Official General AI Comments & Discussion Topic

Latest update V10 Gen 2 at Monza 1991 ai are way too slow off the start, and are too fast entering corners and slow on the straights, also they seem to have no slipstream ability.
The DPI at Watkins Glen are awesome btw.

 

I used to run 100 a while back as that was suggested but now I feel 50 is quite well balanced (apart from the odd punt up the rear).

 

I just came across these 2 video's where a guy points a very common AI mistake across sims, including AMS2. This concerns 'overtake stacking' where too many AI cars try to divebomb each other in a row. In the second video he gives a simple solution. Take a look. I hope this gets fixed!

The problem:

The (simple) fix:

 

Track: Virginia
Cars: Porsche GT4, Sprint Race, P3 (Honda)
AI Aggression: 55
AI Strength: various

AI have 100 extra horsepower on the straights here, regardless of AI strength setting. In my P3 race, I dialed it back to where I was overall a second per lap faster than the fastest AI but was still losing 2 seconds to them on the back straight.

Should also note this is the only track thus far on version 1.3 where I've seen AI wandering onto the grass a lot, and having full traction. (More than any track in the game, the VIR grass is a sheet of ice for the player).

 

You're absolutely right, but no ...

I spent a lot of time redrawing all of the f1 championship ai lines on assetto corsa this way for this problem.
and it works perfectly well!
When you watch the ai on the track it's just beautiful ...
But no.
because when you, the player, you roll against the ai, you know perfectly well that they will be nicely tidied up before the turn and therefore you take everyone inside and shout happily "give me the place now !"
It makes racing terribly boring and above all you can overtake at each turn ...
In fact, it's not that simple unfortunately ...

 

My biggest problem with the AI is that I can't seem to have a car behind me while racing.
it is as if the ai gives up as soon as you pass it.

It is as if the AI difficulty drops from 110 to 90 as soon as you pass it.
I spend my races fighting with the cars in front (which is cool) but the cars behind have almost disappeared ...

 

The term 'Aggression' in this context, in this sim, is in my experience rather misleading for the definition of the word and the result of adjusting this level.
Better balance between overall ai speed and 'skill' is proven to be obtained by a higher level of so called aggression since the "skill" they demonstrate in corner speed/entry /exit and less rear ending is higher.
If the name of the levels was, lets say; Speed and Skill these names would better reflect the results and folk would not be put off by a higher level. running the 2 levels within 5-10% is a safer place to start after ones established your speed compared to theirs..
There maybe a difference at the moment after update (not noticed much myself at 100/100 .Track specific of course!)
biggest difference is cars for me.

@YZAKY
it is as if the ai gives up as soon as you pass it.

Yes I have seen this also.
With each update they improve, for the most part

 

AI were across the board abominable at various points in AMS2: constantly driving and overtaking on kerbs and grass with no speed penalty; constantly ignoring hitting and PITing the player; rage turboing to make up implausible ground; constantly divebombing under the player into corners; maintaining full speed on the outside of turns and off the ideal race line; racing side by side for lap after lap; dramatically weaving in a physics defying way; being extremely hard to compete with but giving up once passed; forming trains that never changed over the course of a race; etc etc etc

In the last few patches, the majority of these behaviours have been toned down quite significantly. So for me at this point, at least in the low and medium powered tin tops and other non formulas that I prefer, the AI are generally decent and quite often lots of fun. Once you move up to the really fast and high powered classes, the speed and car fragility means that the quirks of the AI are magnified, particularly their aggression and ability to always come out better than the player in a collision. Most of the complaints I see seem to be about formula AI, maybe that’s where Renato and team should be concentrating their efforts, and the results will trickle down to further improve the experience on the more modest classes.

Personally, my remaining issues are mainly

• A few tracks/sectors/corners where AI are massively advantaged relative to player
• A few classes where the AI appear to be driving a different vehicle and can barely be competed against
• AI too slow into corners, but get implausible grip and speed out of corners on wet tyres
• AI almost never make unforced errors, and recover from any errors with inhuman reaction time and implausible physics
• AI getting faster and faster as the race progresses, while the player gets slower due to tyre wear
• Flags and penalties

It seems like AI is one of the hardest things to get right in simracing, and imho all of the major players have various issues with theirs. AMS2 has to win the award for the greatest AI improvement in the shortest span of dev time.

