AIW editing for mod tracks in AMS: how?

[MJQT]

AMS modding newbie here who recently got back into sim racing. I'm absolutely loving driving Automobilista, especially CART Extreme (since I'm a huge AOWR fan). Would love to contribute to this awesome game and put in some work on improving mod track AIWs – for example on the JNS Oval tracks.

How to go about doing this? Any experts have any tips they can share?


Disclaimer: I don't think this question has been explicitly addressed in existing threads. If it has, my apologies – in this case, it'd be greatly appreciated if you could direct me to those discussions.

**One potential method that came to mind after doing some research: for rFactor conversions, could one modify the AIW "the old-fashioned way" using the rFactor AIWCAM Editor on the old rFactor track and then use that AIW file in the AMS version?

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

Now the Value in the box is the distance your Yellow line is from the Waypoint. So you could simply add the same value to the Box beside it, and you would then have what you describe but using the Waypoint line as the middle.

I know for a fact the yellow line is not perfect, and in some areas you absolutely can dip a bit below it. I wish to avoid that, especially considering that dropping from the banking to apron is a great way to crash yourself.

If you hit the H key a help file will open that has some nice tips. And if you hover your mouse over some of the buttons some interesting tips pop up.

I did check that, it was sadly not the helpful. What bothers me is I swear I pulled up a menu at one point that had an explanation on how to possibly do it, but I can't for the life of me find it.

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

Here's another thing - how do I add pit road exit waypoints? The cars merge way too early and way too slowly (they merge back onto the track at half speed entering turn one - problematic for anyone else coming!). IRL they run on the apron between turns one and two before merging onto the backstretch.

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

Alrighty, here's an update on what I've been doing.

I made the decision to try and rework Talladega, as the AI have an obsession with braking entering the corners despite the player being able to take the corner flat-out.
So after revising the track limits, I decided to try and redo the racing line.

This was a mistake.

I tried punching in the waypoint offset manually, going by a distance as small as a tenth between points to try and create a smooth entrance. That didn't work. I looked into it, and found that the curve tool needs to be used to tell the AI how to properly take the corner, and it also smooths it out.
And it did.

But no matter what I try, I can not get the AI to take the corner flat out, and having the racing line turned on reflects this. I then tried adding grooves to the track, so that the track will darken as you race. And that's when I found out what the problem is.

For some reason, this game engine refuses to acknowledge the idea that high banking exists. Anything above about 15 degrees and the half the groove would float above the track, and the other half would go through the floor. As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell the editor that a corner, or even the entire track has high banking. This is also why the editor refuses to let the AI go full throttle, no matter how I set up the track.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that this is likely the reason why this has not been fixed, despite the mod being several years old. It's not just the NRacing mod I'm using that's effected - multiple other mods, and even vanilla cars all have this problem.

What frustrates me even more is that there does not seem to be a way to "trick" the AI into taking the corners flatout. Reducing AIBrakingStiffness just makes them brake sooner. Increasing the AI aggressiveness to Max just makes them more suicidal (and prone to punting the player). Setting the AI Strength to 120% just makes them unnaturally fast (230+ miles an hour/370+ kph). Inserting one continuous curve just makes the braking point appear before the damn corner (See the picture I attached). Placing down twenty curves between turn one and two just insert more spots the AI are told to brake. Having the AI try to learn the track by making them run test mode for 200 laps does not actually let them attempt to run the corner flatout. Having the cars diamond the corner (enter low, go high in the center, and then go to the bottom for the corner exit) doesn't prevent braking, nor does keeping them glued to the top or glued to the bottom of the track. Setting all the waypoint offsets to "0" didn't help either.

Unless anyone here has any other ideas, I'm thinking this might be the end of the road for trying to fix these tracks. And that disappoints me a lot, because I feel like there is potential to have the AI give half-decent races on ovals if I could just wrap my head around what makes them tick.

 

[Italotracks]

Alrighty, here's an update on what I've been doing.

I made the decision to try and rework Talladega, as the AI have an obsession with braking entering the corners despite the player being able to take the corner flat-out.
So after revising the track limits, I decided to try and redo the racing line.

