rec.autos.simulators

I'm pretty sure dlong and dlat stand for "distance longitudinal" and
"distance lateral" respectively, but I'm not sure if that is considered in
reference to a vehicle axis system or a track axis system.  Anyway, as long
as you keep your car pointed in the right direction that would be
approximately the same thing.

I started on the assumption that you would want to increase the distance
between the cars to prevent hitting, so I tried increasing ai_dlat_pad and
decreasing ai_dlongpad_scale, as the comments seem to suggest.  Doesn't
work.  The only effect I got for decreasing ai_dlongpad_scale was that it
made the AI driver wait until later in the braking zone before trying to go
by me.  That actually increased the incidences, because it meant he was
still trying to get by me at turn-in.  So I looked at a few other tracks and
found that some used a very high value, and tried that just to see if it
made a difference, rather than spending all night trying to tweak it by
minute amounts.  It seemed to work well, so I left it that way.  Might still
need some fine tuning, that's one of the reasons I would like to get other
people to try it.

Anyway it seemed that the most effective way to make sure the AI don't
rearend you in the braking zone is to make sure they are a little farther
behind when you get there, i.e. increase ai_drafting_distance.  Then to make
sure they don't hit you when they try to go around you need to increase
ai_dlat_pad.  Finally it seems like increasing ai_dlongpad_scale stops the
last minute suicidal dive bomb passes.

Again, I can't swear this is going to work for everybody, but we'll never
know unless we get some people to try it and tell us how it went <big hint>.

I just fired up Austria after the GP today and had a *long* hard
chuckle at the AI.

Still they all move to the outside of the track at the start, meaning
I start at the back and am still P6 out of turn 1.

The guy in P5 moved to the inside of the track at turn 2, to defend
his line, or so I thought. I was about to give the AI some credit for
doing that, when he swerved back to the outside right across my
nose...

The only thing they did get right is DC being unable to drive and
spinning off.

To be fair, NR2003 was NR2002 v1.1, so I guess NR2004 would have been
the NR2003 patch if it was going to be released.

Yeah, I just tried A1 and it does seem to be prone to that, though not
always.  Bet you couldn't do that everytime, or even at all on the other
tracks.  You also didn't mention the level you had it set to.  I suspect
it was rookie which is meant to be easy. ;-)

What's wrong with that?  Were you expecting him to just let you get a
good run at him around the outside?  If you're not alongside him then
he'll want to get the best line through the corner.  The failure I've
found is that somethimes they stick to the inside so much when defending
the corner that they'll slow down too much causing you to have to either
brake harder than usual, or take a wider line, just to avoid going into
the back of the AI car.

Now that's uncannily accurate.  However, did you check to see how he got
up and running again?  You'd have noticed how they don't do the pivot on
the central axis thing in order to get pointed in the right direction.
The AI actually seem to use the same laws of physics as the human
driver.

Ok then.  Of the sims that you have experienced lately or still play,
which one(s) would you say rate the highest for AI behaviour that looks
most human-like?
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -21.77

I must be the only person on the face of the earth who doesn't have a problem
with the ai.....(ducking)....

Mike

I don't either, I'd rather race the AI than be involved in the online mayhem
they call races.

Phil

No, it was Pro, and no, you can't do it at Monaco, but you can do it
everywhere else.

Well, when he swerved back across, he removed my front wing and his
rear wing. That was the problem. There is absolutely no chance of
going around the outside of T2 at Austria, so I was about to give it
full credit for realising this and defending the line.

To be fair, that is correct.

Gran Turismo! Er, sorry, bad joke. That's a good question. The only
game I can play with the AI and not think about the bad things they
are doing is GPL. Okay, you occasionally get rear-ended, but on the
whole it's pretty damn good. Nascar Racing 2003 has some good 'AI vs
AI' AI, so the races look amazing by themselves, but as soon as I try
to race with them, it falls apart. Stick your nose underneath someone,
and they seem to be so keen to give you room that they end up wrecking
themselves (on ovals). As mentioned already in this post, the
rear-ending is a bigger issue than before on road courses as well. The
LFS AI is pretty good for emulating the touring car style of racing,
even if it is a complete hog with more than a few cars.

No one has confirmed any knowledge of a patch that is being worked on...

Marc

****************************************************************************

****************************************************************************

And get up to P6?  I doubt that very much.  Maybe you can gain a few
places this way, but certainly not overtake 2/3rds of the field.  Before
posting my original follow-up I did test this out several times over and
A1 was the weakest, but on the other tracks often cars would be 3 wide
not allowing for this kind of thing.  Is this with the patch btw?
Perhaps they improved things with the patch.

Well I must have done about 100+ starts in the past couple of weeks and
not once have I had my front wing removed by this kind of behaviour.
Perhaps you were just unlucky.  Yeah, sometimes they get things wrong
during the starts and drive as if you're not there (especially when they
move sideways and tap wheels), but the more you understand how to avoid
this, the less this happens.  What I've noticed is that, when you're
alongside an AI car they seem to have strict rules as to which part of
the track they think is theirs and which part is yours.  As long as you
stick to your part of the track they keep away.  As a result, I have
very few side on collisions.

Now why did I suspect you liked GPL?  Funnily, when I was talking about
the decent GP3 AI, it was in comparison to GPL (as well as N2k2/3) that
I had in mind.

