Official General AI Comments & Discussion Topic

So I now also made a short compilation of the various AI issues I encountered while randomly choosing tracks for about 1 and a half hour.
(Settings V1.4.2.3; 108 strength, 75 aggression, heavy rubber, input device Dualshock 4).

The first clip is how the AI should be in terms of traction; everything after this is the current Automobilista 2 AI experience, consisting of slow straight line speeds (especially when racing in packs), the mother of all traction cheats, and braking as if using drum brakes.
An experience indeed.

 

You'll be fine when you can get damage-free laps in!!

There is almost no difference in top speeds between the AI at 95 and 108. It's all in the corners and braking, so note also that "we" have to be a bit more aggressive than the AI through and out of Ascari to match their top speeds on the straight. Take a bit more curb than they do, or else it will be difficult to keep up with them. The Ultima GTR at Monza is about 0.5 seconds per lap slower than our internal benchmark. Which basically means it's close enough, but erring on the slower side. There are other combos not yet fully calibrated where you need to tone down the AI strength to keep up with them (and a few where the AI are too slow, too). As you likely know, these are continually being ironed-out with the goal that all car/track combos are reasonably evenly keeled relative to us, the humans (at whichever AI strength level is appropriate).

 

I definitely saw some AI issues there with slow straight line and corner speeds
But mixed in, I also saw some F1 cars trying to race on club racing circuits and some questionable passing attempts by the human

 

The only circuit unsuited for this car I raced on was Cascavel. Everything else was usable for Formula 1, even though Curvelo might also be debatable (they did race on tracks like this though, eg Buenos Aires).

Apart from that, the racing at "unsuited" circuits was not the issue, because the racing was mostly fine, it just didn't seem to happen with identical cars.
Which passing attempt did you find questionable? Most of the passing that happens in braking zones is me avoiding the AI's far too early braking.

 

• Car / Track used: Formula Ultimate
• AI Strength setting: 100 to 110
• Corner (if issue is corner specific): See report below
• AI Aggression setting: 10%
• Session Distance: Custom championship, Full Weekend P/Q/R, Full race lenght from 2019 real F1, mandatory pit stop, no refuel allowed.
• Weather when the issue was observed: Most Dry
• Player Tyre: Soft slicks more of the time
• AI Tyre (if known to be different from player): I don't know
• Type of session when the issue was observed (practice / quali / race) All

Imola GP weekend
AI strenght set at 110% for practice and qualy to match my lap times. In general, AI behaviour is slow in / super fast out of corners. Turn 1 AI tendency is to brake a lot later, slow trough the chicane, and super fast on acceleration out of it. This, coupled to the AI tendency to put his car nose just behind player's rear wing, it leads to a lot of AI ramming on the braking zone at T1.

At Variante Alta, AI brakes too soon, being slow, and accell super fast again.

At race time, AI simply doesn't get affected by fuel load, brake and engine wear, etc. They start the race posting similar lap times as P and Q sessions, all the laps, during the entire race. AI only seems to lose pace when tyres get worn at middle of the race. In contrast, player has to set up the car to last the race and to have a stable car to drive for long, looking at engine and brake wear, fuel consumption, etc, so lap times at race time suffer a lot compared to what the AI does, which results in an unfair advantage to the AI.

My workaround to that problem is to lower AI strenght by 10% only for the race. It usually has the benefit to equalize lap times against AI, making a good and fair race, but the inconsistencies noted earlier about AI speed during braking, transitioning and accelerating, makes each race a somewhat frustrating affair, even when the resulting lap times are similar between AI and the player.

On a wet track, AI on this track is simply unbeatable for me. They have super grip everywhere, I'm 10 secs a lap slower on wet conditions here. AI doesn't suffer from wet puddles at all. While I have to adjust my lines to avoid get caught by puddles, sliding here and there, they can past through at bizarre speed and 100% gas application. It's unraceable to me, very frustrating experience :-(

Azure (aka Monaco) GP weekend
Again 110% P/Q and 100% Race (same behaviour than before regarding lap times for P/Q and R trims)

AI tendency to go side by side during almost the entire lap usually ends on multicars pile ups at the chicane after the tunnel. They go side by side at the chicane, and one, sometimes both cars, crash against the barriers and against each other, stopping in the middle of the track and preventing other cars to pass by, so race over and start again :-(

They are super slow in / super fast out again on this track. They brake a lot early at Mirabeau, and have a super boost through the Hotel hairpin. They are really fast at Massenet only to brake hard at Casino entry instead to be flowing through them both. They brake a lot at the chicane entry too, only to be super fast out of it. Often, slower cars brake out of nowhere at the middle of the fast Piscine chicane, so a guaranteed crash into them if you are following that AI car.

Again, lap times match with the player, but racing the AI is super odd here too.