This was a mistake.

I tried punching in the waypoint offset manually, going by a distance as small as a tenth between points to try and create a smooth entrance. That didn't work. I looked into it, and found that the curve tool needs to be used to tell the AI how to properly take the corner, and it also smooths it out.
And it did.

But no matter what I try, I can not get the AI to take the corner flat out, and having the racing line turned on reflects this. I then tried adding grooves to the track, so that the track will darken as you race. And that's when I found out what the problem is.

For some reason, this game engine refuses to acknowledge the idea that high banking exists. Anything above about 15 degrees and the half the groove would float above the track, and the other half would go through the floor. As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell the editor that a corner, or even the entire track has high banking. This is also why the editor refuses to let the AI go full throttle, no matter how I set up the track.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that this is likely the reason why this has not been fixed, despite the mod being several years old. It's not just the NRacing mod I'm using that's effected - multiple other mods, and even vanilla cars all have this problem.

What frustrates me even more is that there does not seem to be a way to "trick" the AI into taking the corners flatout. Reducing AIBrakingStiffness just makes them brake sooner. Increasing the AI aggressiveness to Max just makes them more suicidal (and prone to punting the player). Setting the AI Strength to 120% just makes them unnaturally fast (230+ miles an hour/370+ kph). Inserting one continuous curve just makes the braking point appear before the damn corner (See the picture I attached). Placing down twenty curves between turn one and two just insert more spots the AI are told to brake. Having the AI try to learn the track by making them run test mode for 200 laps does not actually let them attempt to run the corner flatout. Having the cars diamond the corner (enter low, go high in the center, and then go to the bottom for the corner exit) doesn't prevent braking, nor does keeping them glued to the top or glued to the bottom of the track. Setting all the waypoint offsets to "0" didn't help either.

View attachment 725654

Unless anyone here has any other ideas, I'm thinking this might be the end of the road for trying to fix these tracks. And that disappoints me a lot, because I feel like there is potential to have the AI give half-decent races on ovals if I could just wrap my head around what makes them tick.

Your best bet (if you're racing them alone offline) is to go into the car mod's .TBC file and where you have the following entries eg. AIGripMult=1.050 etc... turn them way up.
There might be several depending on how many compounds, front rears etc are referenced in the tyre file.
In AMS, and other sims, the AI don't 'see' the banking, so you'll have to artificially boost their potential grip. Maybe have that as a separate .tbc file, and switch back to the previous one when running at road courses.

Let me know how you get on with that, it's not optimal, but a workaround..

 

[Italotracks]

Alrighty, here's an update on what I've been doing.

I made the decision to try and rework Talladega, as the AI have an obsession with braking entering the corners despite the player being able to take the corner flat-out.
So after revising the track limits, I decided to try and redo the racing line.

This was a mistake.

I tried punching in the waypoint offset manually, going by a distance as small as a tenth between points to try and create a smooth entrance. That didn't work. I looked into it, and found that the curve tool needs to be used to tell the AI how to properly take the corner, and it also smooths it out.
And it did.

But no matter what I try, I can not get the AI to take the corner flat out, and having the racing line turned on reflects this. I then tried adding grooves to the track, so that the track will darken as you race. And that's when I found out what the problem is.

For some reason, this game engine refuses to acknowledge the idea that high banking exists. Anything above about 15 degrees and the half the groove would float above the track, and the other half would go through the floor. As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell the editor that a corner, or even the entire track has high banking. This is also why the editor refuses to let the AI go full throttle, no matter how I set up the track.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that this is likely the reason why this has not been fixed, despite the mod being several years old. It's not just the NRacing mod I'm using that's effected - multiple other mods, and even vanilla cars all have this problem.

