Yes, I am serious. Google has done it in real life. Cars that, using a combination of numerous cameras and radar, can in a way see the road and what is going on around them, and drive across the country completely autonomously. In fact, these self driving machines have almost caught up with humans on the track as well. (Autonomous AUDI RS7 at Hockenhiem) How could the AI "see"? Well, how do the google cars see? What a camera sees and what we see on our screens are the same, a digital image consisting of single-colored pixels. If we can get an image from the AI's point of view that mimics what the player would see if he/she was driving that particular car, couldn't essentially the same technology that drives a real self driving car (with some tweaks) also drive an AI car in a sim? I think it's very possible. And this would also eliminate the need for those annoying AIW files, aside from maybe grid and pit stall locations and other small things like that. This would lead to the AI calculating their own driving lines based on what they "see" around them, driving in a much more human manner, and AVOIDING things like walls, wrecked cars, or other objects instead of blindly following predetermined lines. This would make for a much more enjoyable single player experience. If ISI could do something like this, they would be known as the ones who completely revolutionized sim racing for a LONG time. I don't know enough about coding or have the resources (obviously) to do it myself, but I have plenty of ideas on how it could work. It's fun to think about at least hahaha.
You have an interesting concept. The main problem I for see in this (both real life and in a sim) is the AI driver having to make a choice between the lesser of 2 or more evils at the same time. Here is an example: There is a 3 car crash 30 yards or meters in front of AI-1, there is a car losing control to the immediate left or right, The car behind AI-1 is almost touching AI-1's back bumper. AI-1 is not going to speed up slightly then ditch itself in the grass to avoid more injuries and damage.
Simple. AI always takes the most obvious defensive move at that instant. You are driving on a 2 lane road with concrete walls on either side, so swerving off the road is not an option, and a car coming in the other lane all the sudden veers into your lane. There is another car 10 yards behind him that stayed in his lane. But your natural instinct would be to swerve left into the other lane to avoid being hit head-on. If you're lucky, the 3rd guy would see that you came into his lane to avoid the 2nd guy, and in turn swerve to his left to avoid hitting you. No one is hurt. The other option would have been for you to stay in your lane and hope the 2nd guy realizes what he's doing at the last second and swerves back into his lane, but no one would do that in the spur of the moment. In other words, you'll always take the defensive move when making an instant decision like that, no matter what the future consequences of that move may be. Also, you need to remember that every AI car would be capable of making these decisions, not just one of them, so it's not AI-1s job to avoid everyone else. Most likely, AI behind AI-1 would see what was happening ahead, and slow down to give AI-1 and himself more room to avoid it. That's what a real driver would do in that situation. Other thing is you're forgetting how fast computers think compared to humans. The AI driver could literally calculate the best of 1,000 possible moves in the time it takes you to blink. Virtually "at the same time". But that wouldn't be very human-like would it? So what would the AI driver do in this situation? As any human would, either try to swerve to avoid the wreck in front, or enter "Oh sh*t I'm screwed!" mode and slam on the brakes. haha
I don't think that any dev HASN'T thought of these things to implement, having super excellent AI is a tremendous boon, the trouble is the sheer time and massive effort required for this kind of thing, and to get it right/reliable. We are dealing with very small dev teams in our sims, versus other AI research areas with monstrous budgets in comparison. Heck, SMS would still be considered small by most game standards. I see in that other thread, you mention something like "the AI should be not afraid of rubbing other cars, tapping them, etc". Even that seemingly simple thing could then open up a whole new can of worms though. Having gone back and played some of the old titles again recently, I certainly think there is a bit of rose tint with some of the views I've seen posted around regarding the old AI in sims. I have found though that for the most part, like 95% of the time with decent content, the AI on the normal road circuits to be very very good. It's the new oval AI that they need to work on, and that IMO isn't something that can be massively downed on. With the first release of the cars and tracks, rules, etc. With time, like all the time they have had with road courses, I'm sure things will function a lot better. Having faith in the teams that have given them what we have so far. Be it Codemasters, Kunos, ISI, etc. If they ever do dirt racing with rF2, I can imagine the same types of things cropping up again. We would then have lots of jumps and loose surfaces to deal with, moisture, etc. Yet more further stuff that would need to be fleshed out and sussed.
Interesting thoughts here,- however this was discussed already in the past. I for myself think that something like "autonom AI-line-creation" should be possible and that ISI done important steps toward this! AI in rF2 is already very "autonom", open and free compared to all other titles. They have theire own head already. The big thing that seems to be missing, is that the AI does not (yet) recognize where exactly they are on track at that moment. (like you said) The next step would be that AI knows on which ground AKA material they drive (tarmac, roads, curbs, grass) and compute with help of this knowledge and the corridors, theire line itself. Something like this.......
BTW, most of german car-manufacturers have worked on that, long before Google started with it. And i fear that a "Google-controlled" car will not have enough calculation power left, to control a car in a safe way, besides screening commercials on the dash and permanently sending all informations, like start-point, taken route, current position of the car,.... and of course all other available data, to Googles Servers.
