AMS modding newbie here who recently got back into sim racing. I'm absolutely loving driving Automobilista, especially CART Extreme (since I'm a huge AOWR fan). Would love to contribute to this awesome game and put in some work on improving mod track AIWs – for example on the JNS Oval tracks.
How to go about doing this? Any experts have any tips they can share?
Disclaimer: I don't think this question has been explicitly addressed in existing threads. If it has, my apologies – in this case, it'd be greatly appreciated if you could direct me to those discussions.
**One potential method that came to mind after doing some research: for rFactor conversions, could one modify the AIW "the old-fashioned way" using the rFactor AIWCAM Editor on the old rFactor track and then use that AIW file in the AMS version?
Yep, only windows 7 for me. To put the icing on the cake, rfactor itself doesn't run on Windows 7 (Steam no longer supports it) but the editor does, so I have to reboot my PC and go into windows 10 to test any changes with the AI
It has been a few months since I used my windows 7 computer on steam I stay in offline mode. Maybe a steam update recently broke compatability? I don't know....I sent you a message with a fix though. Don't want to get in trouble here on RD.
Alright, having done all the JNS tracks (bar Talladega, which I'm dreading...), I figured it was time to share all the stuff I've learned.
Alright, almost every track has two grooves - a left one, and a right one. The right one on an oval is treated as off-line, whereas the left one is the racing line.
Because of this, pit road also has two lines - again, one left, and one right.
For some reason, every single track had both the pit lines on top of each other, meaning all the AI crammed into one lane, regardless how wide the pits actually were. So I spaced them out so that there are now two lines on all tracks. The AI treat these lanes strangely. They treat the left one as the "in" lane, using it if they have not yet had service. The right lane is the "fast" lane, and is where things get strange. If they enter side-by-side, the AI will use the fast lane when needed, but will also just come to a dead stop instead of missing their pit stall. Stranger still is that they don't always use the fast lane when exiting the pits, regardless if it would be wise. More than a few times I've seen them prefer to sit in a line rather than use the fast line, yet all the same traffic seems to be a lot worse if you have the lanes merged together as one.
Speaking of merging, when they enter the pits, there are going to be two lines that allow them to do so. One is on the left (racing line), the other on the right. By default, the right lane would immediately jump to the left and copycat all the way to the other side.
Default pit entrance for Phoenix (on the right side)
I didn't want the AI to swerve like maniacs, so I decided to give each lane the ability to go to the pits. This has the added bonus of allowing cars to enter the pits side-by-side.
Modified pit entrance to Phoenix, along with the modified pit road lanes
There was an unexpected consequence to this. For whatever reason, the AI does not seem very coordinated on some tracks. If a car is off-line and decides "PIT NOW", it will follow the outside pit entry line, as expected. They will account for traffic, slowing down drastically if the need arises. The first problem is that they will only slow down so much, before deciding to commit and cutting in front of cars - they seem incapable of aborting a pit stop. The bigger problem is that cars on the racing line do not always respect this, and it seems to be entirely based on the tracks rather than the drivers. The driver on the racing line will completely ignore the car trying to pit, and can inevitably crash or spin out the car trying to pit. This almost always causes the pitting car to be spun back out onto the live racetrack, potentially in harms way.
But it gets weirder. The pitting car will insist it has made it to pit road (even if it is on the track), and will beeline for it. This is mostly fine if there is no pit wall (assuming they don't take out any oncoming cars), but if there is a pit wall, the AI will decide that the most reasonable course of action is to slowly grind along the wall, wheels completely locked to the left. Once they are adjacent to their pit stall, the car will automatically teleport to its stall, receive service...and then promptly retire the race. (The game cites it as a "DNF".)
I might add this entire process does not trigger a full course yellow, unless the pitting car causes another car that is not actively pitting to crash or spin.
One final note about pit road behavior is that the AI don't always seem to fully understand how pitting should work. On some tracks, they will pit as you expect, with cars trickling in over the course of a three to seven lap interval (depending on track size and fuel consumption.) The weird thing is that this does not always seem to work as intended. On some tracks, you'll end up with the entire damn field pitting on the same lap. This seems especially common on tracks under a mile in length, though it does not seem exclusive to this.