What frustrates me even more is that there does not seem to be a way to "trick" the AI into taking the corners flatout. Reducing AIBrakingStiffness just makes them brake sooner. Increasing the AI aggressiveness to Max just makes them more suicidal (and prone to punting the player). Setting the AI Strength to 120% just makes them unnaturally fast (230+ miles an hour/370+ kph). Inserting one continuous curve just makes the braking point appear before the damn corner (See the picture I attached). Placing down twenty curves between turn one and two just insert more spots the AI are told to brake. Having the AI try to learn the track by making them run test mode for 200 laps does not actually let them attempt to run the corner flatout. Having the cars diamond the corner (enter low, go high in the center, and then go to the bottom for the corner exit) doesn't prevent braking, nor does keeping them glued to the top or glued to the bottom of the track. Setting all the waypoint offsets to "0" didn't help either.

View attachment 725654

Unless anyone here has any other ideas, I'm thinking this might be the end of the road for trying to fix these tracks. And that disappoints me a lot, because I feel like there is potential to have the AI give half-decent races on ovals if I could just wrap my head around what makes them tick.

Or you could go into the track.AIW file and change the following. This might be a better idea..

WorstAdjust=(0.8000)
MidAdjust=(0.9950)
BestAdjust=(1.1400)
RaceQualRatio=(1.0005)
AIRange=(0.1000)
AISpec=(0.0000,0.0000,1.0000,0.0000) // 4 ways to express AI speed on track, limit the acceration, max speed, their cornering speed, or their deceleration. 0.0 - 1.0
AIDraftStickiness=(3.000)

Turn the top three entries way up, as long as AISpec is (0.0000,0.0000,1.0000,0.0000)
That means when you increase the Worst mid best adjust values, it will increase their speed only by affecting corner speed at that track. You might go for 1.3, 1.5, 1.7 to see if they take the corners flat. Play around with the values..

 

[Simon Aguirre]

For some reason, this game engine refuses to acknowledge the idea that high banking exists. Anything above about 15 degrees and the half the groove would float above the track, and the other half would go through the floor. As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell the editor that a corner, or even the entire track has high banking. This is also why the editor refuses to let the AI go full throttle, no matter how I set up the track.

I will try to explain it from my experience (I could be wrong). Each waypoint in the AIW file has a position in 3d space (wp_pos) and a perpendicular vector (wp_perp) that indicates the "direction" of the track to the sides. The racing line (and therefore the groove) is a distance from wp_pos in the direction indicated by wp_perp. This means that only straight lines can be represented exactly, anything with curvature will have an error. The further away from the waypoint, the bigger the error (potentially). One thing to try is to set the waypoints on the racing line; that should reduce the distance to (almost) zero. The problem there might appear when trying to set the track limits. Also it would imply creating the AIW from scratch.

What frustrates me even more is that there does not seem to be a way to "trick" the AI into taking the corners flatout. Reducing AIBrakingStiffness just makes them brake sooner. Increasing the AI aggressiveness to Max just makes them more suicidal (and prone to punting the player). Setting the AI Strength to 120% just makes them unnaturally fast (230+ miles an hour/370+ kph). Inserting one continuous curve just makes the braking point appear before the damn corner (See the picture I attached). Placing down twenty curves between turn one and two just insert more spots the AI are told to brake. Having the AI try to learn the track by making them run test mode for 200 laps does not actually let them attempt to run the corner flatout. Having the cars diamond the corner (enter low, go high in the center, and then go to the bottom for the corner exit) doesn't prevent braking, nor does keeping them glued to the top or glued to the bottom of the track. Setting all the waypoint offsets to "0" didn't help either.

Again from my experience, there is no "magic trick" that will fix the AI behavior. A lot of trying different lines and refining them is the only way; and even then the results may not be satisfactory. On top of that, sometimes one lines works ok with one class of car but not another.

Unless anyone here has any other ideas, I'm thinking this might be the end of the road for trying to fix these tracks. And that disappoints me a lot, because I feel like there is potential to have the AI give half-decent races on ovals if I could just wrap my head around what makes them tick.

Between these comments and the previous one about the pit exit, it seams to me that it could be better to start from scratch than trying to fix the current one. I could take a look but i am in the middle of a cockpit upgrade at the moment, don't known when i will be able to do this.
To make sure we are talking about the same track, you are using the one from "JNS Trackpack" uploaded here by Dann Murillo, right?

