AI - and why it's still not good enough

[Tuckwit]

After a long break from sim racing I recently decided to get back into again. Hearing all the great things about AMS2 and the AI updates I took another look.

I really want to like AMS2 as it has so much going for it, with the huge range of tracks, cars, weather options and day/night cycle etc. Not to mention the superior graphics engine compared to most others.

Sadly not much seems to have changed. The AI cars are still unrealistically twitchy, tend to follow each other literally nose touching bumper and still rarely suffer any mishaps. Watch the drivers in a replay and you will see how comical they are. They have an inhuman ability to avoid spinning on any surface unless the RNG gods decree it so.

I only race against AI rather than (toxic) humans so it's important for me that they behave as human-like as possible. I had 2 x 30 minute races at Hockenheim and Brands Hatch and didn't see any accidents, only maybe 1 mechanical failure. I'm not looking for mayhem, just the same kind of things that happen in a real race.

From what I can see on YT any accidents that do happen seem to be canned/scripted and don't make any sense in the context they happen. It's like - Right, this car is going to have some kind of accident now, roll a dice, make it do this... I saw one replay of a car going round a slow corner and suddenly the back end flips out as though it had been hit by a speeding truck.
I know you can edit the AI files to make it more frequent, but what's the point if you have to edit every driver and it just makes more canned accidents anyway.

For the time being am going back to Raceroom for my AI fix. They drive smooth, race well, and suffer human like mistakes. rFactor is a pain getting working AI on 3rd party tracks. I hear great things about iRacing's AI but I simply don't have the money or desire to sign up for the subscription, I already forked out a ton of money for Raceroom stuff a couple of years back.

What are your thoughts,

[rallysmo]

did you turn on fcy, with that and agressive set to medium, with ai set at 100% at least 2 of 3 races they deploy the safety car, also for me ams2 ai behave better that r3e but i dont play it since 2020.

the train behavior isnt in ams2 but sure in acc, in ams 2 the 3 top cars has a triangle defense position, in ac, acc only the first car defend the top position.

[RebelDiamonds88]

Iracing is indeed the gold standard, though price wise not justifiable unless you already own some good content - I spent months being obsessed by IndyCar AI racing in iracing and honestly nothing comes remotely close. The design principle of the A! is iracing was that you wouldn't be able to tell if you were racing humans or bots, and that certainly shows with lots of character and human like flaws in the AI.

Otherwise I pretty much agree with your observations - if you come from AC or ACC you'd probably think you're in offline heaven, but in comparison to other titles on the market, AMS2 is competent, but rarely thrilling when it comes to the race. AI mistakes have never really worked except when they rolled out the Hi Tech update, but those behaviours were rolled back.

I don't think they are anywhere near as bad re nose to bumper as they once were, but equally they don't really race you, the don't defend in any meaningful way, they are not aggressive on the brakes, nor in corners, they don't consider corner exit, -they don't do risk reward, nor suffer from it's consequences. You can basically bully them at your will, and that does lead to a competent, yet essentially asinine experience.

Work in progress mind. like you hope they have a proper look at the AI, not just endless tweaks, because offline racing, and the ease of how many exciting parameters you can add is probably the games USP. Making that a compelling experience with dynamic racing would seem like a obvious home run. It's difficult stuff to achieve no doubt, but keep asking for something better than just OK.

[Alice Cooper]

I spend the majority of my time in AMS2 racing against the AI. Currently working my way through all the championships and the AI are proving a challenge to race at the appropriate AI strength setting to pitch me around mid pack in qualification. In addition they now exhibit various pit strategy and stops for variable weather. I also observe both driver mistakes and car failures and safety cars. Maybe I'm just being lucky. Then again maybe not. The game is in great shape and just getting better and better for me.

[Tuckwit]

Originally posted by rallysmo:

did you turn on fcy, with that and agressive set to medium, with ai set at 100% at least 2 of 3 races they deploy the safety car, also for me ams2 ai behave better that r3e but i dont play it since 2020.

No, I didn't want to turn on full course yellows as for me yellow flags should only come out on the part of the track where the accident has happened and your clear once you've driven past. I don't want to be prevented from overtaking someone if i'm on the other side of the track to where an accident has happened.

[<;)))<]

I also have rarely any Accidents / FCY. Maybe all 5-7 Races there is One.
Even more funny, its happening more often in SIngleclass Races then Multiclass. I expected way more in Multiclass. WIth Cars lapping each other etc. but nop

[DmAnd]

Originally posted by RebelDiamonds88:

Iracing is indeed the gold standard, though price wise not justifiable unless you already own some good content - I spent months being obsessed by IndyCar AI racing in iracing and honestly nothing comes remotely close. The design principle of the A! is iracing was that you wouldn't be able to tell if you were racing humans or bots, and that certainly shows with lots of character and human like flaws in the AI.

