - The AI is weirdly schizophrenic, seemingly gladly moving over whenever you start to approach overtaking them, but when they're overtaking you the hit their Fast 'n Furious style 10x nitro canisters and try to blast right by and sometime even through you. 100% AI is well balanced but Adaptive just feels a bit gimmicky if not almost "arcadey".

AC1 - Quite the mixed bag - sometimes they race realistically but other times they've been the dumbest opponents that couldn't even pass a regular driving test. I've seen absolute mayhem when certain cars just can't take certain corners on certain tracks and I go around a corner to see 10 cars just everywhere. I've seen them all stuck because one car that'd crashed and ended up in the track, which was apparently too much to navigate around. Guess that's a modding issue?

rF2 - Very dated feeling AI, originally stuck in a train formation which is slightly improved with a text file tweak, but then they still have absolutely zero compromises or just basic reactions to yourself racing them. If you don't take constant avoiding action they'll have you off and I'm constantly racing in fear, which just ain't fun.

I don't have LMU (yet) and will never have iRacing as I don't conform to being constantly extorted so couldn't pass judgement there.

In summary, I agree with Emily in that most of these titles have good or even great AI. They're generally competent enough to race against and for what they are and can do that's an impressive feat of programming. That said, from a strictly offline racer myself, I'm becoming more tempted with going online just to see if I might be missing out on a better experience, or if I should remain happily reclusive.

As @stenovitz says, the details of the AI line and "hints" matter a ton in most sim racing games. If you, modders, or developers get this right, you can have a pretty great experience.

In isiMotor-derived games like F1C, rF1, GTR2, RACE 07, AMS1, and rF2, the line, raceable surface, track limits etc. are defined in the AIW file. There are also a bunch of numbers you can optimize on a per-track basis that make a big difference, since the AI run on simplified physics. I've actually led the effort to create a community website cataloguing AI-related tips and tweaks for this game engine.

I presume that Le Mans Ultimate is similar to rF2 behind the scenes, but we don't know for sure. In any case, the AI works brilliantly in that game. LMU is the first to offer AI that can race convincingly through slower class traffic at a speed comparable to the player – very exciting.

In AC, it's the AI line and "hints" that have to carefully optimized for each car-track combo. I have little experience racing with it, but I've heard the wheel-to-wheel racing is quite weak.

The ACC AI is passable but unexciting. My biggest frustration is that they leave a hilariously large amount of space when side-by-side, leading them to slow down a lot and take very awkward immersion-breaking lines. Also, the AI fast lines in ACC can be frustrating, often not using the full width of the track and thus leaving speed on the table (check out Misano for example).

RaceRoom isn't moddable, and I believe was originally somewhat based on isiMotor. However, to optimize their AI, it appears the devs have to follow a similar process to Assetto Corsa. Ever notice that RaceRoom AI cars are wildly fast through some corners at some tracks? AI cars appear to be given artificial speed and grip boosts through some corners – if the devs optimize this correctly, it means the AI can stay with you and provide a satisfying battle, but when there are issues, it can feel unrealistic and frustrating. It seems the devs have to sift through every car and track combo and dial in these parameters 'just right'. Must be tough!

Hah! Now I praised the vast AI opportunities in AC with various tools, but completely forgot :

AC AI starting behavior.

Certainly amongst the most awfull - maybe due to it's into my spine just staying reluctant untill the AI's have sorted it out, I forget all about this "small detail"
But from there on, AC tools delivers plenty of possibilities for excellent off line races still stressing your racing skills.

We all know the best AI is still Grand prix 4.

Richard Wilks said:

We all know the best AI is still Grand prix 4.

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Oh, reminds me of simulating the all-experience fragility part, reflecting the unique behavior of each team car, even down to pilots more unfortunate here than others.

Geoff Crammond's team already sorted this part out with Grand Prix 2.

The more I think about this, the more I feel that current AI is getting behind the times.

In fact, a recent LTT video pointed out that AI as we regard it isn't really AI, it's more just a set of specific predefined algorithms made purely to simply execute / perform a very specific function. AI doesn't act human as it doesn't (yet) have humanistic qualities or capabilities - it's currently just a tool and nothing more.