 

Yes, in many open wheelers, the AI still does those crazy things you mentioned in the beginning of your statement. Some of them are meanwhile not as significant as they were before.
Due to be able to edit custom AI files, this forming of trains can be avoided on many of the tracks.

What is left?
- Still no penalties and flags

- On in- and outlaps in qualifying, AI races you as it already was the race.

- AI still tries to cut corners instead of braking when being overtaken by player before chicanes (and rather crashes on tracks where there are tyre walls like in Hockenheim 88)

- Racing line has no big impact on their speed when exiting corners. They can miss the line completely and drive out of curves quite fast.

- They are completely blind for situations in front when player is involved. For Instance, if player has to break for a group of AI in front in lap 1, where there often is some kind of pile up before corners, the AI coming from behind tries to force it's way through, just as if there was no traffic in front of player. This often leads to the impression that you are being brake tested in front while attacked from behind.

- When having contact, the AI's cars feel heavy as tanks. So, they can easily avoid a spin most of the time whilst player has to work hard in order to do so.

- AI's overtaking behaviour towards each others is poor. Even with custom AI files, a really fast car can not overtake a backmarker on many tracks, because they are too cautious to pull out of slipstream before corners and overtake on the inside. They tend to step back and drive back to the racing line, although they could stay on the inside a bit longer and cut the slower car off. In general, in game's logic the car coming frome the outside always forces it's way through, even if there is a car on the inside and already in front.
This inconsistent behaviour leads to forming these trains again on those tracks, although a custom file is in use which makes the top drivers some seconds faster than the backmarkers. You can observe that very well on tracks like Imola 88. There is a long full speed section from the start up to "Tosa". Faster car pulls out of slipstream quite early, but instead of going for the manouevre before corner, they decide to drive behind slower car again and ram it a bit.

 

Version: V.1.3.1
Car: All tried (FVintage, FRetro, GT Classics etc.)
Track: Monza 71/91/10k
AI Strength: 90-93%
AI Aggression: 75%
Corner (if issue is corner specific): All
Weather when the issue was observed: Dry

The AI straight line speed and acceleration is still all over the place. Every car I try to race here they shoot past me like they have 20 hp more. Ascari is especially heinous.

 

Formula trainer at Laguna Seca, they scratch the left wall after the start. Standing start, good weather, 90/50 difficulty, i start last.

 

Track: Salvador Street
Cars: F309
AI: 91/50

The AI could jump the sausage curbs in the chicane at the start/finish w/o any issue while the player's car is thown into air if you hit them. Taking this corner properly means losing 1-2 seconds vs AI despite the low setting.

 

F-Retro_Gen2

The most annoying thing is the fact, that the AI does not understand the principle of slow in/fast out in corners. They enter like idiots and then stand almost still on the apex, braketesting the player, while the guys from behind try to force there way through because of their blindness. Extremely horrible in F_Retro_Gen2. The AI also can not drive a clean line in this class, always change line in front of player, slowing down while guys from the back attack you. And when you are side by side with them, they have a move towards your side hanging in your rear tyres, spinning your car and go on. Of course, they can drive on the grass full throttle with no issues because of their "physics".
Main problem to me: Reiza dared to release a completely broken AI, which did not even deserve the name, when game came out. It was just a laugh. And instead of starting all over again, they are tinkering here and there, but it will never be good that way. With certain open wheelers, you notice how horrible the AI in many classes still is.

 

I agree. I think that for the fast open wheelers, we need an AI overhaul instead of minor tiuning passes, in terms of overtaking logic and a somewhat realistic race pace during long races.