I'm not sure why, but on some tracks the AI are obsessed with trying to destroy the wall exiting a corner. This seems to happen most often exiting the second corner (regardless of track) on the initial start, but it can go on for multiple laps. While they are smart enough to avoid the wall when running alone, when side by side the car on the left will act like there is no car on the right, forcing the latter into the wall. The really strange part is that there are some tracks where no matter how I modify the racing line, the AI will continue to do this.
Speaking of concrete, JNS did a number on some these conversions. For example, the entire outside wall at Nashville does not appear to have correct collisions. If a car hits the wall, they will be sucked in, then quickly spat back out over the course of under a second. This can cause a crash. (Or, in the case of VHR's NASCAR Trucks Mod, it can result in flight.)
Michigan also seems to have this problem, though only exiting turn two, so I simply modified the collision detection to minimize the odds of this occurring.
Nobody is perfect. I know for a fact I am not perfect.
But looking through these files, you start to question what was JNS smoking?
Let's start with the most obvious problem - pit roads. My god, did they make some weird choices. For example, virtually every racetrack has cars exiting pit road stay on the apron (off track) until they reach the backstretch, where they can then merge back onto the track. Yet most (but not all) of the track have AI merging in the middle of turn one, often on rather steep transitions between the flat apron and the banked surface.
Then you got tracks like Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where you're supposed to use the inside lane until it merges naturally on the backstretch. Yet JNS decided to just have you merge in the middle of the short chute between turns one and two.
The white line is the path you would take IRL, whereas the red one is the path the game has the AI take when exiting the pits.
Gateway is an even bigger mess. Instead of using the access road that begins entering turn three, JNS decided to have you instead use the a strip of tarmac that is meant to be used only by the pace car. This means entering the pits is both awkward and dangerous and I struggled to get the AI to consistently enter the pits without crashing. (...and even that isn't a promise.)
The green line is the one you take IRL. The red one is the path the game has the AI take.
Nazareth has a similar problem to Gateway, except the strip of tarmac is not only much smaller, but it's on the very inside of a corner that is not easy to reach at speed. I've found that to be an unsolvable mess that I can only try my best to overcome.
Now you could argue that they wanted to reduce the amount of pit nodes, but that makes me ask what the hell was going on with ORP.
Pit entry on ORP starts all the way at the exit of turn two, all the way down the backstretch, before finally entering the pits at turn three.
ORP as it appears IRL, showing where you actually enter pit road in turn three...
And then you have what I like to call "trampoline curbs", quite possibly the biggest sin this entire track pack has to offer. These are found on a few tracks - in this case, I will discuss Pocono. For whatever reason, the curbs on the inside of the track lack any sort of collisions. This means your car will fall through them. Now of course it isn't actually wide enough to completely swallow a car (...as far as I've been able to find), but it can cause all sorts of carnage, especially with the AI. What I really don't understand is that while these curbs are present in turns one and three, turn two actually has proper collisions with the curbs, which means you can bounce off that one as much as you like.
I basically had to modify the AIW in a manner that makes the AI assume there is a wall there so that they avoid going too low.
Turn one at Pocono. The pink line is collision detection, which will tell the AI there is a wall there. The pink line merges with the edge of the AI track width (the red lines), making the AI assume that the going beyond the track width will result in them hitting a wall. Note that as they exit the corner the pink line "jumps away" from the track.
It amazes me that this made it past quality control... which suggests to me there was no quality control, at least on these tracks.
Cameras are surprisingly easy to manage. When you click on the big red box that says "CAMERA NAME", the program loads up the CAM file, allowing you to see the positions of all the cameras, there activation range, field of view, and so on.
Cameras found on Iowa. The bright blue lines indicate cameras that physically move as they follow a car - think of a camera strapped to a zipline.
The are easy to modify, with the only real headache being that you can't physically gauge the Y-axis (height) of the camera, meaning you need to do trial and error.
That said, a large portion of the tracks (about 2/3) have a glitch where the listener positions on all the cameras are set to "-3.402823e+038, -3.402823e+038, -3.402823e+038" - essentially at the center of the track. The listener positions determine where the "microphone" of the camera is, so the fact that all the cameras have their microphone in the center of the track means the audio is always extremely distant. This is a problem I do plan on fixing, but it is sad that nobody noticed this. (...although to be fair, I didn't even notice myself, and I found the problem completely by accident.)
