Stock cars near impossible to race in SP?.

TJ_Tas

TJ_Tas

Registered
Anyone else finding it just about impossible to race against the AI in the stock cars?. I find they just don't allow you any road presence. Its funny because they are really good at playing nice with each other but won't allow you (me) any room on the track.
 
They were tricky at first but that was more to do with me getting used to the cars themselves, I've had a few good short races with them but nothing more. Remember, as per the release/build thread, that the AI are very much a work in progress and will improve over time.
 
Ya, I've almost thrown my keyboard across the room. I'm using the stock car less and less every time I venture to RF2. I don't feel like buying a new keyboard.
 
The only problem I'm having is on the shorter ovals, they all of a sudden lift off going into a corner. I have to swerve to avoid them and usually end up in the wall. They don't do this during practice or qualy. They go full out. But in the race, the lift off?

Really makes it difficult to have a good race on the short ovals.
 
It is more likely your lines T.

Watch most replays of accidents you will see your car was not exactly where you thought it was at the time.

Been guilty of it myself 100 times.

So then all you need is to drift out a little at the exact same time a Ai may happen to drift in a little
and the gap gets closed twice as fast.

Seen it all the time. :)
 
buddhatree said:
The only problem I'm having is on the shorter ovals, they all of a sudden lift off going into a corner. I have to swerve to avoid them and usually end up in the wall. They don't do this during practice or qualy. They go full out. But in the race, the lift off?

Really makes it difficult to have a good race on the short ovals.
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This, and when I'm 3 wide on the inside, they NEVER leave me any room and end up forcing me down to the apron, like they don't know I'm there. It's like the AI doesn't have any kind of code for a 3 wide with player situation. very annoying when trying to go 3 wide at Jacksonville.

And try racing the Stock car AI at a road course like Bathurst. I think they all had 15 shots of whisky before the race LOL. They can never make it through the twisty downhill section the first lap without a huge pileup. Coming over the crest at "skyline" (T11) is what screwes then up because they brake way too late and get 0Gs there, causing them to hit the tire stack at the next left hander. They also hend to hit the wall coming into sulman park curve.

I think the problem is the AI trying to use same physics as the player (RF1 player physics, but still). It's just too complicated for an AI having to anticipate things like tire slip and weight transfer ahead of time Bathurst has a lot of crests and dips and it just wreaks havoc on the AI.

NR2003 has one of the bast AIs ever (all Papyrus sims really) and I think the AI physics are kind of "faked" so the AI can go exactly where it wants to go without worrying about brake lockup/slip angle/weight transfer/ect. , or anything the player has to worry about. they just follow their lines and everything car physics wise is simulated after the fact. For example, NR2003 AI has a "Spin mode" that the cars can switch to randomly to spin out, not by the AI driver actually spinning the car out. Not as realistic, but a much better racing experience then having to avoid cars that slam on brakes in the middle of a turn for no apparent reason.

If you can't make them drive like an actual human appropriately, then fake it. They should follow their AIW lines PEROID, without any kind of physics getting involved, with the appropriate braking ant throttle points estimated, and the car physics (appropriate slip angle, weight transfer, ect.) can be calculated as they are traveling from waypoint a to b and then b to c and so on. Then they can be programmed to occasionally overdrive a corner or make mistakes, but it's all scripted. This is a much better way to go about it that trying to create an AI that can actually control a car like a human. It's just WAY too complicated.
 
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I don't think its a racing line issue Durge. I Think Pearce comes closer to the mark. To me it "seems" like the AI have some sort of swarming/ avoidance routine with each other but it doesn't include the player.
 
Okay thanks, had not tried yet only got wheel back, my observations were based on watching online session.

Sorry, just that your general description sounded alot like what I described.
Saw it happen a number of times in Stock Car server above.


Over years I watched some rookies that do everything but drive a straight line and for the large are part totally oblivious to what is happening around them.

Take most any open race at Monza and I guarantee you before T1 at least 2 Historics will touch, then grab each others wheels and toss themselves and a few other unsuspecting cars into the scenery.

If you drive like that with Human or Ai any content there will be grief. ;)

Anyways with Ai I am aware of where they are but I will give them an extra 6"-12" room.

Just saying. ;)
 
Had offline Race at MP used Tim's setup, no Ai training straight to race

@ 100% was not hard to win though use one of my rubber profiles was heavy , rubbed doors with heaps of cars, saw yellow flags but avoided all.

What I did do in 20 minutes was destroy my tyres and had to limp last 10 laps or so.

great great great

and 32 cars same settings as F3 still well over 100fps great great great

Never even adjusted seat or mirrors and still had great awareness, etc.
 