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

Or you could go into the track.AIW file and change the following. This might be a better idea..

WorstAdjust=(0.8000)
MidAdjust=(0.9950)
BestAdjust=(1.1400)
RaceQualRatio=(1.0005)
AIRange=(0.1000)
AISpec=(0.0000,0.0000,1.0000,0.0000) // 4 ways to express AI speed on track, limit the acceration, max speed, their cornering speed, or their deceleration. 0.0 - 1.0
AIDraftStickiness=(3.000)

Turn the top three entries way up, as long as AISpec is (0.0000,0.0000,1.0000,0.0000)
That means when you increase the Worst mid best adjust values, it will increase their speed only by affecting corner speed at that track. You might go for 1.3, 1.5, 1.7 to see if they take the corners flat. Play around with the values..

I tried editing the values, and... uh...

*413 km/h

(They still brake in the corners, but at these speeds I'm not surprised tbh.)

Even at the track's default BestValue of 1.2, the AI not only go unnaturally fast, but they brake for the corners as well. (With that value they can easily get up to about 225 or so miles an hour). No matter how the line is set up or what I try, they'll take nearly the entirely lap flatout, but for at least one corner they refuse to go beyond 175-ish miles an hour. I could adjust the gear ratios so that they can't exceed ~210 mph, but that would be unrealistic as they are not constantly bouncing off the limiter in real life. (The reason the ratios are even set like that in the first place is to reduce their acceleration on superspeedways to mimic how they behave IRL.)

To make sure we are talking about the same track, you are using the one from "JNS Trackpack" uploaded here by Dann Murillo, right?

That is correct.

 

[Speednut357]

Alrighty, here's an update on what I've been doing.

I made the decision to try and rework Talladega, as the AI have an obsession with braking entering the corners despite the player being able to take the corner flat-out.
So after revising the track limits, I decided to try and redo the racing line.

This was a mistake.

I tried punching in the waypoint offset manually, going by a distance as small as a tenth between points to try and create a smooth entrance. That didn't work. I looked into it, and found that the curve tool needs to be used to tell the AI how to properly take the corner, and it also smooths it out.
And it did.

But no matter what I try, I can not get the AI to take the corner flat out, and having the racing line turned on reflects this. I then tried adding grooves to the track, so that the track will darken as you race. And that's when I found out what the problem is.

For some reason, this game engine refuses to acknowledge the idea that high banking exists. Anything above about 15 degrees and the half the groove would float above the track, and the other half would go through the floor. As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell the editor that a corner, or even the entire track has high banking. This is also why the editor refuses to let the AI go full throttle, no matter how I set up the track.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that this is likely the reason why this has not been fixed, despite the mod being several years old. It's not just the NRacing mod I'm using that's effected - multiple other mods, and even vanilla cars all have this problem.

What frustrates me even more is that there does not seem to be a way to "trick" the AI into taking the corners flatout. Reducing AIBrakingStiffness just makes them brake sooner. Increasing the AI aggressiveness to Max just makes them more suicidal (and prone to punting the player). Setting the AI Strength to 120% just makes them unnaturally fast (230+ miles an hour/370+ kph). Inserting one continuous curve just makes the braking point appear before the damn corner (See the picture I attached). Placing down twenty curves between turn one and two just insert more spots the AI are told to brake. Having the AI try to learn the track by making them run test mode for 200 laps does not actually let them attempt to run the corner flatout. Having the cars diamond the corner (enter low, go high in the center, and then go to the bottom for the corner exit) doesn't prevent braking, nor does keeping them glued to the top or glued to the bottom of the track. Setting all the waypoint offsets to "0" didn't help either.

View attachment 725654

Unless anyone here has any other ideas, I'm thinking this might be the end of the road for trying to fix these tracks. And that disappoints me a lot, because I feel like there is potential to have the AI give half-decent races on ovals if I could just wrap my head around what makes them tick.