Oh, and Iowa is one of the few tracks where effort seems to have been made with the camera work. Most of the tracks have very few cameras in relation to the track size. (Rockingham has eight, Daytona has six... I70 only has three!!)
TL;DR: The program is handy, but there are some things I still need to fix, and even more things that need I know for a fact I am unable to fix.
(PS: This probably took me a solid 90 minutes or so to write, as well as fetch all the images. Hope this will help someone in some way, or at least explain the madness that I'm working with!)
It has been a few months since I used my windows 7 computer on steam I stay in offline mode. Maybe a steam update recently broke compatability? I don't know....I sent you a message with a fix though. Don't want to get in trouble here on RD.
Yes even in offline mode it still prompted me to go online to update, and refused to let me start it.
But thanks a lot for your message, I have replied!
Alright, I got a new question that's been driving me nuts. Camera flags.
Now just to make sure we are all on the same page, here's an image to show what I'm talking about:
The editor has two fields for you to fill out flags. The weird thing is that there are two in the first place. From the research I've been able to come across, I've determined the following settings exist:
flags1
1 = zoom
This allows the camera to zoom in and out based on where the car is. It will zoom out when the car gets close, and zoom in when the car is a certain distance away. (I have no idea how to edit any of the parameters regarding the zoom amount, but I'm honestly fine with whatever the default settings are)
2 = allow camera movement
I previously said that you can have cameras set up to physically move, as though they are attached to a zipline. Adding this flag allows the camera to move, as without it the camera will stay in its current position.
4 = allow shaking
This enables the "Shake Rate" and "Shake Mag." fields to be enabled. What this does is that it allows the camera to physically shake when a car gets near it. I have not determined exact thresholds, but I believe Shake Rate indicates how frequently the effect can be triggered, and Shake Mag is how much the camera can physically shake. I think these numbers are 0-100, but I haven't experimented with going beyond those numbers.
If you want a camera with multiple effects, you just add them together. For example, if you want to enable both zooming and shaking, then you add the two flag numbers together (1 + 4) and put in the number 5.
...now this is where I have questions.
There doesn't seem to be any information regarding what other possible effects there are, and I can't find any information regarding what flags2 can even do. (When you hover over it in the editor, it literally just says "flags2 ???").
I have made multiple search attempts to find something, but have had no luck.
I did read on a separate forum that if you put "32" into "flag1", it will cause that camera to only operate when the vehicle is in the pit lane, but I have had no success with getting it to work. (The forum was regarding RaceRoom, so perhaps it's a function exclusive to that game?)
I am almost certain that there are more undocumented flags, but I am struggling to find a proper way to experiment and get conclusive results.
TL;DR:
What other flags are there? And what is "flags2" even used for?
There seemed to be three culprits which I think I have fixed.
The first (and most obvious) was that the racing line was garbage. (The alternative line was also garbage, which made the AI freak out when changing lanes.) A lot of messing with that in the AIW editor helped the AI behave consistently. AI now may lift off the throttle a little when entering a corner (which I think happens in real life), but considering the used to jam on the brakes this is a HUGE improvement. That said, most series are now able to run more or less flatout.
The second issue was something in the AIW file referred to as "slowwhenpushed". I originally thought that this was an item related to AI letting off the throttle when you went bump drafted them. But a lot of research later and I found an old forum that states it actually serves a very different purpose. Apparently the higher that number is, the more likely an AI car will back off and fall back into line when racing side-by-side with another car as they approch a corner. I believe that a higher number means they are more likely to chicken out, but if anyone knows otherwise please let me know. (Range appears to be 0.0 - 1.0) JNS Tracks have this number set to 0.35 on all tracks by default. EDIT: There seems to be conflicting information on what the heck this actually does. I am now coming across multiple forums on various websites that seem to argue one way or the other. I'll try and find more information on this and make another edit if I come to a concrete conclusion. The only thing for certain is that it has an impact on AI behavior.
