Simulator Controller with AI-based virtual assistants (race engineer and race strategist)

Another Friday, another Release. Lot's of fixes and improvements in different areas (please take a look at the Release Notes). Worth to mention:

1. New sttings allow you to customize, in which cases the Strategist will inform you about strategy changes.
2. The "Strategy Workbench" now includes detailed consumables charts in the strategy comaparison report. I have attached a typcial report to this post, if you want to have a look.
3. Again we have many improvements for the "Setup Workbench", which now can handle turbo cars with adjustable turbo boost.
4. Many car meta data has been added to the "Strategy Workbench" including the new cars of the GT2 DLC of Assetto Corsa Competizione.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

This week we once again have extensive expansions to the "Setup Workbench". A new mechanism for so-called DLCs allows metadata for vehicles from the community or from third parties (so-called mods) to be added to the vehicle inventory. These additional content downloads are available as a preset in "Simulator Setup". The list of these vehicles will be constantly expanded from now on and you are welcome to contact us in the Discord if you are looking for metadata for a specific vehicle.

There are also improvements for the "Practice Center" and the "Race Center", as well as some bug fixes. And there are some improvements in Team Server and data synchronization for Teams. If you run your own Team Server, an update is due.

So there's a lot to discover again. Never stop improving...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

The most important change for today is that the Push-To-Talk button no longer needs to be pressed twice when activating/calling one of the Assistants. And the Driving Coach learned some more tricks when discussing your performance and the handling of the car after a session. And last, but not least, the icons on the Stream Deck now shows you whether a given function is activated.

Thanks to @mirko_lesko, there are also a couple of new cars in the car meta data DLC. Don't miss that.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Todays release 5.6.0 is packed with some ground-breaking new functionalities for strategy development. The strategy optimizer has seen a major rewrite and now offers several new options for you to set the preferences for the resulting strategy. Most notable is the possibility to optimize the car weight over the course of several stints or the ability to choose different strategies for the first and the last stint independently. Furthermore, the strategy simulation now keeps track of each tyre set and the number of laps a given tyre set already has on its rubber. The resulting strategy will always choose the tyre set with the best remaining tyre life, in cases, when a session with a restricted number of tyre sets is being simulated. Last, but not least, you can now fix one or more pitstops at an exact lap with predefined refuel amount and tyre change choices, if necessary. Additionaly, the "Strategy Workbench" now provide a direct view of a resulting strategy without the need to scroll down in the strategy report, which improves the workflow effectively.



I will conduct a live coaching session for all new features of the "Strategy Workbench" in our Discord on Monday evening @ 19:00 CET. I will be happy to meet you there.

Other changes apply to the "Session Database", where you now can export and import settings, for example, to share them with your team mates. And there are additional function configurations available in the Startup Profiles. Please see the Release Notes for more information.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Beside several smaller fixes and improvements I can release the first integration for Le Mans Ultimate today. Not everything is working already, most notably the pitstop automation is not working at all, since the data API support of Le Mans Ultimate ist still incomplete and buggy, but most of the telemetry data is already available, the car positions on the track are correct, and so on.

Please take a look at the Release Notes for information on how to install and configure the shared memory plugin for Le Mans Ultimate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Many small, but nevertheless important changes are part of today's release. Opponnent pitstop information in the "Race Center" will be almost 100% reliable now and past pitstops will be taken into account when a strategy is re-calculated for a race with pitstop restrictions. The Le Mans Ultimate integration has been improved and the handling of sessions where drivers with duplicate race numbers are present in rFactor 2 is now handled correctly. Last, but not least, there is now support for team managers who want to create and share an initial configuration for all their team members.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

The Spotter has learned a new trick today. He can inform you about accidents ahead and also behind as well as about slow cars on the track ahead. Not everything is supported in every simulator (yet), therefore checkout the Release Notes as well.

And support for iRacing weather is here. You can manage tyre compounds and the Assistants have knowledge about the current weather. However, there are some open ends at the moment due to restrictions in the current iRacing API, so be sure to read the Release Notes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: The BigO | Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Today's release brings countless improvements for the iRacing support. The new weather model is now fully supported, the grip status of the track is recognized and the Engineer can now reliably choose between the available tyre compounds when preparing a pitstop.

For Assetto Corsa Competizione, warning of accidents and slow vehicles on the track is now also supported by the Spotter and the detection has been fundamentally revised for all simulations. However, incorrect warnings can still occur if an above-average number of accidents happened in the first laps during the learning phase. If these erroneous warnings are too disruptive, they can simply be stopped during a running session. This is described in the Release Notes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Two weeks since the last post here and we had two releases in this time. Many smaller improvements and a lot of tweaks for the accident detection. And the Spotter and the Strategist can now refer to a car using the race number and the current position at the same time. Additionally, Nordschleife has been added for ACC and Testdrives are now handled as practice sessions in iRacing.

Please see the release notes for the last two releases for more information.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

The most notable feature of this week's release is the possibility to specify the frequency with that the Spotter supplies information during a session. Many other, more minor changes are documented in the Release Notes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

This time we have improvements in the session handling of the "Practice Center", the Spotter informs differently about unsafe drivers ahead or behind and there is a new info component available in the "System Monitor", which informs in detail about car damage. This data is also available in the integration plugin and can therefore be used in SimHub, for example. Not yet visible on the outside are many preparations for the new GPT based architecture of the standard Race Assistants.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

This is the first release in a series of upcoming releases, which will introduce GPT technology for the standard Assistants (Engineer, ...). The first release will allow you to send the speech of an Assistant to an LLM, for example ChatGPT, for rephrasing. This will introduce interesting variations in the spoken messages of the Assistants, making the conversation much more natural.

