Automobilista 2 V1.3.3.0 RELEASED - Now updated to V1.3.3.1

Agreed. I spent the last two days dialling in the ai for an F3 Sao Paulo custom race and in the end just got fed up of either driving at 10/10ths every lap which was the only way of having an ai doing similar lap times to me, or dialling down the difficulty a notch or two to make it less banzai and then having the ai braking excessively mid corner followed by them overhauling/outpacing me on the subsequent straight while my overall lap time in clear air was a second quicker..
It might have helped if they made the occasional mistake but its utterly pointless continuing to race against an ai thats pulling away from you even by a few tenths a lap as that trend will only sustain itself. Get the pace dialled right (which takes forever as its a narrow window that varies too much across multiple tracks and classes) and you're back at 10/10ths and any error at all on your part means the race is again pointless as the ai will not make any mistakes that enable the gap to be closed again, or you're playing bumper cars mid corner before the ai super launches back onto the straight. Difficulty it seems only affects cornering ability.
Sadly Ive uninstalled again and will revisit in another six months or so.

 

At this point I'm convinced the customization of the AI behaviour is inherently limited by the engine. Yea, I'm once again blaming the ME.

Renato has been tweaking parameters for almost 2 years, yet the AI has never displayed any sort of human-like racecraft (like we see in AMS1 and AC, for example). They are all too perfect, lapping as consistently as the clock ticks. To make things worse, the impression I've is that their simplified physics means tweaks have to be made by curve by curve, car by car. A never ending effort of finetuning.

If AMS2 was initially mainly aimed towards offline racing (one of the reasons given for the lackluster MP we had - and still have to some degree), then the AI is indeed very disappointing.

 

Well, donno, but waited the whole video this guy to rise up the opponent strength. not saying it will sort all, but still, at least rising 99 higher

 

His choice of 77? for the aggression level means this is not a fair reflection on the AI, or the criticisms this review made. Sure there are problems but lets keep it real. The other thing is that it is a complete distortion of how far a car behind quickly drops back. If you were to use the look behind feature when the cars seem relatively distant, you will see that they are in fact quite close. In stead of jumping on the bandwagon of AI is crap the reviewer could have spent a bit more in depth on the AI settings, tried several out to really see how good or bad the AI are. Yes they need refining, but in my experience they are pretty good now, at least good enough to have decent racing with of which I have had many.

 

Agreed.

Having good AI races does take some human intelligence. If the AI skill is too low (99 in this case), raise it higher. And 77 aggression is an odd number to settle on without offering any explanation. I think 50 is the usual "default" suggestion.

Even his review of ACC was unfair. "They are too passive." OK--raise the aggression level then. (It's very easy to get ACC AI into a hyper-aggressive state).

You can have very good AI racing in AMS2 (or least I do), but it is true that you have to go into it with the approach of trying to create realistic racing. It isn't too hard to figure out how to "game the system" if that's the approach one wants to take.

 

Obviously he's running the AI at a too low setting, but it doesn't look great when the AI never block going into corners and are often too hard on the brakes, allowing easy overtaking. I think it would be in improvement if the AI difficulty affected both corner entry AND corner exit speeds, and not just corner entry. Right now they will always have the same unerring corner exit at all difficulties, which is both unrealistic and tedious to race against at higher difficulties.

 

Racing the AI in AMS2 really does not have that much to do with realism. I didn't watch the video, but there are several issues that can't really be discussed away:

1) AI, when going for an overtake, is very prone to half-hearted moves that don't lead anywhere, against themselves even more than against the player
2) AI, even when adjusted to the same speed that the player has, is quick at completely different places (mainly corner exit); straight line speed is often also a little too slow.
3) AI still likes to do some not-so-realistic pack racing on themselves.
4) AI does not defend its position in most if not all corners.
5) AI is not or only barely affected by slipstream.
6) AI is not or only barely affected by puddles that can throw out the player.
7) AI does do some weird pit strategies in longer races.
8) AI barely ever spins and the frequency of their mistakes are not in any way related to the conditions.
9) Lapped AI is very, very prone to stupid decisions which block the player and especially the other AI.
10) Contact with AI sometimes leads to oneself feeling like driving a merry-go-round against ocean liners.

 

So,i ask all of you wich AI agression level is the most useful?

