Full disclosure: I love this sim. It's my favourite overall sim on the market, and I play it all the time. Love the tyre model, car feel, own most of the packs etc. etc. However, I mostly use it to hotlap, and that's for two main reasons: 1) Nobody plays it online. 2) The AI... Here we're addressing the latter, so: What gives? - Whenever we get a rolling start on the opening grid, the AI plays this flickering brake lights spastic start-stop game. It makes it very awkward to start a race, and also opens the AI up to massive dive bombs up on the inside on many tracks where you can gain about a dozen spots, if not more. - Furthermore, do they realize GT racing isn't bumper cars? I have several dozen crash reels where the AI have gone out of their way to take me out during a race, and it's immensely infuriating. I'm not talking 'rubbing is racing'. I'm talking literally cutting off my line, on the brakes, making sure I either hit them full bore, or clip the corner, sending me spinning off the track. I just spent an entire evening trying to finish one lap of the Endurance Nurburgring circuit with the 911 Cup car, and whenever I managed to overcome the car itself attempting to murder me, the AI promptly fixed that. - As another minor grievance, it's very obvious that the AI is on a different tyre model to you while racing. They don't experience corner exit oversteer where you do, the same bumps which unsettle your car don't unsettle theirs, and they have this magical ability to go off the track, then come off the grass, pointing straight ahead as if it was just a minor inconvenience. The driving in this game is amazing, but as we know it's let down by a number of issues such as the user interface and general lack of 'user friendliness'. My belief is that the AI is well below the standard set by the handling model too, and that makes it difficult to use this game for anything other than hotlapping or privately-organized race lobbies. It'd be great if the AI could be brought up to the standard of the driving - unless of course I'm missing some vital AI 'cognition' setting.
Ai will always be on a simplified tm, If not our pcs won't be able to run a grid more than 5 cars. Don't ask how ac and acc do it though lol The rest yea it's known u forgot the slipstream issue too.... If we ever get a ai overhaul lots could be fixed.
AC uses a simplified player tire model akin to the rF1 model. ACC increased their complexity 5x, but it's still a simplified tire model compared to the rF2 player model.
All of the racing games have this bug in their AI, IMHO. It's a combination of using fixed AI paths, not wanting an AI pileup in the first turn, and lack of being able to program opportunistic behavior (e.g. why aren't the AI trying the same dive bomb when there's a traffic jam on the racing line and all that empty space?). More specifically per racing game: AC's AI drive like they're drunk and wander offline far too often for no reason, but they typically leave the inside open. They have no compunction against changing lines right through the player car when they're too far from the defined racing line. AMS AI have no block line, so they just aren't interested in protecting the inside line. PCARS2 AI follow a very rigid side-by-side path on the first lap. It is so rigid they leave a car width between each line of cars and cut corners. The programming was purposefully this awful to avoid AI pileups on the first lap by allowing the AI to spread out. rF2 has a block line, where the AI will protect its position by forcing a following car to take the outside line. However, it is up to the trackmaker (or a modder after the fact; see https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/track-aiws.64102/) to create the block line. If no block line, then no protection. My main beef with the block line is that sometimes the AI are late to make the move and it is easy to run into them, particularly with my aging-old-man reaction time; I think there is an AI parameter in the HDV file that defines how late to move, but I've not tried confirming that. I've only 2 hrs with ACC, mostly hotlapping, so have not observed anything except the AI are improved from AC.
not sure I agree that acc is less complex, if anything its much more in depth and has less flaws than rf2 tM
I left out a lot of AI behavior comments because I was specifically responding to the OP's question regarding starts.
Seems like AI is an area we could benefit from machine learning. Averaging out the overtaking/defensive moves of hundreds of drivers over hundreds, or thousands of hours of laps would start to create emergent strategies that we wouldn't be able to manually code otherwise. I already have colleagues using this to great effect, modelling the non-linear attributes of power amplifiers, and it could certainly be a way to get past some of these code shortfalls in racing. Regarding TM in ACC vs rFactor 2. As much as their 5-point model was an improvement over the basic model at release, I personally don't feel the same sensation of true driving in ACC that I get from rFactor 2. The FFB alone doesn't give you nearly as much information about what's happening under the front axle - mostly feeling 'dead' in comparison to rF 2. How much of that is TM, or whatever else, I don't know, but I get substantially less connection, and subsequently joy from driving in ACC.
Let me remove doubt about the complexity of rF2 vs ACC tire models. Edit: you can even watch the contact patch in action by turning on the TGM display (https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/tyre-symbol-in-cockpit-view.54663/)
I think LokiD got to a point where he is just trolling around the forums... rF2 has its flaws (a lot of them) but damn to say a tire model that only got 4 extra points is more advanced... good Lord... if this isn't trolling the guy got an IQ of a banana Back on topic... AI issues are real, some stuff like tires, oversteer, etc, is up to content creation. If they arent getting most cars right for humans imagine for AI lol. Some other issues like getting dive bombed you usually solve by trying to brake on same points the AI will do or get as close as possible to that, it's hard tho (at least to me it was, I'm not a good driver )
The problem that people struggle to understand is that more complex does not automatically translate into better or even more realistic. No matter whether it's about aerodynamics, springs, tires or whatever, in a simulation all comes down to a black box system where you have inputs and output. What's really matter is that at given input you have an output as realistic as possible. RF2 is a perfect example where specially in ISI age the tire model was as complex as now but let be honest it was s***ty as f**k. Leaving others sim aside, I don't classify rf2 TM as realistic but rather just very dynamic which is quite different. Look at TM currently on GTE where they very easily overheat, without even talking about grip which as many real world driver would say in games are really lower than reality. In other words if any developer is capable of developing a black box system made by a single contact point on which at given input the output is more realistic than a zillion contact point system.......well the simpler system will be simply superior, period! Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that AC or ACC TM is superior but only saying that more complex != more realistic
That's a tire not a tire model and this is issue is all about tire creation (or car, probably the issue is on the cars...). So if who made this job would make the same lazy work in AC or rf1 the result would be the same (the over heat, according you since I actually always had problems to get them hot lol) I do believe they should abandon this model anyway, it seems to cause a lot of wrong ideas among sim racers and it's not helping rF2 really (plus the processing power needed is too damn high). Either they do that or should fully embrace it and start proving ppl wrong when they spread wrong info instead of saying in silence all time
Another thing about the complexity of the rF2 tire model is that it is directly tied to graphics, so we get to see the tire flex in realtime. I don't believe ACC has that feature.
By the way, TGM = Tire Graphic Model. You can't properly model the tire graphically if you don't use something like rF2's tire model, where the flex is tied to the physics.
Seeing a slow motion video of a GT car going over a curb, and how it handled, as well as how the tyres deformed was what got me to buy rF2 in the first place. I don't regret it one bit. For all of its shortfalls, no other simulator feels as much like actually driving a car to me, which sort of figures since professional GT teams tend to use rFactor Pro to train their drivers.
My biggest gripe with the AI in this game is that they don't use any race strategies. They all pit at the same time, have exactly the same amount of fuel, and they always use the wrong tyres. In GP4 and F1C you could give the AI a pitstop strategy. It makes the racing more exciting, less unrealistic and less predictable.
The disappointing aspect for me is that the ability to apply pitstop strategies worked well in rf1, but has sadly been left out/broken in rf2.
They absolutely do calculate a fuel strategy if given (an uncertain amount of) time to do some laps before the race. This was a new revelation to me, too, and I have no idea how long it's been in the game.