What I'd love to see AI do in simracing is to accurately mimic humans, flaws and all - AI that sticks to an inside line to block a block pass then struggle to hold the line post-apex because of their compromised entry, or AI who know that if they stick out a wide line while being overtaken in one corner that they could benefit by having the better racing line / entry in the next corner, or AI who put a squeeze on you to force rethinking an overtake, or have AI individuals who actually act individually (i.e.some drive smoothly, some erratic, some take squarer lines while others maintain smoother faster apexes, some defend aggressively etc), or have AI that behaves more extreme on the last lap / few corners so you knowingly could lose out to a divebomb that'd push you wide or even off-track.

We don't lack racing AI, but be do lack applying and receiving race-craft with them, which now I think of it, really sucks. I'm sure that it won't take long now for all the advancements in AI to reach our sims, and if they can nail that then we are in for some great times ahead.

Large Style said:

I'm sure that it won't take long now for all the advancements in AI to reach our sims, and if they can nail that then we are in for some great times ahead.

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Same thoughts here. Just my chat with ChatGPT recent hour with open human questions and info, corrections where the engine is missing correct answers and request for deeper investigation and ChatGPT's learning curve, I see this as a natural next step for offline simracing (edit: of which Sophy and stuff like that already has taken).

(However, the topic is ranking of current state sim AI abilities, but relevant discussion in general).

TomLehockySVK said:

I would say only few racing games i played in the last 4 years have really great AI - F1 22 and 23, GRID Legends, SRX The Game and World of Outlaws: Dirt Racing. The opposite, bottom of the barel worst AI is in Assetto Corsa.

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Thankyou for saving me the time of writing that...

As much as Codies and EA have dropped the ball with the F1 series since 2020, they still have far and above the best AI to have a believable race with... From how they race around you, make contact with you by mistake and how their strategies play out...

LMU had a great start, but as development of the player side physics is still ongoing it's going to be a while before they're fully tuned in... But with only 4 classes of cars it won't be too long before they have something on par with the F1 series...

Jack of all trade sims leave the SP side to the players to set up... The big thing I love about the F1 experience is that I can set the difficulty once and forget about it... In over hyped SP titles I basically need to do an entire test race including practice and qualy just to get the right difficulty for that one event...

Richard Wilks said:

We all know the best AI is still Grand prix 4.

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100% this! I somehow always forget about GP4. I need to play it more.

The feature-rich and immersive GP4 AI shows that you don't need fancy, computationally intensive new machine learning tricks. GP4's AI behaviour is determined entirely by a set of carefully defined "if this then that" rules and numerical parameters. You just need developers to put the time and resources into creating a satisfying single player AI racing experience.

Even Le Mans Ultimate shows this. Folks like Devin at Studio 397 were assigned to work on cleaning up the rF2 AI spaghetti code and optimizing it for multi-class racing... and the impressive results from this time and effort speak for themselves.

pz666 said:

Thankyou for saving me the time of writing that...

As much as Codies and EA have dropped the ball with the F1 series since 2020, they still have far and above the best AI to have a believable race with... From how they race around you, make contact with you by mistake and how their strategies play out...

LMU had a great start, but as development of the player side physics is still ongoing it's going to be a while before they're fully tuned in... But with only 4 classes of cars it won't be too long before they have something on par with the F1 series...

Jack of all trade sims leave the SP side to the players to set up... The big thing I love about the F1 experience is that I can set the difficulty once and forget about it... In over hyped SP titles I basically need to do an entire test race including practice and qualy just to get the right difficulty for that one event...

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In addition some sims have the 'adaptive AI' option, of which I used quite frequent back when FIA GTR was released.
Doesn't deliver perfect human-like close battles (though I remember quite a few close battles with aiS in a Porsche series), but helps alot on the competitive level on the long run where sims even as of today seems AI loosing race craft, just using standard sim facilities. Speaking, I agree F1 20, 22 and 23 (the newest codie stuff I have in my barn) is one of the better ones here, speaking pure race craft for a 1:1 grand prix distance.

the Adaptive AI in Raceroom works but it takes a lot of effort to "train" it properly
the "basic" AI determined by the lvl u choose is in the works after recent physics updates because these usually break some things in it, people frequently test and report anomalies that are being fixed over time but since there is like 60 tracks and idk how many cars it takes some time especially for exotic combos