The third issue was with the NRacing mod itself. I think the creator used raw numbers and data from NASCAR Racing 2003 Season when creating the setups. This would be fine, except the AI here handles that information differently, and instead of shifting into fourth gear and "ride around" they would just stay in third to remain in the higher rpm ranges. This does not seem to be a problem exclusive to NRacing, but it was most pronounced here. I modified the default gear ratios for Talladega so that the AI will actually use fourth gear. (It should also be noted the default gearing here allowed 220+ miles per hour speeds, which is WAY to fast.)
I've learned other tricks and tips with the AIW, which I will report at a later time when I can give a more through explanation. The bottom line is that things are turning out well, and progress appears to be going well. I've also learned how to modify .hdv files and have been trying to figure out what does what in that area. For some reason documentation in that field is either unclear or outright missing, so I think at some point I'll create a new forum just to document what I've found in case somebody else runs into the troubles I've encountered.
I found another thing with the NRacing file that has been causing problems.
There are two engines that are usable for the mod - the "standard" engine ("CUP03_engine") and a restricted engine ("CUP03_restricted_engine") that is used on plate tracks.
The issue was that under the upgrades file, the related engine upgrade for Daytona/Talladega was incorrectly listed as "CUP_engine_Restricted".
What this means is that when the game loads up the cars, it is unable to find the file in the directory (because it doesn't exist), and so it would use the failsafe - which would be the default engine.
When I corrected this in the upgrades, this saw the horsepower drop by a fair amount, and top speeds got reduced to a more realistic level. This also allowed me to revert the Talladega gearing back to the standard values that NRacing came equipped with, so that's a nice plus.
I was already planning on adjusting gear ratios on other tracks to try and get the AI to stay in fourth gear, so this was found by accident. I plan on contacting the creator of the mod at a later date with the "adjusted" gear ratios. (There were some other minor changes I've made that aren't really worth mentioning. Namely stuff like engine temps and damage values.)
=============================================
On the topic of track files...
There's apparently a handy command that I've stumbled across.
"Auto Line Smooth"
This little line of code can have a MASSIVE impact on how the AI behave.
By default, AMS has this set to "0". There's no documentation on what exactly setting it to 0 does, so I'm guessing it disables the line of code. When set to "1", AI will use the fastest (racing) line whenever possible; "2" has them use both the inside and outside line; "3" has the AI use both the fastest line and the inside/outside line.
One would think that turning this to "3" would improve the racing, right?
Not exactly.
I'm not sure how the AI handle this command in rfactor, but in AMS they can turn into complete idiots. While the racing improves on some tracks (such as Talladega or Martinsville), other tracks (such as Michigan or Kansas) causes the AI to drive like they've all had a lobotomy. Bouncing off walls exiting the corner, ignoring the existence of other cars (both human and AI), and other stupid things. So while I did get an improvement on some tracks, others saw a notable downgrade.
The easiest way to "fix" this was to simply only apply it to tracks were the AI notably benefitted from it (...or at least were not hindered by it). I simply dropped a line that read "Auto Line Smooth="3" into the track's GBD file (not the AIW!) and that did the trick. This also has the added benefit of not messing up AI on other tracks where you don't want this enable (like vanilla tracks).
I've also upgraded/added cameras on almost all the tracks by now. I find it surprisingly rewarding, even if it does get a bit tedious sometimes. I'll upload a video at some point demonstrating the differences between the cameras on the JNS tracks.
Yes that is correct, download guitarmans aiwcam editor and have fun! rFactor AIWs work in AMS, and you can open any AMS AIW file and edit it without any conversion needed...
There may be “some conversion” necessary. The AIW file has some inbuilt features that existed in rF but function differently in AMS, so requires some adjustment based on what’s common in AMS AIWs.
There's apparently a handy command that I've stumbled across.
"Auto Line Smooth"
This little line of code can have a MASSIVE impact on how the AI behave.
By default, AMS has this set to "0". There's no documentation on what exactly setting it to 0 does, so I'm guessing it disables the line of code. When set to "1", AI will use the fastest (racing) line whenever possible; "2" has them use both the inside and outside line; "3" has the AI use both the fastest line and the inside/outside line.
One would think that turning this to "3" would improve the racing, right?
Not exactly.
