SP Experience/ Adaptive AI

[UOPshadow]

First off: I don't play MP, so it was okay for me to buy the game for SP only and I accepted that there wouldn't be pitstops. Also: I wouldn't have bought if they didn't offer the 2014 update also, since what I like about racing are strategical decisions regarding tires, pit stops and so on. And these things where really important in the real DTM this year. Oh and I have no experience with RRE.

I played the first race of the Championship several times with Practice/Qualifying/Race to see how the mechanics are working.


ADAPTIVE AI

So what's adaptive AI? Since there is no manual all I have is the information other users have given and what's floating in the net: adaptive AI adapts to you after 5-10 Laps. That's the theory.

In practice, well, I would like to know how it exactly works, because I'm a little bit putzzled. To what does it adapt? My fastest time on the circuit? Some average from my last 5-10 Laps? Why 5-10 Laps? And then: WHEN does the AI adapt? In the same session? The next session? Does it adapt every time anew?

My experience: I startet a free practice, the AI was usually 1.5 Seconds off my pace. The same in Qualifying and in the race. Then I quit that, went back into the main menu and startet a new game. Now sometimes the best cars were in range of my fastest lap... in one particular game in Practice and the first 2 Qualifying sessions the AI did that very well, but in the last Qualifying session they were again off 1.5 seconds. The race was no better.

It was one of the dullest races in my life. I won but I really crept around the track talking to my girlfriend and still I was 30 seconds in the lead after 31 rounds. If I had tried my best I'm sure I would have been 3 seconds better per lap. Beforehand I tried a full length race, but couldn't be bothered to drive 42 laps with the AI 2 seconds behind me in every lap. There's no point in it. This isn't fun, this is work and really boring.

SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE

The thing is: The driving is nice, the graphics really suit me, I tweaked my FFB to my liking and WHEN the AI is up to your speed or faster it is really enjoyable. This is what I got out of the demos. That's great and I like it. But after several tries, I only had that pleasure to see the AI adapt maybe 2 times out of maybe 10. So the AI is good and it is fun raciing against them, but it would be important to know to what and when they adapt to you.

Another letdown was what I call the rfactor syndrome...the AI does it's best lap in Practice and Qualifying in their very first lap... so if you have P1 after 3 of your own laps you don't have to be bothered to watch what will happen, because the AI usually can't beat you. Which is a shame because there is something like a TV director setting, where you see the other cars lap (sadly without the TV overlays).

Then - there's no manual. Some things really aren't very clear to me. For example on the mini display in your car you have three warning signs. Oil lamp, exclamation mark and something that relates to your motor. At first I didn't have auto clutch on, so rightfully I smashed my gearbox to pieces after 3 Laps. I really would like to know what failures can happen to the car and why they happen. What do they mean exactly?

I played with every option on real. So real flags, tire wear, motor failures - everything was activated. Tire wear I didn't really notice. It's probably there, but unnoticable to me.

The thing is.. with an AI that most often doesn't adapt to you, no Pitstops, no Safety Car, no tire strategy BUT everything else working it is not the DTM Experience it is the Vettel Experience. Really, in my first full length race I was in no time 30 seconds in front. What should I do the next 32 laps? If you want to entertain yourself, well, you can hotlap, but that's it. In real life I would love this, in a game, well... As long as you don't make any dumb move (and driving really slowly doesn't cut as that) there's not much race to have.

SimBin are very opaque regarding information or answering questions and because of this this message is directly adressed to them:

I know developing games is hard and afaik you only have a small team, but there are only so many things I can accept when I pay for a full price game. I bought a fully functional hotlap simulator with beautiful modeled cars and tracks (credit where credit's due), where the driving is great fun and all else works indeed, but: without proper working AI this game is worthless to me. The AI is good IF it is up to my pace, but I it's far to erratic how this works. Please fix the Race Experience ASAP or explain how I can edit the AI so that this game is actually fun.

PS: And for heavens sake write a manual or explain your options ingame better. Somebody without simulator knowledge will be helpless with so many options which aren't explained properly.

 

[Kenny Paton]

I like reading this about the AI, I might even buy it now. Finally a game where I might even win a race.

 

[Sean Lander]

Would be nice if there were options in the difficulty settings like: "Opposition Difficulty: 1-Easy, 2-Intermediate, 3-Pro, 4-Adaptive.

