Update 1.14 and RTR DLC impressions

I'm stunned by how much time people seem to have to look at details while driving.
I didn't even notice that the car has air ducts, tbh.

 

I have to say, I'm always looking at details because i'm keen on seeing how the pros do it and am generally in awe of the work @pankykapus and his team do.

But i have to say I never thought the air vents in the Maserati were too low poly, seems about on par with most other cars.

 

They clearly are too low poly. I was racing in this car last night and was far too warm. More polygons would have ensured better airflow to me thus keeping me cool.

 

I did a "trackday" with small sports cars class at Magione, AI at 95, range 5, aggression 85, so I had skill levels ranging from 90 to 100 in the AI.

I was unable to spot differences to what i would see on a public server with a trackday setup. Good and not so good driving, little hickuos and sandbox visits here or there, two times somebody spinned out, severla cars and me rubbed their doors at each other.

This AI is amongst the best out there on the market, me starts to think. I think Lord Kunos has pulverized the huge lead of Raceroom in this department.

I also believe to have noted that the faster/agile/sensible the cars in the field are, the less aggression is recommendable to use, for fast cars can get "hurt" more dramatically if moving aggressively over the sidelines and curbs - and that is what they start doing in the faster classes, apparently. With usual street cars and sport cars, I have aggression at 80, 85.

I think I am fully back in AC business.

 

I KNEW IT I KNEW IT !!!! YET MORE EVIDENCE OF KUNOS CUTTING CORNERS AND MAKING AC EVEN MORE SIMCADE !

There might be a way to hide the sharp edges with some texture work rather than changing the model / increasing polly count , Personally I'm to busy trying to drive into people online to notice air vent poly counts

 

I must disagree there, if I would be forced with a wepaon at my sleeve to criticise something in the DLC and patch, it would be the Corolla, I find it as agile and loight as a heavy brick, I see no agility and speediness as I would expect to have in such a famous RALLY car. Feels instead like a family van with heavy load for summer vacancies and 6 people aboard. But maybe thats just me.

But hey, this is complaining on an extraordinarily high niveau. I am no car collector and there are so many cars, too many as if i could even frequently drive just those that i especially like, so the Corolla locking me out from its fan group is no problem at all.

 

That's just clever engineering, by putting a small fire bucket in all fires will only stay inside of this and driver just needs to blow it out like a candle. Why make the bucket so big the driver cant blow fires out easily.

 

Ah, so you're one of those 362 W-graders.

 

AI is a definite improvement, I like it so far.

I have to say though with high aggression it gets even more obvious that the AI doesn't know where on some tracks overtaking doesn't make sense or where it'll end up at a disadvantage next turn (obviously this happens IRL too but the AI will reliably do that). Just tried GT1 at Spa for example and the AI trying to overtake left into the Radillion/Eau Rouge combination while I'm on the racing line is more than suboptimal (and ended into crashing us both into the left barrier uphill because I didn't see the car until we crashed). Ideally the AI would need to realise that if it overtakes into that corner it needs to go around the outside into T3 to safely overtake and not end up on the outside of the T4 and having to slow down higher up the hill. Maybe some more hints for the AI would help in those special cases.

But overall it's a nice update.

 

The whole point of high aggression is for them to want to overtake so bad that they don't care what part of the track they are on when they think the opportunity presents itself. Lower the aggression setting and they will show a bit more patience before trying a move.

 

After a full night of racing online yesterday I can say that stefano might want to bring down the human aggression slider down so it's not permanently stuck at 250%

The amount of battles that I lost out on because a human driver decided to use both inside and outside line mid corner or just plain outbraking themselves into the back or side of me made me appreciate even more what they have done with the AI

 

I'm beginning to think that a lower aggression setting on some car / track combos can result in more overtaking.... anyone else finding this?

With high aggression settings I'm seeing cars 2 or 3 wide swerving about and generally tripping over each other and not getting passes done.

With lower settings they usually try to pass in a more considered way, resulting in a bit less of a roadblock. Then the AI gets the job done and the faster cars find their to front a bit quicker.

Whatever the settings, the AI is massively more enjoyable now, Stefano has somehow managed to pull a human sized rabbit out of a rabbit sized hat with this update. Magic

 

I agree it is like magic

 

There a lot of spoilt children playing in the daytime...around 10pm gmt is when I go online, to avoid the kind of brat I would like to slap!

 

AI is good enough now that apart from any fine-tuning, the only other behavior that I'd really like to see occur is AI defending into braking zones.

 

+1

 

I like the Maserati the best. Only cars I dont like are the LMP ones. They kinda just want to make me shout "For Gods sake, Jim! Im a driver, not an airline pilot!"

 

The reason I dont like the lmp cars is because on Nordschleife tourist the worst drivers seems to use them which makes it difficult to drive anything slower, because they will catch up sooner or later.

 

Someone already made the cancelled Vitaphone skin for Maserati MC12 Gt1:

http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/vitaphone-maserati-mc12-gt1-2009.15434/

Also colored some of my own, with Content Manager. Another cool feature of CM, you can easily paint cars in any color, and save them as new skins (in case someone didn't know). Not that it's very difficult with Photoshop or Gimp but CM it's just few clicks and done

 

That is a hell of a tip. Thanks very much.