rec.autos.simulators

Is there a way to regulate the frequency of yellow flags brought out by the
AI cars in offline racing?  Depending on the track,  I spend more time
riding around under yellow than racing.  I've tried adjusting down the
aggressiveness of the field, but didn't seem to have much effect.  Turning
off yellows results in demolition derby.  I was hoping there was a value in
an ini file that could turn it down.

     Heh-I refer you back to the Wednesday 5-19 7:46pm thread "More
Yellows in NR2002?", where someone else complained because there were
TOO few yellows...  ;-)
    I often wonder about 'low sample size' when people complain about the
frequency of phenomenon X (it being too high or too low for their tastes).
Of course some tracks in N2002 give you more wrecks than others, and
if you spend a lot of time on one or the other it will skew your perceptions...

    JD

"John DiFool" wrote

I don't think that there are too many cautions, but I do find that some
accidents are caused by really stupid AI.  I have seen crashes while cars
are slowing down under yellow, crashes when cars pull on to the track, and
cars seem to be drawn to pileups.

I was racing at Lowes last night, and about halfway through the race there
was a crash on the front stretch.  Three cars were involved initially, but
cars behind them got tangled up as well.  I saw this, and took evasive
action, hitting the grass and getting by almost unscathed.  Watching the
replay, I could see car after car piling into the accident at speeds of over
150mph up to ten seconds after the accident.  Twenty-one cars were
eliminated from the race, and another six or seven were damaged.  Is there
any way to stop crashes like this?

I think AI performance varies from computer to computer just like graphics
and fps. I think if your stressing the system to much the AI starts getting
worse. When I went from a 950mhz to a 1.4ghz the AI got a lot better. It
think They need to have more of a game configuration setup than just a
graphics config. Something that will set graphics, sounds, and AI based on
the system. I run Las Vegas 35% races with no yellows and then I see posts
about yellows every five laps at Vegas. One other thought I had is if AI
strength makes a difference. I have noticed that as I increase the AI
strength things actually seem better. Of course that could be that I'm just
getting to be a better driver too.

MadDAWG

I have noticed similar incidents as this, and it is like the AI doesn't see
the accident until they are about one car length away from the nearest car
in the accident. It would be nice if someone could find a way to modify this
to a further distance. I think this would at least reduce the "Dumb AI Big
ones".

I have also noticed on a few occasions on the SS tracks that if there are
say five - six cars drafting around one of the turns all the cars in that
pack suddenly lose grip and end up looping at the exact same time and
manner. This usually causes the "Big one" due to the above problem, in my
offline season. It would be nice to be able to fix this as well.

One of the changes that was made to make the AI more realistic was to
increase the aggression ratings.
When I lower them, these sort of problems somewhat diminish.

--
Tim White
INTRAC Motorsports
www.birds-i-view.com/intrac

This was my first thought also.  Most of the complaints were too few
yelows.  To me there were not nearly enough AI yellows in N4 (aside
from Bristol and Mart.) but N2002 seems to be a lot better.  What I
have seen is yellows breed yellows when damaged AI cars get bunched up
with non-damaged AI cars.  But, this is what happens in real life,
just not to the extent that it happens in N2002.  I had 5 yellows in
10 green flag laps at NC last night, but had 100 caution free laps up
to that point.  I think the bottom line is we all want more realistic
yellows.  But I rather have the yellows (along with the damage model
that actually drops AI cars out of the race) in N2002 than the caution
free races in N4 any day.

Brian Oster

Brian Oster