I'm not sure how the AI handle this command in rfactor, but in AMS they can turn into complete idiots. While the racing improves on some tracks (such as Talladega or Martinsville), other tracks (such as Michigan or Kansas) causes the AI to drive like they've all had a lobotomy. Bouncing off walls exiting the corner, ignoring the existence of other cars (both human and AI), and other stupid things. So while I did get an improvement on some tracks, others saw a notable downgrade.
In the ISI forums one the developers mention that auto line smooth was meant to be a develpment feature, not for normal use. You can see the thread here: The-definitive-AI-Settings.
The post is about rFactor2 but he said that the information is relevant to both rF1 & rF2.
I did experiment (a while back) with the 'drivinglines' setting in the AIW. It's usually '1' for a single driving line but when set to '2' the AI will use more racing lines. But that's not the only thing that changes, the AI behavior is also different. What i saw was an IA catching up to another car and following it close behind; in the usual AI behavior you see one of two things: they try to overtake the car in front or they touch the brakes and fall back a little (after this they catch up again and they cycle repeats).
Another thing to keep in mind is that the AI will use the inside/outside line with this setting and those lines are usually made for the formation lap only. To have (at least a chance) of a decent result you may need to re-work those lines.
There is another setting in the PLR file that may be of interest to you: "Autocalibrate AI Mode". When enabling this setting and following the wright procedure you will get a "<track name>.ini" file with a potentially improved racing line for a particular class of car. Don't forget to set it back to "0" before racing (or you are going to see same bad behavior from the AI).
I hope this helps in improving the racing with AI for you (it's a never-ending task of tweaking, experimenting and testing, but it can be quite fun as well)
*sigh*Every time I think I'm getting close to finishing the JNS trackpack update, I find a piece of code that seems to completely changes my understanding of how EVERYTHING works.
So there's a little piece of code that you can access in the AIW editor called "AIDraftStick.", short for AI draft stickiness. Now when you hover over that text box, it says the following:
"A number (in m/s) that gets added to the speed of the car when drafting.
4 seems to be the default value."
Now to me, that seemed like a rather odd thing to be placing in the track AIW. It seems like that would be better suited to have something like that in the .hdv or maybe even the car upgrades. But hey, what do I know?
...clearly not a lot.
A while ago, I was searching for a way to make the AI more aggressive with going side-by-side. They just seemed content with running nose to tail in a massive freight train, even if the following car was quick enough to try and make an overtake.
I stumbled across something that suggested that draftstick is responsible for this behavior in regards to how to the AI handle passing each other. The problem is that whoever made that post did not do the best job explaining its function. They seemed to imply that it dealt with how AI would treat each other under braking. For example, they specifically mention setting the value to "3" on a street circuit to encourage trying to out brake a competitor when entering a sharp corner. Something like this would not be very useful on most ovals, as heavy braking zones are not too common outside of certain tracks like Martinsville.
It was at this time I discovered AutoLineSmooth, and tried implementing that. The results were... varied. Some tracks saw improvements, some saw a big drop in AI intelligence, and some tracks it didn't do anything. Much to my frustration, that last one seemed most common on tracks like Mansfield where you want the AI to be more aggressive with passing.
Simon Aguirre then pointed out that "AutoLineSmooth" is actually a leftover piece of coding for beta testing that shouldn't really be relied on because it causes the AI to do wacky stuff - for example, forgetting where the walls are. This collaborated with my results of testing that feature out, so I now had to go back to square one - digging through forums trying to find ANY documentation that might be useful. I eventually stumbled across a forum discussing the way it was used in Race07. The discussion seemed to indicate that adjusting draftstick would directly impact how the AI raced each other. And it apparently had nothing to do with the AIW claims it does.
Essentially, the lower the value on draftstick, the more likely a following car would be to pull out from behind and try to make a pass, instead of just playing a game of follow the leader.
After messing around with it at Daytona and Talladega and finding some minor improvements when set to 3.5, I naturally tried to dump that number down to something like 2. Turns out that doing something like that will lobotomize the AI into almost never drafting, even if it would benefit them in certain cases.
I then tried playing with it at Mansfield, and once it was turned down to about 2.5, I now had AI that were actually willing to try and pass each other instead of pretending to be a merry-go-round.
This is great, because it means I may have finally found something that actually encourages the AI to actually race each other on tracks I want them to.