How are you using the ISI Aiw editor? I cannot get that running in Windows 10. Are you using Windows XP.
If I were trying to fix this problem, I would adjust the wp_cheat values for each waypoint. This will adjust the speed the Ai is trying to reach for each point. In the Guitarman editor, it is easier to see and adjust the wp_cheat values.

 

[Simon Aguirre]

Let me start by saying that i know almost nothing about oval racing, so take this comments with a grain of salt.
Today i did a quick pass at the aiw and the car and i believe that there are many issues combined that are causing the problem (the AI line is only one of them).
Is quite late here so i will make a recap tomorrow of what i found, for the time being here is a video of the progress so far:

 

[Simon Aguirre]

The main cause for AI breaking seems to be the bumps when changing from the flat part of the track to the banking (and vise-versa). Because of the simplified physics, dealing with bumps while cornering is usually quite hard for AI (specially at high speed). In this picture you can see that the front left tire losses all the grip at the bump of the entry to the second corner:

Most likely there is a line that will minimize that transition, but without my simrig in working order at the moment, i will not be able to find it.
On top of that i also found many AI settings that were quite extreme and some of the new AMS AI settings that were missing. Adjusting and adding those did help but is not a definitive solution.
I believe that they are racing a little bit better but there is a lot of room for improvement (and i didn't test full races, pit entry/exit might need some extra work).
The two thing that are affecting the most (besides the racing line) is tire wear and (i think) the loss of downforce when they close behind another car (still referring the bumps).
For now this is the best i can do; in a month or so when the rig is ready i will take another look.
In this this link are the files that i change (aiw, hdv, tbc, ini). I also included the replay, results and telemetry of one of my final tests. I hope all this will help you push car/track combo a bit further.

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

How are you using the ISI Aiw editor? I cannot get that running in Windows 10. Are you using Windows XP.

I'm not sure what I've done differently. I downloaded the AIW editor from the downloads section on this site under Automobilista, threw it all into a folder, and it worked straight out of the box.

The main cause for AI breaking seems to be the bumps when changing from the flat part of the track to the banking (and vise-versa). Because of the simplified physics, dealing with bumps while cornering is usually quite hard for AI (specially at high speed). In this picture you can see that the front left tire losses all the grip at the bump of the entry to the second corner:
View attachment 727153
Most likely there is a line that will minimize that transition, but without my simrig in working order at the moment, i will not be able to find it.
On top of that i also found many AI settings that were quite extreme and some of the new AMS AI settings that were missing. Adjusting and adding those did help but is not a definitive solution.
I believe that they are racing a little bit better but there is a lot of room for improvement (and i didn't test full races, pit entry/exit might need some extra work).
The two thing that are affecting the most (besides the racing line) is tire wear and (i think) the loss of downforce when they close behind another car (still referring the bumps).
For now this is the best i can do; in a month or so when the rig is ready i will take another look.
In this this link are the files that i change (aiw, hdv, tbc, ini). I also included the replay, results and telemetry of one of my final tests. I hope all this will help you push car/track combo a bit further.

I'll most certainly have to investigate these files at some point. Judging off your video you seem to have gotten them to behave surprisingly well. (Of course this doesn't cover the same issues they have at Daytona, but we'll cross that bridge IF we get there.) The loss of downforce might explain why they also seem to behave worse when they are too close to another car.

I did at one point try redoing the line so that they exclusively ran high, where in theory they would not encounter such an abrupt transition. It appears this wasn't enough, as they still check up regardless.

I'm at least glad to see that someone else is making progress on this. Most of my knowledge when it comes to modifying track files involves the old-fashioned method of physically opening .ini files and manually editing them, so I'm a bit out of the water with this stuff.

Perhaps at some point

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

On a different note, I've decided to at least try and fix all the other ovals, as if I can't get Daytona and Talladega to work I at least want to fix what I can. The adjustments will be pretty basic on most parts - adding a second line in the pits (where possible), smoothing pit entrance and exit lines, marking proper boundaries to keep the AI from racing on the apron, correcting pit speed limits, safety car release timings, trying to get the AI to not completely crap the bed whenever a FCY is triggered, adjusting grooves, etc.

