Official General AI Comments & Discussion Topic

Something I'm really curious about - a friend of mine is adamant that you need to run practice and qualifying sessions to 'train' the AI; if you don't then the AI performance will be out of whack and very aggressive - leading to the AI barging you off track during the race and leading to a generally bad time.

Is this correct? My understanding was that you run the practice/qualifying to see your pace against the AI, and thus adjust the AI difficulty to match you own pace.

 

I tested that theory many, many times and there is no "training" AI in AMS2. It makes zero difference whether you run 5 min qualifying, 1 hour or straight to race, the results are always the same.

And no matter how many times i skipped qualifying and went straight to the race i was NEVER, not even once pushed off the track by AI in all the years i have been playing this game. Your friend should post a video that shows under what circumstances was he pushed, because more likely than not he was not respecting the AI on the track.

 

In clip 2 his spotter states car on your left, then clear left when he starts to turn in, then goes back to saying car left.

That clip needs a view from the AI cars chase view, most of these issues aren't easy to work out just from just one angle.

Based on that one cockpit view angle in clip 2 I'd be slightly annoyed that the AI didn't back out there. Given this is a clip from someone using triples the second car is only barely coming alongside (can't be seen on the left screen) and only appears in the mirror implying its slightly further back.

 

Thanks Tom, that confirms what I've been thinking also.

 

In all of those clips i see you ignoring the fact there is a car next to you and expect F1 driving where they would slam their brakes, instead of you respecting them on the track to drive side by side. If that was me instead of the AI you would have been pit maneuvered too for chopping my nose off.

EDIT: I tested the same scenarios and in all instances the AI yielded to me. I am the POV car in these clips.

 

I get the feeling the unspoken assumption behind a lot of these is basically "I'm the human player, and the AI drivers should give me special treatment which I can exploit."

It reminds me of:

 

I agree that a lot of issues stem from people not giving enough space. The AI can't just disappear, and while they can sometimes be maybe overly aggressive in where they stick their nose, people in general are aggressive when racing.
I've had experience with racing at a club level in a real car and honestly some of the moves people try and pull are far more egregious than the AI in AMS2

The main thing I see is people not defending from cars behind that are within striking distance and then being upset when they get sent on.
You need to be aware that the AI will pretty much always drive into a space if there's one left available, so you need to make sure there's no space available for them to drive into.
Racing is more than just driving fast and putting in consecutive quali laps.

(Sorry, this isn't exactly a post about the AI, but people need to learn when they are the problem, and when the AI is the problem before complaining )

 

Given how i have been raced in every single lobby by a lot of people who crash me out when i am literally right next to them, i am not surprised a lot of people have no idea how to give space to the AI because they treat them like they do not matter because "they are just AI".

And every time someone makes a post (and people make them on the AMS subreddit a LOT) about the AI crashing them out or rear-ending them, they never provide any video of it ! So then i test the settings and car/track they write about and i do not have any problems with the AI, in fact my problem is the opposite that the AI is not aggressive enough and always yields to me regardless of settings.

 

In my experience when I treat the AI drivers like a real, professional (or amateur) racing driving, and don't assume I can just barge into the space they're occupying, I have a good time. I actually have a much better experience than I do in a lot of online lobbies.

 

I've had many many instances (more than 3000 restarts that mess up my "driver statistics" in ams2)

Specially during an early transition from 1.5 to 1.6 the AI got super agressive.

It was when historic SPA released and I was running the GT1 Class there, driving the Merc, with 120 skill, high aggression (max was total chaos) and realistic settings, max damage etc.
Something that used to be easy for me before.

Every restart, over the course of 1 or 2 laps, the AI would always hit the back of my car, many times totally destroying the rear wing (100% damage, RED, rear wing flying off my car and I had no downforce).

The thing was, I either had that world record at that time, or was very close to it. And I was faster than any max AI over the course of the entire lap, but players and AI work on diff physics.