The big problem is that now I have to go through all the JNS tracks againto figure out which tracks need which values. As mentioned earlier, setting the number too low makes the AI extremely selfish, but if you leave it at the default of 4 then they will be very stubborn about trying to pass each other unless the car in front is going much much slower.
So yeah, back to the grinder trying to hammer this nonsense out.
TL;DR:
Don't use AIAutoSmooth to encourage passing, because that's a leftover beta feature that doesn't exactly work as you might expect. Use "AIDraftStickiness" instead, because that actually encourages AI to pass each other. Just don't set it too low!
I would like to point out that I said I enjoyed adding cameras to the tracks.
And while that is true, I then proceeded to do Bristol Motor Speedway shortly after posting that, and despite two camera groups already existing it was an absolute nightmare to accomplish.
Bristol Motor Speedway, showing all 27 cameras that have been placed around the track to cover the four camera groups.
Was it a pain in the ass? Yes.
Was I satisfied with the results? Yes.
Do I wish it had not taken almost two full days to accomplish this without making it look like garbage? Yes.
*sigh*Every time I think I'm getting close to finishing the JNS trackpack update, I find a piece of code that seems to completely changes my understanding of how EVERYTHING works.
So there's a little piece of code that you can access in the AIW editor called "AIDraftStick.", short for AI draft stickiness. Now when you hover over that text box, it says the following:
View attachment 757615 "A number (in m/s) that gets added to the speed of the car when drafting.
4 seems to be the default value."
Now to me, that seemed like a rather odd thing to be placing in the track AIW. It seems like that would be better suited to have something like that in the .hdv or maybe even the car upgrades. But hey, what do I know?
...clearly not a lot.
A while ago, I was searching for a way to make the AI more aggressive with going side-by-side. They just seemed content with running nose to tail in a massive freight train, even if the following car was quick enough to try and make an overtake.
I stumbled across something that suggested that draftstick is responsible for this behavior in regards to how to the AI handle passing each other. The problem is that whoever made that post did not do the best job explaining its function. They seemed to imply that it dealt with how AI would treat each other under braking. For example, they specifically mention setting the value to "3" on a street circuit to encourage trying to out brake a competitor when entering a sharp corner. Something like this would not be very useful on most ovals, as heavy braking zones are not too common outside of certain tracks like Martinsville.
It was at this time I discovered AutoLineSmooth, and tried implementing that. The results were... varied. Some tracks saw improvements, some saw a big drop in AI intelligence, and some tracks it didn't do anything. Much to my frustration, that last one seemed most common on tracks like Mansfield where you want the AI to be more aggressive with passing.
Simon Aguirre then pointed out that "AutoLineSmooth" is actually a leftover piece of coding for beta testing that shouldn't really be relied on because it causes the AI to do wacky stuff - for example, forgetting where the walls are. This collaborated with my results of testing that feature out, so I now had to go back to square one - digging through forums trying to find ANY documentation that might be useful. I eventually stumbled across a forum discussing the way it was used in Race07. The discussion seemed to indicate that adjusting draftstick would directly impact how the AI raced each other. And it apparently had nothing to do with the AIW claims it does.
Essentially, the lower the value on draftstick, the more likely a following car would be to pull out from behind and try to make a pass, instead of just playing a game of follow the leader.
After messing around with it at Daytona and Talladega and finding some minor improvements when set to 3.5, I naturally tried to dump that number down to something like 2. Turns out that doing something like that will lobotomize the AI into almost never drafting, even if it would benefit them in certain cases.
I then tried playing with it at Mansfield, and once it was turned down to about 2.5, I now had AI that were actually willing to try and pass each other instead of pretending to be a merry-go-round.
This is great, because it means I may have finally found something that actually encourages the AI to actually race each other on tracks I want them to.
The big problem is that now I have to go through all the JNS tracks againto figure out which tracks need which values. As mentioned earlier, setting the number too low makes the AI extremely selfish, but if you leave it at the default of 4 then they will be very stubborn about trying to pass each other unless the car in front is going much much slower.
So yeah, back to the grinder trying to hammer this nonsense out.
TL;DR:
Don't use AIAutoSmooth to encourage passing, because that's a leftover beta feature that doesn't exactly work as you might expect. Use "AIDraftStickiness" instead, because that actually encourages AI to pass each other. Just don't set it too low!
