Too many AI cars on track at once during prac/qual

So yeah, as title suggests, I've noticed that during practice and qualifying almost always, ALL of the cars go out and do laps together at the same time, and often hold each other up and basically screw up all the lap times. If you set it to private practice/qualifying this obviously doesn't happen. Is there any way to change the AI behaviour so that they spread out and have less cars trying to do times all at once? For the record I'm using a 26 car grid which I don't think is out of the ordinary. I'd rather not have to always set prac/qual to be private to get correct lap times from the opponents.

 

I can't speak for all race settings tracks or cars mind you........


F3 @ Historics tend to pit in groups of 2/4 and I never really seen them lapping all together bar races.

Ai will always hold each other up whatever strength you use as they will always break early for corners so more then 3 cars anywhere close get concertina effect.

They are also pretty horrible using tow even at 120% and 100% agro , mainly because they all drive much the same and keep too close a gaps ( .3 or so ) so they never get a proper run-up from slipstreaming ( .7 - .9 )

They will also come off the throttle for a instant if they over-steer out of tow as well, so any cars behind on that line also get hampered.

All that tends to close them up.

Have you tried testing a 100% race distance

I agree it could do with some work, but hey its offline so it would be down my "list of stuff " .

 

I don't see this in my experiences. Do you limit the numbers of laps? How long are your sessions?

 

If you're talking about our talent? They're not varied enough, so they are passing someone the same skill level and this causes trains rather than clear passing. I think it was only since the FIA F2 that this was made better, historics haven't had new talent yet.

 

+1

I don`t usually see this either...

 

Yeah like I said not worried about it Tim.

What needs fixing for off liners well F3 anyways is they just lap too close.

Looks barely realistic from a GP Historic perspective, for more modern F3 it does. ( Like you said you changing it........)

Ergo when they decide to pass in tow they do not get max pass speed which invariably leaves Ai side by side up to Masta and one will jump off the gas maybe both of them and hold every car up behind them.


They lap too close do not leave enough gap is what I would look at.



It is no different in rooms I tell rookies don't stick so close in draft, you can pick draft up from 0.9 away.

Driving at 0.3 simply defeats the purpose of planning a clean pass without holding up either driver.

It is playing chess in 'ol F3 , plan your move carefully and methodically, smooth steering out of tow , etc. ........not simply push a car in front that hard you have no where else to go all of a sudden and react too quickly ......... which will create understeer. then oversteer then understeer then crash then medic !!!


Like I said I don't see his issue in F3.

 

Ah yeah should have listed that, practice sessions were 120 minutes long and qualifying was 30 minutes. AI were set to 110% strength and 25% aggression. I'll test this out with different vehicles later as well and let you know what happens.

 

Actually just did a real quick test using Renault 3.5's. Practice 120 minutes long, after about 8 minutes all but 4 cars were on track at Sao Paulo.

Same thing happened with historic cars.

 

How many laps were they allowed?

 

Well initially I had them on unlimited and thought that was why there were so many on track so I restricted the amount of laps down to a maximum of 12 but the same thing happens. The AI cars end up in trains of 3 or 4 cars around the circuit and hold each other up etc. But they also don't try to pass each other (unlike their behaviour in a race where they do overtake each other). In prac/qual it's almost like the cars come out of the pits at intervals (so the first 8-10 or so cars are nicely spread out around the circuit), but then instead of the next 'group' waiting for the first group to pit, they all just keep leaving the pits at the same intervals thereby creating the 3 or 4 car long trains (at intervals around the circuit).

 

View attachment 14975

View attachment 14976

Took these screens so you can see what I'm talking about, you can see from the driver list that after a few minutes that everybody is on track and that from trackmap plugin you can see the small trains beginning to form. Hope that helps.

Also, I have actually seen that sometimes the car behind will attempt to pass, but it's like he isn't 100% committed to the move and kind of 'bails out' of it at the last second.

 

How much more could they really be spread ?

You still have 10 cars there have done 1 lap or less.

In quallie sessions limit the max laps but make session longer.

 

I don't think this below is too bad, all my 26 have lapped or have started.
Top 10 covered by .9
Grid 3 seconds gap

Tell the truth I barely saw another car, I just pit out to make a gap is all.

That would close in race................ if I did offline races that is.

If you want clean track you get big gaps in long sessions where hardly anyone laps.

 

I think you are missing my point a little bit here, first of all I am saying that the AI cars should not all be on track at once in a session with that amount of time to spare, and second, yes those screens are showing the first 5-10 minutes of the session, but it only gets worse from there (all cars on track do their 12 laps all at once, thereby screwing each other up completely).

What should be happening is that something like 1/3rd of the cars go out and do a few laps while the others stay in the pits. Then the first group come in and as the track is clearing up, a second group go out and do a few laps etc etc thereby not bunching up and causing havoc with the times.

It was really really noticeable when I started making a talent pack for a mod. If drivers 1 to 26 are set at speed/qualifying speed levels such as: 100, 97, 94, 91 ... all the way down to like 7 for example, and you have the cars bunch up like that in practice/qualifying, you get wildly different results than if you did the sessions private. In private sessions the drivers with top speed/qualifying speed will always be at the front. But if the session is not private, then the individual drivers speeds/qualifying speed variables essentially mean nothing because they won't pass each other and hold each other up etc etc.

 

Set them to do a lot more then 12 laps maybe.

Personally off-line I only race / test online rooms

Set aggression higher maybe, longer sessions in realtime , more qual laps maybe

 

Yeah originally I had laps in qualifying set to unlimited, all that did was make the AI cars go out on track for basically the entire session. I have tried setting aggression higher as well, which didn't seem to help. I only really tripped over this issue because I was making a custom talent file, but now that i've seen it and tested under different conditions, limitations, vehicles and circuits i'm fairly convinced that this is a bug. Like I said, there is an easy workaround which is to set the sessions to be private, that gives me my expected results in the talent pack I am making, as well as expected results in other mods etc. However I would prefer NOT to have to set the sessions to be private because that reduces the immersion of a race weekend.

Think about a real qualifying session of formula 1 for example. You never see all of the cars on the circuit at the exact same time because the cars would be tripping over each other on their hot laps (which is exactly the issue i'm having in the sim).

 

I have recently noticed this in an offline race with f1 92 mod. AI destroyed each others qualifying and also its own qualify.

 

Now this is perfect because I can tell you exactly why this is. The 92 mod does not have a talent pack that comes with it, this is why you see random qualifying results for every round. I'll give you three guesses what the talent pack is i'm working on.

 

I agree, this is something that could be worked on, but it's the same with rf1. Set an hour for quali, 12 laps, and the AI all go out together and hold each other up for 20 minutes and then sit in the pits for the next 40. Occassionally they'll come out and do an extra lap and the get disqualified for exceeding the laps limit. (Although, in fairness I don't know if the last point still happens with rf2)

 

View attachment 14986

View attachment 14987

If you look at the second photo here, you can see Pitkin is absolutely right. After 20 minutes, only 1 AI car has not completed his 12 laps. All cars were running nose to tail in trackmap plugin for that session, but because the session was set to private the results are not affected.