I am faster in certain places, slower in others, and in these cars when the AI was faster than me in a place, they were not patient, they would literally pit manouvre me off the track.

And over the years many many people have complained about the same thing. Even right now I don't advise anyone to run AI above medium, maybe high if you're driving slow cars that aren't downforce dependant or fragile.

And "Max aggression" as pure carnage, the AI was driving like dirty drivers do on some lobbies, literally going for moves that shouldn't be even attempted, and literally bumping sideways.

Maybe it was something with the hit boxes for the cars, but in the GT1s the AIs kept punting me while slightly overlapping on corner entry, literally just like a dirty driving.

I once was able to finish a race but I had to drive very weirdly around them, like I was actively avoiding them. And I've had a much better time driving vs some of the fastest AMS2 players in the world either from top Time trial and from LFW or private racing leagues guys that are just very competitive, but also clean and respectful. OFC humans will always have better judgement.

I mean no personal insult or disrespect to you:
Unless you've been doing world record laps and beating max aggression 120 AI on difficult cars, I find it very hard to believe that you have the skillset needed to properly judge and analyse how aggressive the AI can be. If you're not on the top 1% competitive drivers.
Or the mistake is mine:
I've been traumatised by past updates AI, and nearly stopped racing against it and actively search for human races and haven't been having as many AI races recently.

Maybe for the average joe the AIs can be serviceable and they've been probably updated and improved since then.

But even recently on an amateur league the guys added a few AI cars on the Historic GT1 2001 race, and people had crashes with the AI, the skill was a bit low and still the AI looked a bit oddly aggressive and sometimes in odd places or squeezing etc, just a bit weird.

Still AMS2 AI is amongst the nicest and there are ways to personalize it and configure it more to your liking and taste. For me it's just being careful with the aggression setting and you'll have pretty decent and clean racing with them.

So I don't really see a "big problem" with the AI right now, ofc, if you want max aggression, the AI will be full of very aggressive drivers, and I find that to have it's own set of entertainment.

That option does not exist in many sims, and for slower cars you might want to have more aggressive AI to actually trade paint with you.

In the end its like:
P1"Ai too aggressive"
P2"you set it high or max aggression what did u expect"
P2"set ai to low or medium aggression"
P1"ai is driving just fine now"
this is basically the idea I have about this subject right now. still wish I could make them a tiny bit more careful about the car's hitboxes so they didn't clip my rear wing under braking. but that's it.

In the end you do have valid criticisms as well, because anyone can "learn" the AI behaviours and try to predict them and avoid most of the trouble. The single GT1 race I finish vs AI was like that, but I had to get off the racing line in certain braking zones for some corners, sometimes instead of defending I had to let the AI through just to get them on the next one. And it really slowed my laps because I had less optimal lines, wide lines, to avoid getting punted when the AI wanted to jump on the inside but my car was there.

 

To say somebody needs to have world records on lap times to be able to judge AI quality is wild given the fact that there is a slider that allows the difficulty to be anywhere between 70 and 120. It is even funnier given the fact that you are comparing hotlapping vs racing ? I am so confused about what you are trying to say.

And I would seriously want to see an actual recording on what the AI did to you or how they took your wing off, because i just finished a test at max difficulty, max aggression started on pole and did just one lap and was literally brake checking AI behind me to see what they would do and they did not rear end me even once.

I am also the most critical person when it comes to AI of this game but 3500 hours later, and i have yet to be unfairly hit by the AI and even on max agression they always yield to me and let me have a spot i do not deserve.

Also in my life i played many dozens of racing games with top level AI so i know what good AI looks like from other games.

 

I hold a few world records in the Formula series in AMS2 (I say this with all due humility, but from what I can see, it needs to be said), and I have about 2,000 hours in AMS2. Although I’ve done very few races against the AI, I’m going to try a race with a car I have a record with to see how the AI performs—but of course, I’m in the 120 skill range against the AI, but what about the lower skill ranges—from 120 down to 70? Either way, I’m going to test it out to see what happens, so there will be more opinions in the discussion to help clarify the issue.

