What do people now days think of Ai of gtr2?

[GP STONER]

I like to know what things people come across what they dont like about the ai.

In other words what people think that needs to be better to get a better experiance.

 

[MJQT]

But if you are thinking I could somehow magically open this plugin to see how it works, it does not work that way, it's very, very difficult and months and months of work... It is especially difficult due it not being for GTR2. I hope someone gets ahold of the author and sends him my way. Maybe he'll share his knowledge, not guaranteed he'd want to.

Darn! Was hoping it wouldn't be quite as opaque as that... but at least it's something. Would be interested to verify it does what it says for rFactor, even.

Will be sure to let you know if the author ever turns up (or I figure out where they can be found) and try to put you in contact... but I would be surprised if I ever manage that.

 

[The Iron Wolf]

Darn! Was hoping it wouldn't be quite as opaque as that... but at least it's something. Would be interested to verify it does what it says for rFactor, even.

Will be sure to let you know if the author ever turns up (or I figure out where they can be found) and try to put you in contact... but I would be surprised if I ever manage that.

If you want to help out, you could also do so by helping me with testing. In fact I am not likely to do any of the AI fixes unless I have help with testing, and it is a lot of work and commitment. Also, to be upfront, it will be GTR2 only. Just PM me.

 

[Racer63]

I´d rather prefer GTR2 AI than AC´s all day long.

What needs to be better? Same AI (or close) than RR3. Firstly cars not ramming my car if I´m slowing down and then cars not braking in the middle of the corner.

 

[MJQT]

What needs to be better? Same AI (or close) than RR3. Firstly cars not ramming my car if I´m slowing down and then cars not braking in the middle of the corner.

Both of these issues might be solvable with tweaks to the AI related settings in the PLR file. See Shovas' post explaining what each of the settings does:

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/did-you-know-theres-hidden-ai-settings-in-your-plr-profile.190990/post-3266031

• AI Brake Power Usage:
  • Lowering this should force AI to brake earlier
  • And raising it should make them brake later
• AI Brake Grip Usage
  • May want to reduce this value if the AI are braking too late and going off track
• AI Corner Grip Usage
  • Increasing this may help AI to go through corners faster
  • Although I think it may easily help them corner too quickly

 

[holacrosty]

Hello guys.

Well.. I have those values figured out.
My AI driver is as "perfect" as it can be. It took a lot of other things to acomplish first. So now that "he" drives
"like me" the final part is racing against others as proper and fast as he actually can. And Im almost there.
I just stop to develop AI to "finish" the tires and readapt the car physics.

And BTW those values are just there to compensate for not have been achieved "all the others things" first.
Unfortunately, once your car is proper, they still need to be tweaked, but to compensate the hardcoded values.

AI should be as close as Player as possible. No simplified physics, no forcing values, etc.

 

[jgf]

One thing that can help AI-AI passing is keeping aggression levels, in talent files, high. Aggression basically sets how close to another car that driver will get; while it makes sense that one driver may have an aggression of 95 and another only 75, in practice that is too great a span - that 75 driver will spend too much time bobbing and weaving trying not to get too close to any other cars. So when cars are bunched up this inhibits passing, a fast car with low aggression will not pass unless he has a wide berth, a slow car with low aggression is constantly blocking faster cars since he never holds a consistent line. Keeping them all in the 92-98 range seems to work well, too high and they look like Nascar at a short track.

And keep a constant baseline in game while tweaking AI, I always have in game strength and aggression at 100 while tweaking, thus have the same parameters regardless of track or mod.

 

[holacrosty]

Well.. still not messing with AI again.
But I kinda have an idea of why on some tracks the AI has an amount of extra grip (despites decreasing it on *.PLR). Like the Nos2007 (specially at carrusell and the high speed turns before, but not all the track. Is variable).

I have seen only the AI tire "sinking" pretty deep at carousell. (And at Yas Marina in one of the hardest turns).
I think there is like a "double mesh road".

So the player tire goes for the "upper mesh" (Actuall visible road where grip is calculated by the amount of contact patch) and the AI goes for the "lower mesh". Resulting on an increase of the level of contact patch "pewrcieved" by the "upper mesh".