At the current very good shape of the game physics, when the new MP features go out of beta, I really hope Reiza can revisit the open wheelers AI logic

 

Can anything be done about the AI's pit exit behaviour?
When session starts, they all come out of pits at once, forming packs and trains. Because of their poor overtaking skills towards each others, they drive like that the whole stint, ramming from time to time instead of overtaking. With damage switched on, many cars lose their frontwings. Then, they all pit at once and it starts all over again.
Edit: It has not the same effect with each car/track combination, but with some, the whole field drives in a huge pack in qualifying.
Is it possible to let the guys out of garage with bigger intervals within the Madness Engine?

 

Having spent most of my time since 1.3 came out in various open-wheel cars, the one theme with AI is that they are simply using a completely different engine and turbo package than any player car. For an easy example, take an F309 car onto any track. Get on a straightway and once you reach ~160km/hr, the AI will hit the turbo boost and leave you in the dust. At Laguna Seca the the gap was 3 seconds on the front straight with AI at a pretty low strength setting (90 I believe). Have to run that low setting so I can make up all of that time in the corners. Which then results in in the problem that frequently gets complained about of AI going too slow through the corners.

If the AI had the same engine package as the player, I could run the AI at a reasonable setting and I wouldn't have issues with cars stopping in the corner.

 

Aggression slider does not work, doesnt matter if you use 0 or 100 aggression, it will be the same behavior especially by open wheelers, a pain in the back

 

I did a few GT4 AI races at Hockenheim national yesterday and noticed several things that weren't as bad pre-build.

AI strength 110
Aggression 100
AI 30
Hockenheim national
I did a race in the sun and light rain.
Manual cool-down lap enabled.
Graphics set to high
100+ fps at race start, 160-180fps throughout the race.

Now before I go into details, I will say the AI has improved over PC2 but a few PC2 familiar traits are still hanging around.

More prominent in the opening laps.
AI is terribly slow entering corners when group racing along with multiple cars cutting the inside corners by up to 2-3 car widths.

The next issue, I personally felt was an immersion killer.
When racing the AI I always felt like I had a protective bubbly 2ft around my car that magically pushed cars out of my way when I got near them.
Going down a straight the odd AI car would attempt the inside route but would never fully shut the door. The second I drew even with the inside rear bumper the ai would just magically and unrealistic, slide lateral, and get out of my way.

I also noticed this similar behavior when the AI was fighting among each other on straights. Instead of fluidly moving from side to side, a lot of them would do this weird herky-jerky lateral slide?
If they can get the AI to hold their line and do it smoothly, it would enhance the ai experience greatly.

while on the cool-down lap entering the pitlane 1/2 the field piled up and crashed right before the cones at pitlane.
Also, post-race when the cars were stopping in their pit stalls there was a bunch of graphical glitches...cars flashing, disappearing, morphing through other cars...these grey lines kept flashing where the cars were supposed to be parked.

Lastly and very minor.
When I watched the race start replay I noticed a big white ball on half the windshield of every car....I'm assuming it's a poorly rendered sun reflection?

Anyone else experiencing this?
Was there an ai file I should have deleted at some point?

 

Version: V.1.3.1
Car: Various, including Brazilian Stock 2021, old Porsche RSR, GT4s
Track: Donington
AI Strength: 100%
AI Aggression: 50%
Corner (if issue is corner specific): T5, where the old bridge used to be
Session Distance: 8 laps
Weather when the issue was observed: dry
Player Tyre: dry
Type of session when the issue was observed (practice / quali / race): race

AI should be able to take this gentle corner flat out but they are noticeably slow through it - they don't brake but must be lifting off.

Same with 2nd last corner (T15?) at Adelaide .

 

Cascais
AI 100
Aggression 50
Session: Practice (Quali and Race dont seem to have this issue which is odd)
F ultimate
Weather: Both Wet and Dry
Tires: both wet and slicks

Problem: only im practice, ai always exit the pits onto the grass sliding into barrier and then retire. Happens in wet and dry conditions. Only in practice. Quali and race, ai can exit pits, and even reenter and exit pits without an issue.

Ai also spin out in practice on the final turn before straight but i believe thats probably because of damage sustained from the pit issue if they make it out.
Edit: Nevermind, the entire circuit is messed up for the f-ultimate ai.
Thanks