P.S. I think anyone can test the AI at whatever skill level they’re at—whether it’s 70, 100, or 120—because each range is covered by a driver with that skill level, in my humble opinion. Although I understand the viewpoint that you need a certain level of driving skill to properly test the AI, I think the truth lies somewhere in between. And you also have to realize when racing against the AI that you need to leave space, just as you would when racing against humans, because the AI isn’t a mind reader—just like humans (or at least some of them; I certainly aren’t)—and you should respect positions without overwhelming the AI. In any case, I’m going to test this out for myself to see what I find, so I can weigh in on the matter

 

I can't speak for "the majority of complaints", maybe some people would like special treatment from the AI. I like fair racing, after all this is supposed to simulate racing, not simulate sim racing. This is why it's also pointless to point out that the AI is so much better than human drivers in online lobbies.
Ultimately, the discussion boils down to how knowledgeable the people posting are about racing etiquette and racing regulations. Without intending to offend anyone, many sim racers seem to have never spent any time studying these rules, which adds to the seemingly heated discussion about AMS2 AI skill.

 

I race at Spa in the McLaren MP4/6 with AI at 120 skill, and I have to say the AI performed well—aside from an incident on the last lap when the driver in front of me went off the track. Other than that, I was battling with some of them and they gave me space, although I noticed they have too much grip, which means they take the corners at higher speeds, brake later, and accelerate out earlier. I was only able to keep up in the corners of the second sector. I finished 5th in a 10-car race; I could have done better, but I’m a little rusty with that car—I hadn’t driven it in a while and had to set it up quickly because I didn’t have my saved settings for that car. But anyway, excuses aside, hehehehe, the experience was good, but I have to say that the fact that they have too much grip at that level (120) means they try to pass you even in places where, realistically, they shouldn’t—because of just how much grip they have. I’m going to do more races and more tests, fine-tune the setup, and race with everything dialed in, so I can see where I really stand against the AI at 120. The leader’s fast lap times were out of this world—1:51.00—while the last-place finishers were around 1:56.00 and 1:57.00. I set a fast lap of 1:54.00 (give or take a few tenths).
Overall, the experience has been good against the AI at that level, but the fact that they have so much grip makes them act strangely when entering turns—because they’re going faster than I am and have to brake at the last moment to avoid running me over. I think they should adjust that—the fact that they have so much grip. That’s just my humble opinion; I’ll do more races to see how things play out

 

I created an account to garner attention for this to get it fixed, sorry if I annoy anyone.
The AI for Stock USA is now ruined.
On a race with 39 AI on Daytona Oval in dry weather, AI difficulty set to max 120 and max aggression, Stock USA GEN 1 was so slow that I was 10 whole seconds ahead at the start of lap five. for Stock USA GEN 2, 29 of the AI pitted on lap three, and on lap four 9 more pitted, leaving just 1 AI racing around the track before lap five. Stock USA Gen 3 was interesting; The AI was much better but still too slow for the first five laps, fighting each other for the inside line leaving the outside line open for me to launch past several cars per turn. Half way through lap five, the AI just started shooting ahead leaving me in the dust (this may have been a mechanical issue with my car).
I am not a good NASCAR driver, I normally do these same races at AI difficulty level 88-90 but suddenly I'm the love child of Earnhardt and Petty.
Between the slow racing and early pitting, Stock car USA has become undrivable.

 

One of the other things to factor in is I'm guessing a significant proportion of drivers barely touch the car setup.

Apart from fuel, wing and maybe a little tweak to the ARBs they are probably running the default.

That's basically what I do as I don't have the time/patience to spend tinkering with setups, so I'm very dependent on the default setup being half decent (and some of them aren't). Depending on the car track combo I can have a decent race with the AI with it on Medium aggression, 104-108%, .5 mistakes but it's never going to be the optimal setup.

That's going to have an impact on how you interact with the AI and where the overtaking opportunities are.