Jerez with chicane GP weekend.
The AI behaviour here has the same tendency as described previously. I had to lower strenght to 98% for the race, from 110% in Q.

Also, brake early/slow in/super fast out tendency in the majority of slow corners and more so, at the chicane.

Montreal GP weekend
Here the AI is too fast for me. I had to lower P/Q strenght to 100%, and even lower to 90% for the race.

They are more reckless than on the other tracks I raced them so far. They try to put the car everywhere, everytime trying to overtake. Slow in/ super fast out again at T1/T2, T3/T4, the hairpin and the last chicane.

They crash into the player when in the in-lap entering the pits, because they follow their programmed line and speed to enter the pits regardless if the player is braking into the last chicane, so a total lack of awareness at this spot. It happens a lot on P and Q sessions.

Lots of punts at several spots during the race too, given they can accelerate a lot faster than the player and trying to overtake all over the place.

In general, my findings so far by trying to recreate a somewhat real F-Ultimate championship with full simulation options and full lenght races are:

• I had to use different AI strenght levels for P/Q and Race because (IMO) AI is calibrated to always go full speed to match a certain lap time regardless fuel load, brake wear, engine wear and fuel management, all things I as a player need to look after if I want to complete a full lenght F1 race.
• AI has a tendency to brake early, go slow and accelerate super fast out of a lot of slow/mid speed corners at all the tracks I tested.
• AI doesn't respect blue flags. They don't submit and they race you when passed.
• AI has lack of awareness of the player, and even sometimes against other AI.
• Pileups festival at Monaco, with a lot of AI car crashes not only at the chicane.
• AI race this fragile open wheelers the same as if we are driving GT3 tanks where door to door, bumper to bumper contacts are not so critical.
• I found the soft slicks doesn't represent a challenge in terms of tyre management. I can start with softs, do one pit stop at middle of the race for another set of softs, and finish the race without a significant impact on lap times due to tyre wear. This renders any strategy planning pointless, and you never have the need to use the hard compound.
• In general, it was not a good experience so far doing this custom championship. This is sad for me, I really like driving this car. The management you have to do to be able to finish a long race is good and rewarding if you do it well, but if the AI doesn't follow the same rules, it's pointless, rendering this class only suited to do very short sprint races at full speed, taking out the strategy component the real counterpart car posseses IRL.

Thanks for reading this wall of text

 

100% agreed. Same feelings and findings for me.

 

If you have the patience, try the Montreal test again, but with "Aggression" set to 90% instead of 10%. In theory, there should be less punting and bumping, even though this may seem counter-intuitive.

 

Running less than 80 is usually more troublesome. esp corners in and out.
85/80, 90/90, 100/100 have been good this end for some time. (not tested this week but hope to very soon. 100 agg seems better overall, I just adjust skill to my speed. (Track /weather specific still apply to ai.in general
@Dicra @Fernando . nice to see good reports,

 

I will try 90% and 100% in the next race to see what happens, thanks for the tip.

 

Excellent reports

The problems with the current AI are so universal, so global through every single Formula class (and not only these; basically every car that can't always go full throttle out of corners is having similar issues) and on every single track that I don't know whether I should even send in more reports. It's almost always the same issues, and it needs big global adjustments before it becomes even remotely playable.

Right now, there isn't a single satisfying AI experience for the Formula cars - the corners where the player doesn't feel like driving a different class are the absolute exception. Honestly I'm not sure I can name even one corner where it works (except for some of the full throttle ones, and maybe some of the higher speed corners (5th-6th gear). It's not always too slow in and too quick out (most of the time it is), but it's almost always one of these two (and if it isn't, then the AI accelerate too slowly, like out of Silverstone's Becketts corner).

I have no idea about game development, but something so fundamentally flawed throughout so many car/track combinations will be a ****load of work to fix, I'm afraid. I hope that there's some global parameters Reiza can change in order to at least generally adress the issues - and then individually adress the corners where it still doesn't work.

But some sort of fix for this would be greatly appreciated in the near future (maybe when the AI personalities are introduced?), and I really wouldn't mind if that pushes back anything else, because I think that all the other ingredients for enjoying a good game are there (even most of the times I actually race the AI side by side are good fun), but the AI's quite far away and that drags the whole offline experience down from "fun" to "frustrating".

 

Haven't been playing in a while. I came back and the AI is a pit maneuver festival. I can't get through any race without the AI spinning me in a corner. They are not detecting me since they just seem to drive through me.

Typically AI 80-88, with aggression from 0-90, and I feel like I get spun just as much on low or high aggression. The AI use to be so good at being player avoidant, and looking over the forums it looks like they are being pushed to drive faster in corners likely with forced timing since they seem to ignore physics in corners, which is likely overriding their player avoidance.

Can this be looked at, it doesn't seem to matter the track or car, so far I have tried many. My last race was p4 on brands 86/50 and was spun in the 5th lap. Going to put the game away again for a bit, but player avoidance needs to come back or be a slider for player awareness and avoidance.

