AI in 0.6

Oh sorry I posted in the wrong topic

 

You can tell there is still a hell of a lot of work left to be done but not a bad start....I've been in top split races at the expensive rental place and seen worse driving.

 

Are you deliberately ignoring the posts with links to the evidence that the vast majority of sim drivers never race online?

I'll point out the facts one last time. Less than 20% of people who buy sims ever drive online. This leaves 80% who only ever hotlap or race AI.

Sim racing is a minority activity, and those sim racers who race online are an even smaller niche within that activity.

Like you I want MP more than anything..AI simply dont interest me, but we have to face the fact that we are the minority. From a business point of view developing the AI first is a no-brainer. You have to appeal to the majority of your customers/potential customers first.

A poll in this forum would prove nothing. The majority of active forum users are the "hardcore" crowd. A crowd that are probably more likely to be the people that want MP. Active forum users are also a tiny minority of the userbase.

 

tbh I find that hard to believe.

If that was the case, why is iracing so big?

 

Exactly.

Yesterday I also stated in this (or some) thread, the AI cars won't spin like the hand of God is keeping them in place when they slide angle gets too much. That's not the case(anymore) This morning @ Silverstone thundering into Abbey with only 5 AI 458, complete mayhem(not my fault) and an AI 458 did do a > 360 degree spin. Never seen that before.


Cheers
Robin

 

iRacing is tiny in the big scheme of things. 50,000 users is nothing, and of those there are very few who actually regularly race online!

"Many people think that that the multiplayer and online experience is dramatically important to every racing game. We love online racing too and we participate in various leagues with netKar pro or even other sims occasionally! Still if you count the number of users that play online at any time of the day/week with all the available simulators on the market, and then you also count the sales numbers of all the simulators available, you will notice that the online active users are a tiny fraction of the whole sales, even on purely online dedicated sims. So we’re troubled… where are all these people? Why we can’t see more online active users, than 15-20% of the whole sales of all sims even by the most pessimistic sales projections? Obviously because only a small part of the customers have the time and energy to race online regularly."


http://www.simnewsdaily.com/assetto-corsa-exclusive-developer-statement-interview/

 

Iracing is tiny...40,000 members (and that number is extremely optimistic) is nothing compared to a couple million that buy Forza or GT series....or 10+ million that play COD.

 

I strongly disagree with people saying the AI got worse.
For example the reason there were no or little “pile ups” in turn 1 in the initial release of AI events was because the AI cars were practically glued to the road surface, unrealistically heavy and paired with an alien physics defying drivers. They did in fact hit each other just the same or made the same mistakes but it didn’t affect them! - Now it does affect them and that’s why it looks worse but actually it isn’t.

There are of course a lot of issues that need improvements for example I noticed that the AI sometimes still tends to brake when on the apex and that their speed is still inconsistent e.g. they slow down too much and go thru some corners too slow while speeding thru other corners very fast.
Let me give a specific example: AI on Imola.



1. Good speed
2. Slow
3. Slow
4. Good speed
5. Fast
6. Slow
7. Slow
8. Okayish
9. Okayish
10. Slow
11. Fast
12. Fast
13. Good speed
14. Slow
15. Good Speed
16. Good Speed

At least that’s what I experience.
Then the AI has issues with their awareness. Sometimes they are too sensitive and are stepping on the brakes or evading when they actually could go thru and in other instances they are completely oblivious of their surroundings.

On the physics side I think cars tend to go airborne too quickly. This is not really an AI issue I believe.
Also I noticed that it is now very easy to fall off the track map by hitting a surface too hard.

In any case I see the AI as vastly improved over the AI of the events and is going in the right direction.

 

That's a good point. They aren't brick walls anymore, so the effect of bumping into eachother is more evident, this will help the developers create a more realistic AI that has true to life mechanics, rather than unnatural AI aids, like brick-wallism.

 

But now they - at least in some situations - act like cardboxes, so seem to be far too light. There are enough examples that show what shouldnt happen with cars with weight of 900-1500kg.
Before the update at least regarding physical reactions inbetween AI-cars seemed ok, the player aside.
Things changed, but too see that as an improvement....?!

 

It may be just me, but I have the strong impression that in its current state the AI is I have better ingame experience from AI when choosing rather slower cars. Maybe the AI benefits from having more "reaction time" that way. All messy events I so far observed with 458s, 599s - but not with the slower BMWs, XBows.

I would love to see an option in game to tailor the AI drivers in their skill and aggressiveness myself. It seems there is an app for it, though not functional. After the first round, the field stretches out so far that nothing more happens, no AI duels, no AI vs AI events, nothing.