 

After some of the more recent updates to the AI which did actually make a difference, I changed from lower values (mid) to 95 as it was suggested at the time to up this parameter. So 100 skill and 95 aggression is what I am currently using and enjoying. It varies somewhat depending on car/track combo, so with those values for example at Donny in the F3 (both of which I love and know very well) I can win the race with a decent challenge. On other combinations I might not get any better than midfield and it is very difficult to overtake. But tbh most of the bad behaviour of the AI seems to have been quelled.

 

With all this complaining about how bad the ai is i tried a lower ai level last night. At 50 instead of the usual 95 i run at 100 skill level. Honestly i didnt see a huge difference except maybe the race was a little cleaner? I dont run open wheel much but ive had some good races in multiple different classes. Good door to door stuff and fighting for many laps to pass a car. I would like to see more mistakes especially getting off a corner or entering and i have seen a few mistakes but very few. The biggest issue im still seeing and it isnt as bad on every track is the ai having way more grip in some corners. You just simply cant enter or exit some corners as fast as the ai but it usually evens out over a whole track because youre faster somewhere else. While somewhat obvious its not totally unrealistic. Everyone isnt as fast as each other everywhere in real life either. Im still seeing some speed difference in practice,qualifying and the race but its nowhere near as bad as it was months ago. Usually the ai will slow down some in the race which is expected over qualifying. So if youre with in a second or so of first you will be ok in the race and move through the field. So while i dont disagree that it could still use some tweaking i dont think its nearly as bad as its made out to be.

Again i normally run door cars so your open wheel experience may be very different.

 

Thanks for the clear up!
@neal + @morpwr

 

I think Crimson has confirmed Aggression is just for the door to door racing against the AI, like how long they fight for position.

 

To clarify what I mean by approaching it with a degree of realism: Every sim has ways the AI can be exploited. I can gamify the experience by taking full advantage of those. Or I can restrain myself and focus more on making the experience as realistic as possible.

For example, it's been noted that the iRacing AI tend to be very slow on cold tires at the start of a race. I watched one video where the person passed 30 cars in the first two laps because of this. Taking a realistic approach simply means settling in on these first couple of laps and then start racing for real once everyone's tires are warm.

AI is problematic in various ways on every sim. And I largely agree with most of your comments.

However, what is really making AMS2 AI enjoyable for me right now is that the pacing is largely right for a large percentage of the cars within each lap. That is--if I have the skill level set right there just aren't many places anymore where I can get a free overtake every lap. Raceroom has more realistic AI behaviors when you watch them on the track, but there are "easy pass" zones on most tracks which makes a lot of gains in position less satisfying.

(And note that I said the AI is good on a lot of cars, not all of them. I tried a Formula V12 race recently and it was a disaster as the AI had rear tires made out of rubber and the player has rear tires made out of plastic).

I think AMS2 can make more strides forward, but they need to get to where they aren't fiddling with physics on existing cars every month. Because the AI are on "simplified physics", changing the player car physics requires a different set of AI changes. (And the problem has been that Reiza usually changes car physics first and then updates AI months later). I do worry that they will continue on this path of chasing the same problems around month after month vs. stabilizing the car physics so they can work on more advanced matters of gameplay around SP and MP racing.

Time will tell. But for now I am having fun with SP racing--that wasn't the case 6 months ago.

 

I didnt see that but it seems to be. Not really a huge difference between 50 and 95 though from what i saw. Maybe less dive bombing in corners when they shouldnt but that was about the only difference i can come up with. But even at 95 i havent had any real issues. I am going to try some more back to back races and test this though with just changing the ai aggression level between 50 and 95.

 

I don't know about AMS2 AI, but Palmeiras don't have Copinha nor Mundial.

 

did i miss the dev update?

regarding AI - its far from perfect, and sometimes broken. Drove a race at 1993 spa, with rain mid-race, and the AI on slicks was doing better on a fully wet surfaces compared to me with rain tires, with the early 90s F1 car. they also didnt stop for soft tires after the track dried up and i wasnt really able to close the gap despite them being on rain tires vs my softs

 

CrimsonEminence posted this about AI recently

 

They have Copinha (they win this year, the joke is lost) :'(

 

AI is mixed de-ending on which car type you drive and track you race on. I have found formula cars more frustrating with AI than tin tops. Then again there are some human racers that are worse - particularly at corner 1 in a MP race. Some have no concept of what a brake is.