Otherwise I pretty much agree with your observations - if you come from AC or ACC you'd probably think you're in offline heaven, but in comparison to other titles on the market, AMS2 is competent, but rarely thrilling when it comes to the race. AI mistakes have never really worked except when they rolled out the Hi Tech update, but those behaviours were rolled back.

I don't think they are anywhere near as bad re nose to bumper as they once were, but equally they don't really race you, the don't defend in any meaningful way, they are not aggressive on the brakes, nor in corners, they don't consider corner exit, -they don't do risk reward, nor suffer from it's consequences. You can basically bully them at your will, and that does lead to a competent, yet essentially asinine experience.

Work in progress mind. like you hope they have a proper look at the AI, not just endless tweaks, because offline racing, and the ease of how many exciting parameters you can add is probably the games USP. Making that a compelling experience with dynamic racing would seem like a obvious home run. It's difficult stuff to achieve no doubt, but keep asking for something better than just OK.

hmm now i am curious, may have to try it for a month. I have tried it a while ago but only did some dirt content with the pro trucks and at the time they did not have AI yet.

[RebelDiamonds88]

Originally posted by DmAnd:

hmm now i am curious, may have to try it for a month. I have tried it a while ago but only did some dirt content with the pro trucks and at the time they did not have AI yet.

I'd say it's definately worth a month to at least take a look, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it. I've over £300 of content so my experience may differ, but they added some extra free tracks in the last update so I think they'd be enough to go at. I tend to have one year on, one year off with iracing and always sign up black friday for the discount - that works for me.

Couple of quick tips if you do give it a go. I'd probably treat myself to one decent car to race as the free content isn't very compelling vehicle wise, so maybe a GT3 (those are rain ready so probably the best value proposition), the dallara F3 or the IR-18 Indycar would be my tips.

You then need a trading paints account, all free - but there you search AI ready paint sets and you simply download a field of drivers and skins. Dead easy then to set up a championship of anything you want, and the system does all the points and standings, and you can tinker with the AI to your hearts content. You can also set a field spread, so unlike AMS2 and others where you set strength to 100, in iracing you can go 55-80, which gives you more flexible options.

Finally, you only have to own the car you are going to race in an AI race - so you could get one GT3 for example, then download the other cars and add them to your field. I think you can also run multiclass that way.

best of luck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTiGwbdsu8s

[OnlyPhans69]

Originally posted by rallysmo:

did you turn on fcy, with that and agressive set to medium, with ai set at 100% at least 2 of 3 races they deploy the safety car, also for me ams2 ai behave better that r3e but i dont play it since 2020.

the train behavior isnt in ams2 but sure in acc, in ams 2 the 3 top cars has a triangle defense position, in ac, acc only the first car defend the top position.

the DRS/slipstream trains of AI are most certainly still in AMS2 & it's made worse by the fact they really only go for half hearted moves against each other still, that being said, I prefer the AI racing in AMS2 to anything else on the market that I have actually played, they are certainly better in my opinion than anything the official F1 games have produced.

the races against AI are indeed better but they still have all the classic AI issues in that they are still pretty stupid, they are artificially faster down the straights the higher you set them & in any traction zone they have a pretty big advantage while being sitting ducks wherever aero is needed.

[DmAnd]

Originally posted by RebelDiamonds88:

Originally posted by DmAnd:

hmm now i am curious, may have to try it for a month. I have tried it a while ago but only did some dirt content with the pro trucks and at the time they did not have AI yet.

I'd say it's definately worth a month to at least take a look, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it. I've over £300 of content so my experience may differ, but they added some extra free tracks in the last update so I think they'd be enough to go at. I tend to have one year on, one year off with iracing and always sign up black friday for the discount - that works for me.

Couple of quick tips if you do give it a go. I'd probably treat myself to one decent car to race as the free content isn't very compelling vehicle wise, so maybe a GT3 (those are rain ready so probably the best value proposition), the dallara F3 or the IR-18 Indycar would be my tips.

You then need a trading paints account, all free - but there you search AI ready paint sets and you simply download a field of drivers and skins. Dead easy then to set up a championship of anything you want, and the system does all the points and standings, and you can tinker with the AI to your hearts content. You can also set a field spread, so unlike AMS2 and others where you set strength to 100, in iracing you can go 55-80, which gives you more flexible options.

Finally, you only have to own the car you are going to race in an AI race - so you could get one GT3 for example, then download the other cars and add them to your field. I think you can also run multiclass that way.

best of luck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTiGwbdsu8s

Thanks for the tips. I was going to ask you about that.