All these upcoming changes will be optional, since using a GPT service for speech processing will introduce a bit of additional latency into the conversation, and it might also impose some costs depnding on the chosen provider. Therefore, you can continue to use the assistants as usual without using GPT services.

To activate the new AI functionalities, you can choose between several methods to integrate a GPT service, even by running an LLM locally on your PC, if your system is powerful enough.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

The integration of GPT technology for the Race Assistants has made another big step this week. You can use an LLM now to support a much broader understanding of voice commands, even when they are far off the originally defined grammer. Example:

The command grammar requires you to say to the Engineer: "Can you prepare a pitstop?" When the GPT command processing is active, you can formulate this question almost in any way, for example: "I need to come to the pit. Can you prepare everything?"

Beside many other changes that are mentioned in the Release Notes, support has been added for the Mustang GT3 in ACC.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Release 5.7.2 is the most important and groundbreaking release in a long time. With this release we complete the integration of GPT technology into the standard Race Assistants (Engineer, Strategist and Spotter). All Assistants therefore have a fluent understanding of natural language and can answer all questions in their area, provided the GPT conversation booster has been activated for the respective assistant. As promised, this feature is completely optional as using a GPT service may incur some costs or require a very powerful system, if an LLM is run locally. If the GPT conversation amplifier is not configured, everything works as before, but I'm sure you don't want to miss the new possibilities.



We will have a live coaching session in our Discord on Monday, 20th May, 19:00 CEST. I will explain all the new stuff and there will also be a live presentation.

As always, there are a few more changes. For more information, see the release notes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

This week brings a lot of fine-tuning in several areas:

- The instructions for the GPT-based conversation booster of the Assistants can now be edited.
- The "Race Center" now knows how to handle first lap pitstops after an incident correctly.
- The Spotter can tell you in qualifcation, whether the car in front of you or behind you is on a timed lap.
- The AI Driving Coach now has full access to the telemetry information of the car.
- The workflow for the team manager (configuration of teams, drivers and sessions in the Team Server) has been streamlined.
- And many more...

As always, please take a look at the Release Notes for details. And you want to take a look at this video. It is a recording of our last coaching session, were I gave an introduction incl. demo for the new GPT-based conversational capabilities of the Assistants.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

This week is also all about the new AI functions of the Assistants. It is particularly helpful that the available models of a GPT service provider are now displayed directly during configuration. The integration with GPT4All is now stable after the 2.8 release of this excellent open source project and Ollama is now also supported as a further option for running LLMs locally on the PC. This means that a large selection of commercial providers, such as OpenAI or Mistral AI, is now available, as well as open source models that can run locally on your computer.

As always, check out the Release Notes for more details and other improvements.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

Things are moving fast these days when it comes to AI applications. Two major improvements this week:

1. The Strategist and the Spotter learned a new voice command, with which you can get information about the pitting of other drivers.
2. The knowledge transfer from the rule engine to the LLM has been improved for all Assistants. Much more complex questions are now possible, for example you can ask the Engineer: "Can you tell me the air temperature and the tyre pressures we have chosen for the last pitstop?"

Here are some short recordings with conversations with the Engineer and the Strategist and even between those two. Please note, that some functionality demonstrated here are not yet available in the 5.7.5 but will be released with 5.7.6 end of next week.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/bqfs...ey=33t4j70e3fuetosklvo2peoya&st=3jr0bvs2&dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zza3...ey=5nbo5q1qz0xdvsdgdibk652dq&st=x1a00y5c&dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o3ej...ey=qozaqvqjfhy6tiysvhs6ojkn4&st=n3mkcrw1&dl=1

And you can check the Release Notes for many other improvements, as always.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: https://discord.gg/5N8JrNr48H
Become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/simulatorcontroller
Support the project: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=7GV86ZPS95SL6

 

Another big step for the Assistants: If they are connected to a GPT service, the LLM can now trigger any action inside Simulator Controller. A handful of actions are predefined and you can define your own ones, but this requires some serious technical skills.



Actions can be triggered as a result of your conversation with the Assistant, but the LLM can also decide to trigger an action on its own.

I will now have a summer break. Supoort and minor functional additions will be secured during this time, but since no on-track testing is possible until end of July, there will be no major updates.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

The big, fat summer release is here. Three major changes are waiting for you to explore.

1. It is now possible to integrate an LLM using an external GPT service into the reasoning process of the Race Assistants. This will potentially make them much smarter in handling unforeseen situations and you can define your own types of events and actions to be executed by the LLM.



2. Full support in all applications for a very nice looking dark UI theme.



3. The documentation has been extensively reorganized, rewritten and extended. Details can be found in the Release Notes.

We will have a live seminar / coaching session for the new LLM capabilities in our Discord on 29th July at 19:00 CEST. Don't miss that.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de

 

This week we made a lot of small improvements to the recently introduced features. Of particular note is the advanced handling of pit stop situations through an LLM, including a comprehensive understanding of the available tire compounds and their use for different weather conditions. Additionally, the event and action editor UI has been improved in many aspects.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download: GitHub - SeriousOldMan/Simulator-Controller: A modular and extendable administration and controller application for Sim Racing.
Release Notes: Release Notes
Update Notes: Update Notes
Discord Server: Tritt dem Simulator Controller-Discord-Server bei!
Become a Patreon: Get more from The BigO on Patreon
Support the project: Donate to oliver.juwig@web.de