 

[Kurupt CDN]

From my experience so far when setting up the ai properly it's been quit challenging which I like.....how do you push your self to get better when lowering the settings?
Plus no rl drivers (minus vettel) win every race
When I ran my 5-10 practice laps at the track I was preparing for than entered the race for quali I finished in the upper middle of the pack which forces me to fight for a podium spot.
Iam no professor on the topic of adaptive ai, but if I was to take a guess I wouldn't think it doesn't adapt to your driving style but more to your lap times and use smart ai when around you that's why they may seem slower on straights to get into the ballpark users time? Iam sure the devs will look into slider difficulty for every strength of driver. For now the adaptive is good I'd like to see a pro level based on each of the pros best times at each track for those looking to compare themselves to the real deal.
Again just my .02
Yes I'll agree there's room for improvement but as a first pass feature it's very well done and will only get better over time.
People gotta keep in mind it's more or less a beta demo to give you a taste of what's coming in 2014 version

 

[Joshen]

OK, I've been doing about six races on Lausitzring and I'm still lapping about one to two seconds faster than the AI finishing second. I'm starting to loose interest in this game since I've had it for a couple of days now and still not had a fun race against the AI. Simbin released some info about the AI on their blog under the title "Simbin Dev-Blog":

Adaptive AI

We are very happy to hear that you guys liked our Adaptive AI system and based on the feedback, we keep improving it. We also fixed some issues that were causing AI to go faster or slower than intended on some sessions.

We slightly changed how skilled they should be by default, depending on the difficulty the player starts in. This is just for the beginning and as soon as the player gets some race session going on a track, the AI will start adapting to the performance of the player.

I think it’s worth clarifying how adaptive AI works as we saw a lot of questions about how they work. The adaptive AI adapts to an average of your performance in race sessions on a given track. As you complete more races and become better on a track, so does the AI. It’s worth noting that the AI adaptation does not change during a session. It adjusts itself between race sessions.

First of all, I think they are pretty selective if they think that the community is liking the adaptive AI system.
Secondly, this text raises a lot of questions for me. Especially this part:

The adaptive AI adapts to an average of your performance in race sessions on a given track. As you complete more races and become better on a track, so does the AI.

Does performance mean lap times?
Does the the ARI take in account if your performance (lap times?) is hindered by slower cars? Mistakes?
By average does it mean the mean of your lap times?
If the AI adapts to your average, will it ever beat your best?

If I understand things right, and I really hope not, does this mean that if you for example do steady 1-minute laps on a circuit, the AI would adapt to that and also do 1-minute laps? But if you get bumped of the road every 10th lap by the AI and then do a 2-minute lap, while you recover from the sandtrap, does this mean that the AI reacts to your new average (which is 1.06)?

If this is the case we are doomed to race mediocre AI. I surely hope I've misunderstood this...

 

[hachigo]

Well, its the other way around in my case i guess.

Settings are Get Real, no Traction control etc.

First championship race in Hockenheim was pretty fun, not too easy and not too hard, my best lap times were mid 1.34`s (not the quickest, but way above average id say), won the race by 5 seconds or so in the end, AI adapted pretty well.

Now in Brands Hatch ..... no chance, AI drives 41.7`s, i`m pretty much a second slower, while driving my ass off in the car, probably have to change the setup massively or the AI has to relearn again ...

 

[Peter]

1 do 1.33 on Hockenheim in the first race and win with +30sec. But I'm totally lost at Brands Hatch, I can lap under 0.42 but the AI are still faster, the rest of a championship it equalizes.
The second championship it's better and more fun, but they (AI) are still to fast at Brands.

 

[Justin Swan]

1 do 1.33 on Hockenheim in the first race and win with +30sec. But I'm totally lost at Brands Hatch, I can lap under 1.42 but the AI are still faster, the rest of a championship it equalizes.
The second championship it's better and more fun, but they (AI) are still to fast at Brands.

The REAL DTM drivers do Brands Indy in around 0:41 seconds, so you're not far off REAL pace. Assuming you meant 0:42 and not 1:42?

 

[Peter]

The REAL DTM drivers do Brands Indy in around 0:41 seconds, so you're not far off REAL pace. Assuming you meant 0:42 and not 1:42?

Thx, I mean 0.42 (must be my age).

 

[Andi Goodwin]

Thx, I mean 0.42 (must be my age).

your not 42 thats for sure...

Andi

 

[Richard Eriksson]

Then - there's no manual. Some things really aren't very clear to me. For example on the mini display in your car you have three warning signs. Oil lamp, exclamation mark and something that relates to your motor. At first I didn't have auto clutch on, so rightfully I smashed my gearbox to pieces after 3 Laps. I really would like to know what failures can happen to the car and why they happen. What do they mean exactly?
.

The DTM spec would surely have a tranny capable of clutchless shifts, can't find exact specs at their site, but i am guessing it's power cut electronics with drum based sequential? So the whole auto clutch off ruining the box in 3 laps seems out of order?

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

When I first heard about "Adaptive AI" I thought it was a really good idea. Ands it still may be, but since then I have changed my mind about what a good AI is like.

Personally, I would prefer they concentrate (they as sim dev, not simbin) more on the way the AI drive, no human, RL race driver or simracer, would find your car a bit slower in a high speed corner and simply plow into you. The human would do his best to avoid you.