Such AI driver setups should be able to be saved, because a general AI setting of lets say 95% in one car class gives you an AI that battles back against the player, and in another car class it makes the AI drivers easy to be defeated. There is no consistency in that setting so far, when comparing car classes.

 

So I tried out a track day with the AI..
From Abarths to FXX and Zonda.. Kinda got lost in thought and then this happened.

 

That was awesome!! Block me on the straight you must DIE!!!!!! The guy in the 599 wasn't taking no crap today, no sir.........looked alot like when I ran multiclass races at that expensive rental site.

 

^ My breakfast tea all over the table.

 

Just tried out a race at Magione with 10 X-Bows and 5 Lotus 2-11's. Other than the stuttering and other weird graphics thing it does that I can't really describe it was a blast making my way through the field in the X-Bow. When everything runs smooth as butter (about 2/3 of the race) it is amazing. At one point when I was mid-pack something happened ahead of me, just saw smoke and then a very slow car to the right that the pack behind me ran into...LOL....saw cars going everywhere in my mirrors. I made some passes on the outside that never would have worked in MP. Seems that if I only run 6 to 8 AI things go pretty smoothly with minimal if any stuttering.

 

Made some tests with the new 0.6 version, and conclude that in my system more that 12 cars on track is not playable, Low FPS and CPU usage warnings, right now AI is very hard on hardware.
Looks like AI have a lot to go and learn, there's a lot work to be made. At the race first stages when cars are closer and there is to many collisions the system just can handle it, AI completely ignore your car and each others. AI can better handle some cars than others, so I understand why no new contents this release, more mess. Collision model had some changes, the bodies are not complet solids any more.

So what I see here is KUNOS trying to give AI the same high level of work than other departments of the SIM.

I not so shure if that is the right way to go. Let me explain.
I believe AC is been a great sucess, bringing customers from others games/sims even from others plataforms other than PC, and that is suposed to be the plan. The statement from the developers that they don't put apart the possibility to bring AC to other plataforms like consoles at some stage, put me a little stumped.

KUNOS must remember that trying to please everyone can be a little complicated and risk. I hope that KUNOS do not go the way that they have to release a new versions every one or two years just to keep gamers customers, that mostly have some AI fun and make the career mode, then shelf with it.
The customers that have his eyes on and gonna give AC a long happy life are hard simmers. They will wait, but please see what is happening with examples, people are getting tired of bet on unfinished stuff.
The current 2 week release with improvements, new features, and new contents, plan, seems to do the magic, bringing new costumers and giving SIM community a good taste about how things should be.

A good MP and modding capability will be very importante. Don't underestimate the power of the modding community, they will help to sell you SIM all over the World.
One more thing, and hopping that I am not crossing the line, it's releated to modding. If possible go for a model where we could have from modding developers, both, free and quality certificates by KUNOS mods for a small feed. Feed to be divide by the modding team and KUNOS team. I know that are many top modding team that are move by the pleasure of giving people something completely free, money don't buy everything, but then they can just give way the money the earn to humanitarian purposes. It will also help quality mod keep coming and support to KUNOS.

Cheers

 

The main thing for me and Career Mode is that the AI have individual personalities and differing driving styles & skill, it's too predicatble to race against 19 AI when they all behave exactly the same way (as it does currently), the ability to tweak these settings is a must for other Offline races or single seasons and such like.

 

The AI is important. For every MP player, there are 5-6 customers who never play MP, but play SP exclusively. The comparison of sales numbers of racing sims and customers listed as users at online servers do not support any claim that MP is the most important aspect of a racing sim.

 

The debate about having Multiplayer as a more important attraction that the Ai, is a waste of time and energy. Kunos, has given us Ai, so stop with all the wishing and self important posts about MP being the only aspect of AC worthy of your time. If you do not want to help find/fix/help or confirm bugs/issues and hardware problems, then go play something else. We have signed up to a pre-release and been given the chance to help make EVERY aspect of AC better than the nearest rival. You don't want to help then do what you will but stop with all the pointless 'Polls' or discussions about how Ai is irrelevant. The only irrelevant thing is the talk about what is irrelevant!

All comes to those that wait.

P.S. I would ordinarily avoid Ai in simulator, but we are here to see what needs fixing or looking at. This time is not wasted, even for those that think MP is the one and only Holy Grail. The time spent racing on track is all helping you be faster and have a better understanding of what AC is all about. I'm personally loving ever single little step, every little tweak, the journey is the experience not the arrival.

 

This times a billion....

Couldn't agree more