 

I find no particular enjoyment in races where the AI streak away out of every corner and every straight, only to be caught again going into every corner. This seems to be the case with a lot of openwheelers, and definitely with the P4 (which IMHO has the most unbalanced AI in the entire game).

I think that in general the AI of the tin tops is far better behaved than openwheeler and prototypes. At least with most of the low and medium powered tintops that I prefer to drive, there is some semblance of actual side by side racing. For me, the 2021 Stock cars are consistently enjoyable at 100/50 for instance.

 

It is. I noticed this in PC2 as well after many frustrating incidents. Higher aggression makes the AI more likely to overtake rather than rear-ending you.

Generally, I agree with many of you that the AI corner exit needs some work. At first I thought it was my setups and I needed some git gut, but after much adjustment and practice on some of the difficult corners I don't think it's humanly possible to accelerate that hard after the apex without spinning out.

 

My view is that racing fast open-wheelers against the AI in AMS2 has always been terrible. The AI just doesn't work at all well in open-wheelers. You can't have AI trying to go 2-3 wide through every corner at Monaco or Long Beach, or sticking the nose in whenever there is two inches of space. That's not reality and it will never work no matter how much "calibration" you do. The AI needs to be different for open-wheelers vs. tin tops.

I would guess most if all of the "AI calibration" is going towards GT and Stock Car Brasil AI, which does work reasonably well aside from some classes that are just way too slow into corners (like paradoxically the GT3 now are).

 

Some of the historic tin top content (like the new 70's touring class, or the 80's Stock Cars) also works quite well. On the other side of the spectrum, the SuperV8 class is as bad as any of the open wheelers, because these cars require some careful throttle application, which the AI doesn't seem to need to do.
The street cars are another class where the AI completely blitzes the player.

On another note (still 1.2.4.3): T5 at Kyalami (that quick right hander where the first sector ends) seems to be a full throttle corner for the AI, where they gain around 5-7 tenths in comparison to the player (cars used were GT1 and F3). They then proceed to lose that time into and out of the final corner of the circuit, where they seem to be almost standing.
These two corners are of course only the biggest offenders; the old slow-in (and slightly too quick out) rears its head in the hairpin at the far end of the track, and the AI is much quicker out of the S-corner before said hairpin.

 

Oh yeah racing the Super V8 AI is legendary bad. The AI drive like they're tanks with 110% grip compared to the player, while the player's car behaves like a 50 lb shopping trolley - instant spin if you touch any of the AI.

 

My favourite cars in AMS 2 are some of the open wheelers. But when doing races against the AI and starting from the back or middle of the grid, I switch damage off most of the time, because otherwise it is very hard to finish the race with the AI going for contact in so many occasions.

 

My hope is that Reiza will achieve this necessary differentiation by using their promised AI personalities - and simply use different ones for Formula cars and tin tops. Maybe in the November update, but tbh I don't really expect proper AI until maybe late 2022.

 

Hi Marc, I followed your advise and replayed the Montreal race with 90% strenght and 100% aggression.

Indeed, AI awareness was a bit better, they didn't punt me off at the same spots as before, but I noticed other problems which didn't see with AI at 10% aggression.

One of those problems was the sheer amount of AI pile ups. They crash each into another, blocking the track, several times during the race. Crashed cars remained on track for several laps before being retired too, sometimes blocking the racing line.

Another side effect of aggression at 100% was that, as the AI now tries to overtake more aggressively, on some corners they go over the kerbs trying to make the pass while at the same time trying to not to crash another car, so with these formula cars they start jumping and eventually crashing into another AI, into the player, or staying upside down in the middle of the track. I think the amount of pile ups I saw was because of that behaviour, AI against AI, not against the player.

I also tried the next GP on my custom championship (Spielberg), P/Q at 110% strenght, Race at 100% strenght, both sessions aggression was set at 100%.

It was almost the same as Montreal at 100% aggro. Lots of AI crashes, pile ups entering the pits on Practice, cars remained on the middle of the track for a lot of laps. Setting aggression at 100% didn't solve the "brake early / slow turn in / superfast out" I mentioned in my previous post, but seems like the punting the player behaviour is less pronounced overall.

On here, AI brake early at T2, T3 and the last corner. It has super accell out of those corners aswell, and super grip driving the two fast left handers after the first sector.

What the 100% aggro seems to do here is that AI try to defend his position a lot more, which was really good to see, but I had an AI move to block me at the main straight braking zone, leading to an almost crash. For reference, It was the exact same move Max did against Kimi at Kemmel straight some years ago. Watching the replay, they did that exact same move against other AIs too, leading to AI crashes this time around.

I will replay Spielberg again next, this time with aggression set at 10% to see if the increased amount of pileups I got were a by product of the increased aggression settings.

Thanks!