How to reliably pick an AI level for a close, hard race?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by shovas, Feb 21, 2021.

  1. shovas

    shovas Registered

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    How do you pick an AI level that will give you a close, hard race without you crushing your opponents or having them crush you?

    I often find myself wanting to run an AI race, not knowing what AI to select for an arbitrary track, picking 100, then running upwards of 20 laps on track in practice to get to my best, then seeing the AI are ahead or behind and then I have to exit, change the AI level, and see what the AI times are. Then I have to repeat that process to narrow down the AI level.

    Then I get to qualifying and the times may be different there, too. So repeat exiting and changing AI level.

    Then I get to the race and I may blow away the AI or they may blow me away. It never seems to be a positive experience. So repeat exiting and changing AI level.

    But at this point it's so frustrating and so much work to find an AI level that represents my ability that I basically just give up.

    At this point I'd rather just have rubber banding AI than what we currently have.

    And to be clear this is not exclusive to this sim, it seems to be a problem for all sims.

    Why can't we have auto calculated AI based on practice and/or qualifying times? Just set them to an AI level where their laptimes are +/- some percent of my best laptimes? I realize there are corner cases with that but I'm sure we could work out the kinks and have a much nicer system than we do now.
     
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  2. atomed

    atomed Member

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    I think this is an issue inherent to the Sim being open for modding. There is no quality filter where to apply these auto calibrations. Or ten tracks where you can design AIs with overall coherence. If.you can set up everything you cannot control everything. For me it is just trial and error. I do short sessions, figure out where the AI is, take notes and set up the longer session accordingly.
     
  3. Stevy

    Stevy Registered

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    If I remember correctly you can change the AI level in the optiones and then just restart the race weekend and you will have the new AI strenght without the need to leave and load everything again.
     
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  4. shovas

    shovas Registered

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    I thought this was maybe a thing in rF2 but I've never been able to find it. And I think it might only be in the old ui...
     
  5. Highlandwalker

    Highlandwalker Registered

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    That option is not available in the new UI, which is a real pain. You have to come out of the race weekend and go back to session settings and start again.
     
  6. buzz hornet

    buzz hornet Registered

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    I personally find practice and race are relatively similar - so I run a practice session first and then set the ai to the desired level. For what ever reason qualifying seems busted - you would in theory think in qualifying the ai would run with just enough fuel but more times than not I find qualifying times are slower than practice times which makes absolutely zero sense,

    I know no longer use qualifying, I run 2 x practice sessions (1 for practice, 1 for qualifying) and when the proper qualifying starts I end the session thus the practice times set the grid. Since I’ve been doing that I can far better realistic grids and because practice/race ai is the same I get proper realistic hard racing.
    For me the qualifying sessions are bugged.
     
  7. Highlandwalker

    Highlandwalker Registered

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    That seems like a good way of getting a competitive grid, I think I will give it a try. I think it can depend on the car mod being used. I have found that the ASR F1 1991 AI cars will qualify and race quite a bit faster than their practice times.
     
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  8. buzz hornet

    buzz hornet Registered

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    Definately mod related, but it works a treat for me, I would never go back to using "qualifying". I get realistic grids and now proper racing simply by using practice AI speed as my race AI speed - never looked back.
     
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  9. memoNo1

    memoNo1 Registered

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    This sounds very good buzz.
    I check that. Thx!
     
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  10. shovas

    shovas Registered

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    I'll give this method a try. I see what you're getting at. AI tend to overperform in quali to mimick real-life. And who knows what setups they're using, it's usually not exposed.
     
  11. Highlandwalker

    Highlandwalker Registered

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    I tried this method last night with the Tiger Moth track and the Oreca with a grid of 40 cars and it worked a treat, the only problem I found was that you can't set two different times for the practice sessions. I wanted to have a shorter 2nd practice session time, every time you set a time for what ever session it will over ride the other time set.
     
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  12. shovas

    shovas Registered

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    On a similar thread on the ACC forums, I recalled I have had good experiences with iRacing's AI. So, I setup a 60 AI race at Brands Hatch, did a 10min race and loved it so much I reran the race and recorded it.

    Here's the important AI settings:

    [​IMG]

    Here's the video, such a joy after the pain of the other sims:



    Note that AC Content Manager allows settings flexibility like iRacing and may or may not have as good AI, I kind of doubt it. iRacing seems to have set a new bar for AI behaviour.
     
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  13. buzz hornet

    buzz hornet Registered

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    Yes, I run mine via a dedicated server - we run practice outside the dedicated server - that way practice is "qualifying". As soon as the real qualifying session starts we vote to end - thus it sets the grid as per the practice times. Glad it has helped.
     
  14. Nev

    Nev Registered

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    What am doing wrong ? I try to use practoce to set race positions as described but race position are always random unless i run a qaulifying session.
     
  15. davehenrie

    davehenrie Registered

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    are you letting the practice session run to it's conclusion? (you can speed up time but still need to get the full session in)
     
  16. Nev

    Nev Registered

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    Yes i have always let it conclude however in the current build it doesn't automatically end and i have to select either finish session or next session.
    I have tried both options when reaching the end of the practice but still get random grid.
     
  17. seamount

    seamount Registered

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    Hi may you explain to me how to be able to use qualifying times/grid as a starting grid for race ? I tried to follow the instructions above but maybe I did not undertand correctly ...
     
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  18. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    It depends on the mod, whether it's balanced well, but I tend to follow this method (with any sim)

    - Estimate the number based on sim experience. If you're generally a 95%er, start there, etc.
    - Run a long qualifying session on a balanced track (not Monaco, not Monza) and get down to your best time in the fastest car, note the time.
    - Get out of that car and let the AI drive it for a new qualifying session and basically just keep upping/downing the % until they match your time in that same fastest car.
    - If the mod is balanced fastest car to slowest you now should be able to select any car you want and get a reasonable race.
     
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  19. green serpent

    green serpent Registered

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    One thing that would be much appreciated is if you could save the AI difficulty per mod. For me I need the AI to be dialed in perfectly, one click too low and they become way too slow at a certain same point in the track, meaning that I can pick off the entire field in that one corner lap after lap, one click too high and I have to bust a gut to keep up with them and drive in a way I wouldn't drive IRL. This takes a lot of practise laps to get it just right plus you have to exist the session to make changes, and then add to that the fact that the mods are not even remotely consistent in difficulty and it's an exercise in frustration.

    One thing I do as a work around is save the AI difficulty and my best lap time as a name of a setup. At least there should be somewhere to write down notes (or is that just something I can't figure out, I thought old UI had that?)

    Also, sorry to be off topic, but somewhat the oppsoite should apply to FFB Every. Single. Time. I jump into a new car I have to turn the FFB way down. It gets annoying. It'd be great to be able to set a default value that you want accross all mods, and then if you make a tweak to it, it saves the tweak.

    Not to rant, but the hardest part about setting the AI strength is that one darn corner every lap that they just suck on!
     
  20. williang83

    williang83 Registered

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    shhh, people will get offended by that. Right now iRacing AI (among those which i tested) is the best all around
     
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