Just Remember that things are still WIP:

This is from the release notes:

Known issues (A.I.):
We need to give the A.I. another look, as improvements in one area can often affect another. The A.I. are quite dynamic and will adjust their line according to grip levels. At Jacksonville, this tends to see them running high up against the wall. With an upcoming update to the core, we would like to try to keep them from scraping the wall as often as they do right now on the ovals. You can disable the ‘dynamic superspeedway’ code that causes this by changing playerfile value “AI Logic Override” to 2 (as mentioned in the notes below).
 
mschreiner said:
Just Remember that things are still WIP:

This is from the release notes:

Known issues (A.I.):
We need to give the A.I. another look, as improvements in one area can often affect another. The A.I. are quite dynamic and will adjust their line according to grip levels. At Jacksonville, this tends to see them running high up against the wall. With an upcoming update to the core, we would like to try to keep them from scraping the wall as often as they do right now on the ovals. You can disable the ‘dynamic superspeedway’ code that causes this by changing playerfile value “AI Logic Override” to 2 (as mentioned in the notes below).
Click to expand...

This is talking about the lines they take and scraping the outside wall, not the ongoing issue of slamming on the brakes unnecessarily in the middle of the turn. That is a problem with the not only Stock cars, but IndyCars on the shorter ovals as well. Like i've stated before, It's some kind of chain reaction cause by the AI over-anticipating things such as bumps on the track, or getting too close to eachother side by side. Often it's caused by someone going down on the apron up ahead, panicking about it and slowing down, and everyone else behind slows down. It's a simple fix really, just fix the Oval AI where they don't treat the flat apron as part of the track, and it will help tremendously. They go down on the apron even when they don't need to, because they can't tell the difference. Also, the AI need to be a lot less panicky overall. They need to not be afraid of touching each other a little, instead of slamming on brakes to avoid it.

All they really need to know is, "I can take X corner at Y speed, and I'm going to take it at that speed, PERIOD". After all, that's how a human thinks, right? Humans don't go "Well, I have precisely X amount of grip at this particular millisecond, but there's a tiny bump coming up in 5 milliseconds that will decrease my right rear tire grip by 0.001% and induce 1 degree more slip angle as I pass over it, better brake a tiny bit now to compensate!" lol We just hit the bumps full speed and make corrections after the fact, right? Even Senna didn't try to be THAT precise.

The AI should think like a human, not a computer (hence "artificial intellegence") and just drive the car. No need to do all these crazy physics calculations.

Now what we REALLY need is an AI that can actually "see" the track and cars around them instead of just blindly following predetermined lines. Much like the Google self-driving cars can "see" the road using a combination of cameras and radar, AI could theoretically "see" the actual track and other cars and be able to drive much more like a human, and calculate their own lines. How? Well, all an image from a camera on these google cars is just a bunch of pixels, right? The same as what is created in memory in the GPU before we see it on our screens. So if the AI could see what the player sees (from their own POV of course), then this Google technology that drives real cars autonomously could, in theory, also drive an AI car in a sim, correct?

Of course we need to wait until we have more poweful CPUs, because running 30+ instances of a program that complex would use an unbelievable amound of processing power. But it's cool to think about it anyway, and it would make for a much more realistic single-player experience.

TJ_Tas said:
To me it "seems" like the AI have some sort of swarming/ avoidance routine with each other but it doesn't include the player.
Click to expand...

Yes. This is particularly annoying at Jacksonville in the pack, when an AI car beside me decides to slingshot around another, and comes over into me like I'm not even there.
 
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I'm noticing the same issue with AI brake checking on corner entry. I agree, the AI are not smooth and are very difficult to race with.
 
TJ_Tas said:
Anyone else finding it just about impossible to race against the AI in the stock cars?. I find they just don't allow you any road presence. Its funny because they are really good at playing nice with each other but won't allow you (me) any room on the track.
Click to expand...
What I ended up feeling was that they are much like a real life driver, and expect you to be (meaning you hit your marks, which is what they give you room for). You could try turning aggression down and maybe they'll be more likely to back off?
 
DurgeDriven said:
It is more likely your lines T.

Watch most replays of accidents you will see your car was not exactly where you thought it was at the time.

Been guilty of it myself 100 times.

So then all you need is to drift out a little at the exact same time a Ai may happen to drift in a little
and the gap gets closed twice as fast.

Seen it all the time. :)
Click to expand...
Good lord, I'm agreeing with DD. ;)
 
Tim Wheatley said:
What I ended up feeling was that they are much like a real life driver, and expect you to be (meaning you hit your marks, which is what they give you room for). You could try turning aggression down and maybe they'll be more likely to back off?
Click to expand...

No, turn the aggression UP! I tried 0-30% and it makes it worse. Someone else from an other thread recommended 80% and it actually improves the AI.
 
aguy0523 said:
No, turn the aggression UP! I tried 0-30% and it makes it worse. Someone else from an other thread recommended 80% and it actually improves the AI.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was me and I've found that to work really good on the ovals. Still issues though, but it helps. Anything to help make them less timid.
Never ever would that work on the road courses though, it gets super hectic XD
 
Tim Wheatley said:
Good lord, I'm agreeing with DD. ;)
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I've been there couple of times... it ain't pretty, but the man makes a good point on a rare occasion.

I haven't had issues with the Stock Cars AI, other than from my usual I have had to raise the % to get them to keep up.
If an AI does what human would do, like try to squeeze you off the track (not ramming), is always nice to witness in sims.
 
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