Official General AI Comments & Discussion Topic

Herakles, I think you have identified a longstanding issue with this car/track combination. I have been trying this combo for 2+ years and have experienced the same problems as you.

It seems to be an inherent problem with the way the AI is programmed. You can set the AI level so that their lap times are similar to your own overall but they will be slower than you in mid-turn and turn exit but faster on the straights and turn entry. In my experience, this makes it almost impossible to have a decent race against them as you will inevitably have collisions in the turns. The only times I've been able to get through 200 laps are when I've set the AI level much lower than my pace and started the race from the back of the pack.

I've become so frustrated with it that I've gone back to playing the ancient Indy Car Racing 2 for my fix of open wheel oval racing! The AI in that sim is by no means perfect but for oval racing they do act in a more natural and true to life way.

I hope the team at Reiza will eventually get this sorted. It's such a great, immersive sim and I find the AI mostly excellent to race against on the road courses, it's just a shame the same can't be said for the ovals at present.

 

Beside this issue with getting braketested from car in front while being attacked by the one behind when riding in a pack, those constant lateral moves of drivers in front can be really annoying.
They move from right to left and back all the time as if they were drunk, not being able to hold a certain line.
If those things could be fixed one day, the AI would be great imo.

 

Has anyone already brought up the issue with ARC Camaros on the straights? I run max aero on the rear wing and even when I have a much worse corner exit I just leave them in the dust in the straights even though they have my slipstream and I can easly pass the cars in front.

 

This is a problem with many cars actually, not just the ARC Camaros. It was most noticeable to me with the F-Retro Gen2s the last time I raced them, but it's been a quite a while since then. I actually avoided racing them a lot of times because I knew the AI couldn't challenge me properly.

 

I think the reason for this is the AI holds onto the Revs too long before changing up. I found out that changing up near max revs is actually less ideal than changing up sooner.

 

With version 1.6, a typical problem of multi-class races has worsened, namely accidents during overtaking inside curves.

The typical scenario is that of overtaking a slow car near a curve at medium-low speed. When you attack to the inside (for example, in a right-hand corner) and you are about halfway through the corner, with half or more cars now in front of the slow car, AI also starts to turn to the right, as if the player's car had already completed the pass and was no longer there. At this point the slow car touches the rear side of the player (in this example the rear left side, more or less in the area of the wheel) and continues to turn to the right despite the contact. At this point, the player's car has its tail pushed to the opposite side of the curve, and although it continues to steer (in this example, to the right), the car continues on a tangent, without being able to steer because it is now hooked to the AI car which continues to rotate the player's rear.

This problem has always been there and those who race multi-classes with the fastest cars should know it well. However, up until 1.6, it was quite sporadic and it was enough to try to tighten the curve a little more than normal once you got halfway through.

With 1.6 the situation is terrible: I have done numerous races at Daytona/IMSA and this problem occurred repeatedly at the Internationa Horseshoe, West Horseshoe and the following (turn 6), curves with a classic slow configuration where overtaking regularly takes place on the inside.

Although the situation is evident at Daytona (both for the three corners and for the multi-class characteristics), this phenomenon is not linked to the circuit but occurs practically everywhere.

 

The AI in Spa-Francorchamps is horrendous due to its inconsistency. This was the case already in 1.5, but if anything now it is worse. I have raced in Spa against the AI multiple times with different combinations, and in most if not all of them the same behavior arises: the AI is extremely fast in the first 1/3 of the circuit (and you better not be on their way on Eau Rouge!) and extremely slow in the middle part until the last couple of corners. Today I was with the Gineta G55 class, I was losing about 1.5s in the first sector to later recover it in the middle to last part of the circuit. This creates very bad races where every lap the same overtakes in the same places happen: being overtaken after Eau Rouge and overtaking the same cars again in the next corners.
This particularly example has occurred with AI at 102, but it happens at basically any difficulty. I have experienced this since I bough the game about a year ago, where I used to play at much lower difficulties. At the beginning I though it was maybe me, since Eau Rouge is quite tricky, but no, I have also raced in Spa many online races and I am at similar pace with people oy my level equally at all parts of the circuit.
The AI is simply very inconsistent here, so much that I avoid this circuit offline completely, I only played it here today again since I hoped for this to have been addressed in the last updates. Being this a DLC track, and such an excellent and famous track, I am quite disappointed that this has been the case for almost a year now.

 

Unfortunately this is not an isolated case. For spa itself I find them very weak and la source but they then become rocketships from eau rouge through kimmel straight. Imola first sector, watkins glen first-second corners and bus stop-outer loop section, sebring hairpin-cunningham corner, laguna seca andretti hairpin, road america carousel, these are places where I find them quite slow though I can only speak for lmdh and gt3. I find them somewhat manageable, except for watkins glen bus stop. They exit the bus stop into the outer loop extremely slow it just ruined the track for me

 

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but I thought I’d flag it. The AI on ovals coming out the pits seem to have an unfair advantage. I literally have to nurse my car around the apron onto the track, any more than gentlest of inputs resulting in a spin. The AI seem to accelerate away on the apron with pre-warmed tires and/or some magical downforce. For longer races with multiple pit stops this puts the player at a big disadvantage.

Should probably mention this became apparent with the Formula USA Gen 1 cars.

 

I suppose this is at least in part due to the AI not being properly affected by tyre temperatures. In other cars without tyre warmers, like GT1s and LMDhs, I also struggle a lot to keep up with the AI on my outlap. Although the issue does seem a lot more extreme with the F-USAs on Ovals.