I'm sure I'm a tiny minority in the target audience of rFactor 2, but my primary interest in the game (as well as my primary use of rFactor 1) is not actually to participate in races as a driver, but to make fantasy racing leagues with custom drivers (for example, a race-of-champions style series with the best and/or most interesting drivers in the world racing 2007 Champ Cars on various tracks in all disciplines, road and oval) and then sit around and watch them race. For the sheer hilarity and novelty of "omg Schumacher versus Earnhardt Jr in Indycars at Bristol!" I spent countless hours doing this in rF1 before I eventually got exhausted with how difficult it was to tweak the AI to produce reasonably realistic-looking racing, especially on ovals. Sometimes the oval AI was so bad that it looked worse than the old Papyrus games. So I am dying for rF2 to get to a point where I can start doing that again, but I can't afford to buy the game unless I'm sure it's really going to be worth it. Now that the Indy content has been announced I'm absolutely certain I will buy it sooner or later, but I'd like to get some people's thoughts on whether the AI has got to a better state than the rF1 version. Particularly concerning the AI's ability to have realistic line variation and separation on ovals. All too often oval races look like a train of slot cars in rF1 unless you do some weird things in the ini files that can have unwanted side effects. I spent SO much time tweaking the ini files in rF1 and enjoyed doing that, but its been so long that I don't even remember all the details. I'm sorry if I'm not very up-to-speed on the current state of rF2 (I don't even know if any oval tracks are available yet, lol), I just know its in a constant state of evolution and there seem to be many mixed opinions on it. But I don't care about the graphics or the online component or any of the things that seem to be most complained about and/or praised. So it would be nice if some people who spent some time with the AI in rFactor 1 could chime in about how the rF2 AI compares, how tweakable it is, and whether I should buy the game now or wait until its in a more useable (for my purposes) state... Thanks for your help
You're not the only one, plenty of AI Enthusiasts here Firstly the AI in RF2 for ovals is not my area, only one ISI track (Joesville) is available, others will have to tell you about the AI on Ovals. Secondly for road courses: the AI is vastly improved in RF2 over rf1. There have been many tweaks since the Beta first came out at the start of last year, they overtake much more, they "wait" by the side of the road if they spin to let cars go through (also do this in the Pits!), they are just simply better and I'm sure there's more work in the pipeline from ISI...at least I hope there is. Unfortunatley even though they can be "good" without tweaking you will need to dive into a few areas to get them as good as you want them for whichever particular series your racing, there are PLR adjustments and Talent files (the latter is hidden in MAS files now) that you can go to town on and fiddle away with but what tweaks you make may for one series may be bad for another (in my experience anyway). They of course still have their flaws that again I hope get ironed out a long the way, but for what it's worth I've had some great races with having to tweak anything, if the AIW of the track is of a decent standard then that's most of the battle won I've found - poor AIW and you may as well drop that track. I've thought all along that a system in place for Modders to create their own AI System would've been great, or a better way to differentiate AI from series to series.....but as it stands it's all one basic system for everything.
Sounds really encouraging! Too bad that the talent files are locked up in MAS files, but oh well, I've dealt with that before. I've been messing around with ISI games since Sports Car GT. Do they make believable mistakes yet? Make microvariations in lines? I always thought it looked dumb when you have a train of 12 cars slowing for a hairpin and all of them take precisely the same line. In a real race one will brake late and another will brake early, one will take a slightly wider arc through the corner, one will have a little wheelspin on exit and the other will be perfect, etc. The AI has to do those things for it to look as realistic as possible and make me believe they're not just riding on the AIW-file line like a slot car.
Nah in my testing the Mistakes area is not right at all, there is a setting in the PLR (as in rf1) but that's Intentional mistakes so they just fire off at a corner or straight for no apparenet reason. I have seen them "spin" but after more testing it was always in the same places at the track, not random so again something to do with the AIW of that track. As they do overtake more you do tend to see more battles between them (and yourself) so they do go round corners side by side, although the classic "thats a human on my outside I better slow down" syndrome still exists so sometimes it's too easy to pass. Get the Aggresion setting right and they do like a good old Dive Bomb moce though so watch out for those For the most part now I'd say it's just the little areas that ISI need to tweak to make them better; ignoring blue flags, racing side by side with a human, better mistake code handling and of course proper Oval AI!
Other aspects: 1 - AI cars are not racing correctly in wet condition yet; the race turns in a demolition derby and they go to the pits all together. 2 - AI appers to be too fast on green tracks, as the grip only affects the human driver. Need correction. When the track get rubbered, then their pace are OK. 3 - I think AI driving is well optimized in comparison to rF1 and it requires very polished AIW files for tracks. Even in official content, there's issues with AIW lines, forcing the AI cars to brake too much in some corners. If AIW file is well done, it's very, very difficult to race against 100% strength AI. If AIW file is bad, you probably will want to set strength above 100%. 4 - You'll always need to tweak some *.PLR parameters to obtain a good AI behaviour, but it's easy to do after all. 5 - I didn't check if AI calibration is already working. I used to improve the AI races significantly after to run a calibration session in every track I ran in rF1, not sure if it's still possible in rF2.
I tried this at a couple of tracks and saw no difference so I dont believe it's working as it did in rf1, might need to do more thorough testing on this though.
It'd be interesting someone from ISI staff to clear this point out, at least if they are planning to fully implement this feature since it's a very important one for offline racing.
It would be good if the player could setup a best line for AI by driving laps. Even cornering straight speeds and do it for each track / car combination or set a generic one. This would then be used as the baseline for all the other AI logic while racing. Its frustrating to race 2 different types of cars at the one track, have good races with say the 370z, but have skippy AI constantly flying off on the same track. I mostly play offline so am keen for well developed AI. I am really missing the transparent trainer in the latest build too.