I even found this in the Bahrain 2006 readme: "FEATURE LIST : * Variable Grip Level".
And in the Sakhir2005: "Update 1.2: - deleted double polygons (the whole road was double)".

So how can I detect doble road mesh and delete it in 3dsim?
here Nos2007 at carousell:

 

[jgf]

As to the original question, I think GTR2 AI out of the box is mediocre. But with patience it can be tweaked to be very good.

Just remember the hierarchy - in-game menu (strength and aggression sliders)>plr file>track/physics>setups>talent. Go no further up the ladder than necessary to achieve what you want, changes at any level usually require tweaking everything further down the line.

 

[The Iron Wolf]

@jgf - just to clarify, you mean start with in game menu and talent file being the last resort, right?

 

[jgf]

@jgf - just to clarify, you mean start with in game menu and talent file being the last resort, right?

Actually just the opposite.
First I always set in-game strength and aggression to 100 before doing any AI tweaks, this assures all tweaks are done to a common baseline; changing either affects all cars, all mods, all tracks. Same with plr file tweaks, they affect all cars, all mods, all tracks.

Then consider what you need to adjust; a talent file only affects one particular car; a setup change affects all identical cars (assuming you assign setups to AI cars), as will a physics edit. Either will affect that car/mod at all tracks. And editing a track AIW file will affect all cars/mods at that track.

So at the top of the hierarchy are those adjustments that affect the entire game - in-game menus and plr file. Leave them alone unless you want to change everything.

Next level is changes affecting a group - track tweaks affect all cars running on that track; physics files affect that type of car running at any track.

Next are setups, affecting a type of car at one track; and talent files, affecting one car at all tracks.

A change at any level can affect all settings below it in the hierarchy - change the grip at a track and you will need to tweak the setups of all cars running there; change the physics of a mod and you will have to tweak the setups for that mod for all tracks. One exception, giving the AI decent setups often requires tweaking the AIW files of that track to balance performance again.

So when you need to tweak, consider which file will give the results you want while affecting as little as possible of the rest of the game. Hence my concept of the hierarchy

The main issue with the plr adjustments that they are very mod dependent, there is no across the board setting; what is optimum for a GT series may be way off for F1 cars and vice versa. One workaround is to optimize the plr file for a particular series, right click on it "add to zip", then edit the file name to include that series, you now have a 'playername''seriesname'.zip in your player folder; repeat as necessary for other series, then when you need to change, just right click on the appropriate zip and "extract here". Only hitch is remembering to switch files before starting the game. The midadjust/raceratio/qualratio settings in the AIW file are usually acceptable for a wide variety of cars - as long as these settings were all derived with the in-game strength at 100; then just use the strength slider to adjust for whatever mod you're using and the speeds will track in proportion (usually, lol).

 

[MJQT]

The main issue with the plr adjustments that they are very mod dependent, there is no across the board setting; what is optimum for a GT series may be way off for F1 cars and vice versa. One workaround is to optimize the plr file for a particular series, right click on it "add to zip", then edit the file name to include that series, you now have a 'playername''seriesname'.zip in your player folder; repeat as necessary for other series, then when you need to change, just right click on the appropriate zip and "extract here". Only hitch is remembering to switch files before starting the game.

Just FYI – I don't know if this applies to GTR2, but in rF1, I recently discovered the following interesting line in the HDV file that overrides PLR settings:

AIPerfUsage=(1.00, 1.00, 1.00) // PLR file overrides for (brake power usage, brake grip usage, corner grip usage) used by AI to estimate performance - only positive values will override, see PLR for defaults

Since brake power usage, brake grip usage, and corner grip usage are the three main things you'd want to adjust per mod (as, for example, Shovas has done for the original GTR2 content) using this line in the HDV file would seem to actually allow you to do that car by car (even better than mod by mod) and leave your PLR file alone.

 

[jgf]

Just FYI – I don't know if this applies to GTR2, but in rF1, I recently discovered the following interesting line in the HDV file that overrides PLR settings:.....

There are many subtle differences between plr files, talent files, etc. for rfactor and GTR2. If you're not involved in multiplayer, or have a dedicated install for that, applying the plr tweaks directly to the hdc/hdv files is a definite improvement. Occasionally the differences are frustrating; rfactor AIW files do not have "raceratio" and "qualratio" settings, which I am so accustomed to tweaking in GTR2.