On the topic of grooves, I did find out something interesting. The game CAN register banking for track grooves, but only up to about 6 meters. Anything beyond that and it seems to have a stroke and make the groove start to level out until it's flat, meaning it will go through the floor and hover over the race track. Most tracks will probably be able to have some type of groove added (if it's not there already), but some tracks like Talladega (where they use ALL the track) will likely be unable to have a groove added.

So far I've made adjustments to Atlanta, Bristol, and Autoclub, and will be starting work on Charlotte. This is on top of the speed limit adjustments I made years ago. The bottom line is that I will be releasing an update at some point. It's just a matter of time, and how much I can actually do with what experience I have.

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

Great news! I think I fixed Daytona!

I was working on Daytona (track limits and other garbage) and decided to run a race. During the race, I felt they were going a bit faster than they actually should have been able to at 100%. I checked the AI Adjust setting, and found them set to 1.1/1.2/1.3 for worst/mid/best. I adjusted these numbers to 0.9/1.0/1.2, respectively, and the AI have stopped lifting entirely!!

Unfortunately, I checked the files for Talladega, and found they are already set to 0.8/1.0/1.2, so we still need to find a solution to that. I suppose worst case scenario I could detune the AI to run slower times, but I feel like that isn't the solution I should be going for.

I have continued to update the tracks at a somewhat steady pace. Charlotte, Chicago, Darlington, Daytona, Dover, Gateway, New Hampshire, and Homestead have all been updated (with Homestead being the easiest so far). I am currently working on I70 raceway, though there appears to be a strange bug with rolling starts that I am trying to hammer out that is proving pesky. (All the AI beeline for the pit wall, and the game file indicates they are being told to merge directly onto the track to start the formation lap...something I'll have to try and sort out.)

Anyway, that's good progress, and I'm glad this does not appear to be a fruitless effort. The AI being able to actually race Daytona properly has given me hope!

 

[morsify]

I'm not sure what I've done differently. I downloaded the AIW editor from the downloads section on this site under Automobilista, threw it all into a folder, and it worked straight out of the box.

If you are sure it's the ISI editor you downloaded, can you please provide a link to that download? The only one I can find under Automobilista is the one by Guitarman.
Thanks

 

[Johnny Speed]

If you are sure it's the ISI editor you downloaded, can you please provide a link to that download? The only one I can find under Automobilista is the one by Guitarman.
Thanks

Maybe here?

ISI rF1 modding tools - pack

Thank goodness the Internet Archive preserved this website from rFactor 1's heyday: "rFactor 1 Developer's Corner" https://web.archive.org/web/20171021035833/http://rfactor.net:80/web/rf1/devcorner/ It contains a lot of great information and...

www.racedepartment.com

 

[Johnny Speed]

I have read that some of that stuff does NOT work with windows 10.

 

[MJQT]

I have read that some of that stuff does NOT work with windows 10.

In my experience, the ISI rF1 modding tools no longer run under Windows 10 or 11. I have heard they can be run thru Wine (set to emulate Windows 7) on a Linux distribution, though.

 

[Italotracks]

In my experience, the ISI rF1 modding tools no longer run under Windows 10 or 11. I have heard they can be run thru Wine (set to emulate Windows 7) on a Linux distribution, though.

Yep, only windows 7 for me. To put the icing on the cake, rfactor itself doesn't run on Windows 7 (Steam no longer supports it) but the editor does, so I have to reboot my PC and go into windows 10 to test any changes with the AI

 

[morsify]

I have read that some of that stuff does NOT work with windows 10.

I've tried a few times and can't get it to work, that's why I was asking where he downloaded it. I live in hope that someone can get it running, but I suspect he's confusing it with guitarman's editor, which still works fine.

 

[Dat-Mudkip]

I've tried a few times and can't get it to work, that's why I was asking where he downloaded it. I live in hope that someone can get it running, but I suspect he's confusing it with guitarman's editor, which still works fine.

I double-checked and it appears that I downloaded the version guitarman uploaded. Barebones as hell, but it works.