German manufacturers Daimler just recently tested a driverless truck on Germanys roads. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34444603
Yeah, that's what's annoying. They do seem to ignore the corridors if it's convenient for them. This is a very big issue at tracks like Monaco and Macau that have no runoff, especially when they run side by side, the AI will try to cut the corners or run wide and end up smacking the wall. It would help a lot simply to have have 2 sets of corridors (Racing surface, and all drivable areas). That way they can cut the "racing surface" (still shouldn't unless absolutely neccisary), but will NEVER try go ouside the "drivable area", AKA through the wall at Monaco. Jeez, they need me at ISI as the "guy that knows what needs to be done but doesn't know how to code it" lol. Honestly, seeing that my IQ is apparently 165 (or was when I was 6 y/o at least), I probably could code it if I was patient enough to teach myself how. After all, I did write a pretty good Tic Tac Toe AI when I was 15 (WAY WAY WAY more complicated than you would think if you want to do it right). As you can tell my some earlier posts I've made around here (PearceYaussy), having a mind like mine can be a gift or a curse. Mostly a curse. In other words, I'm completely bat**** crazy. haha. Anywayyyy, there I go again rambling about irrelevant crap on a sim racing forum. Bottom line ISI, fix your damn AI, or I will. EDIT: I just now realized I spelled "Jonathan" wrong. HAHAHAHA
Oh dear. This software seems to drive some people mad..... Just for your info: Looooooooong time before you entered this ship, many people thought about that deeply (me included). You are the last I would ask for ideas on AI. Sorry, I´m no stuff member, but sometinytimes it seeeeems that ISI themselfes havn´t examined all circumstances AI can get, what shouldn´t be a suprise, as it is overwhelming extensive and deep. Get sleep (and a grip)!
It's awesome that you have great ideas and are able to think deeply about them. It's awesome that you're passionate and want to share your ideas. But try to seperate that from going on about yourself and especially in a self-enlightening and complimenting way; it makes you seem self-absorbed and conceited. I bet you're not like that though but rather just like sharing your thoughts and experiences with others but that's not how others may percieve it. With regards to AI and your idea, I think it's brilliant. AI coding needs some sort of advancement. I think the fundamental principles of it haven't changed in probably 20 years or more. I remember seeing some videos on the IGN videogame website about some new revolutionary AI method which made AI much more dynamic and natural. i think they had a video showing sort-of stick-men AI going up and down levels of a tower or something while the player did the same. I don't know what ever happened to it. I'm 50/50 on AI in general. On the one hand, other than for career modes (e.g. GT Legends), why race fake humans who don't drive like real humans and don't follow the same, exact, 100% identical physics as the human player when you can do so against other real humans online? On the other hand, as technology increases, AI should as-well and one day should seem just like real humans. The place to start, before implementing any sort of recolutionary type of AI behaviour/"thinking" is, in a racing game, to give all AI cars the 100% same, exact, identical physics as the player. Absolutely 100% identical. That's my opinion.
Yep, that would be great to have and would probably suss out a couple of those odd moments where they find a teeny bit more grip than you, but the stupidly immense power that would take to process...maybe in 10 years time they could enable that XD
If a game is able to properly and efficiently fully utilize all available threads of a given PC then this may be feasable now depending on how many AI you run and how many threads your CPU has. For eg. properly, fully, and efficiently utilizing the power of my twelve 4.5 GHz Haswell threads (i7-5930k) can really do some processing damage but multithread programing is apparently very complex and there's even a few different methods and hybrid methods to do it all with their own positives and negatives from what I read.
Haha, yeah and to add to that, we can just pull out the old "optimisation" catch term...clearly stuff just needs to be optimised, right? No matter what the case "they just need to optimise it, that's the solution" XD Still, 42 AI stockcars with player physics? Nah, haha
Haha, na, I was thinking more like 10 or 15 AI. I'm thinking 2 threads for the human player, the graphics, and basically all the stuff the game does (like ATM) then the remaing 10 threads for AI. Maybe 2 AI per physical core and 0.6 AI per virtual (AKA Hyperthreaded) core. Virtual cores only add about 30% improvement when fully/properly used rather than about 100% like a physical core; that's where I got 0.6 AI (30% of 2 AI). Now windows doesn't know/care which threads are on physical or virtual cores; it just sees the total number of threads. But ya, let's assume half-and-half. So RF2 running on 2 threads (1 physical, 1 virtual) which leaves 5 physical and 5 virtual cores for AI; that equates to 13 AI ([2.0 AI * 5] + [0.6 AI * 5]). Completely making up numbers out of my ass here but judging from how much CPU power is needed playing RF2, a theoretical 2 AI / 1 physical core definitely seems doable.
Indeed multithread programing is very complex and I am sure many remember what did happend when build 930 was released. I hope that some time in the future rFactor2 is going to be upgraded to quad core support, so that owners of quad core CPU`s can also get full benefit of they CPU`s. http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/24126-4-core-support-(quad-core)
Yes, USUALLY lol. Take a certain man with wonderful hair who might be the next US president for example (god help us). My point is, I'm generally a very humble person. When I say stuff like that, it's to try to get people to understand me for once, not to brag. I dont just go around "blowing my trumpet" as they say.