I must have driven hundreds, if not thousands, of hours against the GPL
AI and, too be honest, it disappoints me.  They slide from left to right
(not steer), their overtaking is poor, never making most of the draft.
They actually bleed off speed when overtaking as they move out because
they get too close.  Do they ever defend the corner?  (Sorry its been a
few weeks since I last played it, but I don't think they do much).  Mind
you, they often don't have to, relying on their superior braking
abilities.  

They are extremely predictable.  I watched an AI race - and 2 cars in
particular - at Rouen once.  The following car was at least a second
quicker a lap, but every lap he would get off line when approaching one
of the least likely corners to overtake on, when he was way too far back
to even stand a chance of making a pass.  As a consequence he would lose
at least a second through that corner to the car in front who was taking
the corner normally, having to make it up over the course of the lap, by
which time, when he got to the same corner he would make the same
mistake again.  He never got into a decent overtaking situation
throughout the whole race.

The reason you never run into an AI car is because their crash avoidance
is so extreme.  Try this:

At Monza as you run down towards the fast sweeping left hander (Ascari I
believe) just after the bridge and before Parabolica.  If you are
overtaking an AI car on the left as you get towards the bridge and are
about 2/3rds of a length past it the car, start moving over to the right
side of the track into his line.  He will back up so much to avoid any
contact as to drop back by some 2 or 3 seconds.  If he was any good he
would have seen you moving across, dropped back slightly and then got in
your slipstream through Ascari ready for a pass on the straight, but
because he wants to avoid any kind of contact he backs off completely.

I won't bother to mention the dodgy physics.

This is not to say I don't enjoy GPL, otherwise why would I have spent
so long on it, but its AI is deeply flawed.

Mmm, sounds familiar to another Papyrus product.

Yeah, haven't raced it for a while, but I do recall its bully-boy
driving style.
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -21.77

<snip>

Sorry about a 2nd follow-up, but I've just read this again and it does
make me wonder.  Knowing how difficult it is to damage the cars, how
would his tapping his tail across your front wing have removed both his
rear and your front?  More likely his wheel would have made contact with
your wing first in that case.  Long before his rear wing.

It seems to me that, this being a very heavy braking area where cars
have to brake from 170+mph down to 40mph, it is more likely that he
moved across in front of you and you rear-ended him at speed because he
had started to brake and you hadn't.  Am I right or am I right?  :)

Unless you have some kind of damage editor.  If so, can you tell me
which one as I really dislike the heavy beating these cars seem to be
able to take.

<snip>
--
Peter Ives (AKA Pete Ivington)
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying via email
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me :)
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -21.77

i can confirm that ive spoken to a guy who was part of the original beta
crew who is currently testing the new patch.

but anything more im going to have to deny.

pez

****************************************************************************
****************************************************************************

Yes there will be a patch and no I am not a tester.

****************************************************************************
****************************************************************************

I'm sure there are many patches for many games that are being worked on
right now. Don't worry.

****************************************************************************
****************************************************************************

Thanks for answering the original question!

Marc

****************************************************************************
****************************************************************************

Yes I was in P6. And yes they were on Pro. And yes I can do it on
almost all the tracks. And yes I have been able to do it since Formula
One Grand Prix on my Amiga. And yes it was with the patch.

Mebbe.

That's learning how to drive the AI. It should be the other way
around.

Maybe his wheel did hit me first, but his wheel stayed on and his rear
wing came off. It doesn't really matter, coz you can lap just as
quickly with no wings ;-)

You are wrong. We weren't in the braking zone, we were approaching it.
He moved to the right, then swerved back across, way before the
braking zone. Believe me, as an experienced sim racer, I know when I
rear-end someone :-D

Okay, we just aren't gonna get along :-), but I'll give my side of the
discussion anyway...

<UNFUNNY COMMENT: How about from right to left?>

Yes, that's true, but that's not really an AI thing. I think getting
the cars around the track with a CC line is just plain maths, making
them do it cleverly is AI. So that comes down to the maths part.

Jeez, you play Nascar a lot, don't you? <GRIN> BTW it's called
slipstreaming in real racing. The 'draft' only comes into play at
Monza, Spa or Le Mans. Try some twisty tracks and you'll realise that
overtaking is all about getting the power down early out of the turns,
not being able to follow other people.

Wh?!?! Gak! Splowf!? Gggh! And you play GP4? Three wheels on my
Minardi, new lap record...

You know, I specifically put that in there in contrast to GPL. Unless
you mean Nascar 4, or something. <Damn, 2 unfunny comments in one
post. I must spend too much time in r.a.s...>

---

Having thought about it more, I think actually the reason why I don't
recall any major problems with the GPL AI is because most of my
concentration is in driving my own car, looking at my marks, only
peripherally checking what the other cars are doing. When I drive GP4,
because it's so far removed in the physics department, I can literally
drive one-handed, looking around at other cars, waving to my mum in
the stands etc, so there is just more time to check out what the AI is
doing. Maybe that has something to do with it.

By the way, I personally think GP4 is the worst Geoff Crammond F1
game. GP2 is the one I played the most, probably because GP3 took
longer than ever, but I had the most fun in the wet in GP3 - despite
the tyre model seemingly coded like this:

class Tyre
{
    bool grip;

<Ruud, have you tried this in racer? It might be the tyre model holy
grail...>
<Aww, crap. That's 3 unfunny comments...>

However, GP3 wasn't that much of a step up from GP2 (the protracted
development meant that when it was released, everything else on the
market looked twice as good). When I got GP4 I was gutted. Absolutely
gutted. In the words of Doug Ellison (I think) from the West Racing
forums, 'Geoff, what HAVE you done?'.

Regards,