I would like to point out that I said I enjoyed adding cameras to the tracks.
And while that is true, I then proceeded to do Bristol Motor Speedway shortly after posting that, and despite two camera groups already existing it was an absolute nightmare to accomplish.
View attachment 757625 Bristol Motor Speedway, showing all 27 cameras that have been placed around the track to cover the four camera groups.
Was it a pain in the ass? Yes.
Was I satisfied with the results? Yes.
Do I wish it had not taken almost two full days to accomplish this without making it look like garbage? Yes.
For the next time – before diving into deep digging into old forums, you might want to also check the website I created to amalgamate high-quality information about various isiMotor AI-related parameters. Hopefully it'll save you some effort.
For the next time – before diving into deep digging into old forums, you might want to also check the website I created to amalgamate high-quality information about various isiMotor AI-related parameters. Hopefully it'll save you some effort.
It does seem like the AI refuse to try and pass each other when going in a straight line, provided they are not already alongside each other. My favorite thing is when a lapped car gets blue flags and, in a panic, jams the brakes. Instead of going around the rapidly slowing object, the following car will just kamikaze into the rear of the slow car, and cause a huge pile up in the process. (Makes CART racing even more chaotic than it already is...)
It's especially frustrating when you have games like NASCAR Heat - a game released in 2000 - where the AI are actually capable of detecting a very slow car in its path and simply going around safely without needing to let off the gas for more than maybe half a second. Like you're really telling me that AI created back in 2001 are somehow more intelligent than something produced over twenty-plus years later? And I'm not just talking about rfactor, but most sim-racing games in general.
Come to think of it, AI in Wreckfest are pretty good at detecting other cars, despite that game being about literally crashing into everything that isn't already destroyed.
Your forum also probably explains why I'm having trouble getting AI to pass each at a track like Bristol, where AI do not seem to use a lot of brakes.
By pressing CTRL+D you can see the effect of setting in real-time, you'll see "Passing Limited: YES" when this parameter prevents the AI from passing:
And you'll see "Passing Limited: NO" when it's allow to attempt a "slipstream pass":
My interpretation of this parameter is that you can prevent the AI from starting an overtaking maneuver "in the middle of a corner" and make it wait until the next straight to do it. Essentially, try to remove the bad decisions while leaving the reasonable ones available.
You are going the need to tweak these values until you find something "good enough" for the cars/tracks of the series (it's never going to be perfect for every situation).
Other settings that affect the overtaking (in the .hdv) are:
The first two where introduced in V1.5.10 and (briefly) the explanation behind them are:
AIPassLatScalar: This is how much extra space a car leaves to pass when overtaking when they have 0% aggression.
AIForcePassCarLength: This is the distance in car lengths behind the car ahead that the AI will greatly increase their likelyhood to attempt a pass.
The third one appeared in v1.4.8, it "makes cars change lane, react to incidents more gradually". In my experience: too little and they pull out in time to make the overtake, to much and the loose stability when pulling out.
My favorite thing is when a lapped car gets blue flags and, in a panic, jams the brakes. Instead of going around the rapidly slowing object, the following car will just kamikaze into the rear of the slow car, and cause a huge pile up in the process. (Makes CART racing even more chaotic than it already is...)
That issue is one that i never found a decent solution for. I tried many different combinations of the Blue Flags setting, but nothing seems to get rid of it. In practice sessions the behave well, but in the race they always brake when they are being lapped.
My favorite thing is when a lapped car gets blue flags and, in a panic, jams the brakes. Instead of going around the rapidly slowing object, the following car will just kamikaze into the rear of the slow car, and cause a huge pile up in the process. (Makes CART racing even more chaotic than it already is...)
I must admit I have not really suffered this problem. Could it be because I always have AI set on low aggression? I can't think of any other reason why I don't see this. Mind you I must admit it is a few years since I did my full Formula Classic races so maybe I've just not come across this after the last updates. (I had some great races where I was following an AI and he was moving through the lapped cars really well ahead of me).
Actually as I'm typing, I just remembered another parameter - in the srs file you can alter the AI blue flag radius/courtesy/reactiontime/liftunderblue . Could this be used to improve it? (sorry if that is what you were referring to trying already, Simon Aguire).