 

[deangelis7]

I've played GTR2 for years and learned how to fix some annoying AI issues by editing some parameters in rcd aiw plr files. But my main problem with GTR2 AI (that I couldn't figure how to fix it) is that sometimes AI seems suddenly to stop seeing my car and push me out of the track. Most of the time AI drive fairly but there are some cases when AI do absolutely idiotic mistakes and ram into my car without any reason. Such impression that AI become just blind sometimes. I spent a some time trying to find solution but it seems hard-coded in-game issue and can't be completely cured

 

[jgf]

I've played GTR2 for years and learned how to fix some annoying AI issues by editing some parameters in rcd aiw plr files. But my main problem with GTR2 AI (that I couldn't figure how to fix it) is that sometimes AI seems suddenly to stop seeing my car and push me out of the track. Most of the time AI drive fairly but there are some cases when AI do absolutely idiotic mistakes and ram into my car without any reason. Such impression that AI become just blind sometimes. I spent a some time trying to find solution but it seems hard-coded in-game issue and can't be completely cured

(italics mine)

Absolutely correct. There are parameters in the talent files and plr files that give you some control over AI mistakes, but even if you set them to be "perfect" there is still a random factor in the game to cause occasional driver errors. Infuriating but realistic.

 

[Sanio Alfa]

did not play this game for a long time. got to back and see that this game is still real sim racing.
but 1 big modern problem is here. lobby is empty.
have someone info where can find group of enthusiast where they have organize league?

 

[RaceLM24]

I've played GTR2 for years and learned how to fix some annoying AI issues by editing some parameters in rcd aiw plr files. But my main problem with GTR2 AI (that I couldn't figure how to fix it) is that sometimes AI seems suddenly to stop seeing my car and push me out of the track. Most of the time AI drive fairly but there are some cases when AI do absolutely idiotic mistakes and ram into my car without any reason. Such impression that AI become just blind sometimes. I spent a some time trying to find solution but it seems hard-coded in-game issue and can't be completely cured

What are the changes you made to RCD, AIW and PLR files to improve the AI?

A tip: every 45 minutes of the game is recommended to restart GTR2. I don't know the real reason but after 45 minutes the AI has a strong decay in performance.
In addition, it is recommended to reinforce parts of the bodywork of each car (inside the DMG file of each car) so as to avoid other slowdowns.

Instead, how do you solve the problem of tamponings when you restart a saved race? Usually it happens with the cars of a higher category that attach themselves to smaller ones creating accidents.

Solutions?

 

[jgf]

Again, I recommend reading the von Dutch AI Tutorial. It delves into all the intricacies of AI, including the accumulated damage that causes them to slow in longer races - any contact causes a slight amount of damage which is expressed by a decrease in aero parameters, the longer the race the more damage is accumulated, till the total drag from this damage has noticeably slowed the car(s). But there is a threshold adjustment you can raise so all the little bumps and taps do nothing, only major contact will cause damage.

As for the AI hitting you, yes they often seem to drive as if you aren't even there. But the solution is something of a Catch-22; the aggression settings, talent and game, basically control how close the AI will get to other cars, set too low and they rarely pass because they won't get close enough, set too high and they pass more but often sideswipe or rear end you.

And even if you make all the adjustments in all the files so the AI are "perfect", there is still a hard-coded random factor for them to make mistakes.

There is an adjustment, in the plr file if I remember correctly, for the number of "ticks per second" that the AI and physics are checked; increasing this can greatly improve the accuracy of both, but can quickly become a resource hog and fps will plummet.

 

[MJQT]

Again, I recommend reading the von Dutch AI Tutorial. It delves into all the intricacies of AI

I second this recommendation.

Have to say I've been contemplating compiling all the tips and tricks for isiMotor2 AI (that is, rFactor 1, GTR2/RACE 07, and AMS 1) into a single document. Or, more realistically, maybe even a dedicated website from a collection of Markdown files. There's so much knowledge out there, but it's not always cleanly and concisely documented. Maybe a small service to the community I could do. Esp since that's been my focus in my modding efforts recently.