AI should be able to defend without being dirty and go on the offensive trying to give the Human player as close an experience to another human.

Instead they seem to be focusing on saving you the time to adjust the AI strenght, something I can usually figure out in about 2 or 3 practices/races.

What I really would like to see is an AI with more granular adjustments so that the entire field does not lap and race inside the same lap time window.

Real races, even at the pro level, usually spread out over the entire track in small groups that race a slightly different speeds.

Recreating this in a game would make pinpoint accuracy of the AI strenght less important because no matter how fast/slow you sare you would find competition.

Then, in the next race you can adjust up or down a bit in order to try to finish a bit closer to the top.

In that context, adaptive AI would be useful, but relying just on that I don't think it's going to work and still leaves the real AI issues untouched. They will still run you off the track as if their car was made out of military grade steel.

 

[Ryan Sylvester]

Glad i read this, brought the game last night and did a 10 lap race at Hock on get real, and won by 30 seconds and thought 'wtf?' but will try it again tonight now

thanks

 

[Joshen]

I'm about to give up. I don't know how many races or sessions I've driven (at least 25+) and I'm still lapping about 2 seconds faster than the AI per lap. I'm not being challenged and I'm not having fun. And I don't know what to do. To me the ARI is a huge fiasco and probably the thing that will make me not play this game anymore. And that's a pity since I've played Simbin titles since GTR and they have always been my favorites. I was also part of the closed beta testing for R3E so I really, really wants this game to be great. And it is great. I'm really enjoying the driving experience. But as long as you can't choose what kind of challenge you want the AI to be, I'm sad to say that I'm probably won't play it anymore. Crossing my fingers for a %-slider in the future.

 

[Jay Ekkel]

I'm about to give up. I don't know how many races or sessions I've driven (at least 25+) and I'm still lapping about 2 seconds faster than the AI per lap. I'm not being challenged and I'm not having fun. And I don't know what to do. To me the ARI is a huge fiasco and probably the thing that will make me not play this game anymore. And that's a pity since I've played Simbin titles since GTR and they have always been my favorites. I was also part of the closed beta testing for R3E so I really, really wants this game to be great. And it is great. I'm really enjoying the driving experience. But as long as you can't choose what kind of challenge you want the AI to be, I'm sad to say that I'm probably won't play it anymore. Crossing my fingers for a %-slider in the future.

To me that doesn't sound like the way ARI is supposed to work, I will ask the guys if there is anything you can do for us to see where it is going wrong.

 

[Ernie]

I'm about to give up. I don't know how many races or sessions I've driven (at least 25+) and I'm still lapping about 2 seconds faster than the AI per lap.

On all tracks or only on a specific track? I'm asking because it could perhaps be track-related and it would be helpful for the developers.

 

[Peter]

Or the AI file is corrupt.
I'm faster on the first track with a new AI file but more or less equal the rest of the season.

 

[UOPshadow]

My sentiments exactly, Joshen. If people want to use ARI that's alright, but give everybody else a choice, please. I really like to drive in the midfield, but without being able to customize the AI there is nothing I can do about it.

 

[Emerson Meyer]

I'm really tired waiting for something really good in this game. I have all the content, I gave my support. Me and many people out there, for sure. But what we have? What are the perspectives? Sorry, but this "Adaptive AI" is ridiculous.
The original AI in GTR2 is 100% better. With the tweaks presented by the community, is 300% more immersive. And we are talking about a game 8 years old. WTH? Nothing was learned?
Start with ONE car, with good physics, a decent offline experience, online races, and the move on with new content.

 

[Jay Ekkel]

We appreciate the support an feedback we get on forums like RD, lets not forget that the platform of R3E and many of its features are still in development. So its frustrating at times if things don't work, but let us know so we can take it with us for the next iteration of things.

And of course we started one car, but even that car and its physics or any of the experiences you would have of that car would be as much in development as 10 or 20 cars.

We always start with car 1 (the aquilla was our first) but by the time you are at car #5 you have learned so much you like to touch up on the first 4, by the time you are at car #10 you learned so much you need to touch the first 9 again etc etc.

Updating the physics normally means updating the sounds, updating the Ai it trickles through a lot of hands before its int he public builds again. And then we start the whole routine over again.

 

[Emerson Meyer]

We, customers, do appreciate support and feedback too.
You are well aware, since the begininng, that 99% of this community don't like (hate, would be a better word), the brake markers...
You are well aware about the poor force feedback...the lack of a guide or manual, doesn't help either.
You are weel aware that a racing simulator is about...racing. Not against a watch, but against opponents, AI or humans.

The adaptive AI could be a good idea AFTER we have the simpler option of AI difficult choice - nothing different that we have had in other Simbin titles. Right now, AI experience in game is more than frustanting.

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