Many modern simulators now impressive weather and environment simulation systems, everything from sunny days with hot tracks to storm clouds and wet tracks with real time drainage, fog, drying lines, changing track temperatures and even seasonal foliage!
There are even sims now that have real-time weather so you can experience the actual weather in that location on the day you decide to race there, it really is quite amazing!
You can choose to race in the dry, race in the wet, or even have a race where the weather changes several times throughout your session, so you may experience all types of weather during the course of a race, this is great for long endurance races.
Having these changing conditions adds a whole new element to the experience, allowing you to plan your strategy, think about tires, wear, pitstops and adapting you're driving style to each different situation.
Feeling the difference between a very cold track and a hot track, gauging how long a change in weather might last and if it's worth staying out on slicks if it starts to rain, but may not last long.
There are even sims where you have to change your driving line as the rubbered in parts of the track go from grippy to slippery as the weather changes from dry to wet!
To be honest It really is quite astonishing to see how far the software has come over the years, and even older titles that do not yet have these capabilities are developing them for the future, for instance iracing announced last year that rain will be coming to the popular simulator at some point.
I love to jump into a server which has a varying weather forecast and seeing who turns into Ayrton Senna in the rain and who can't stand it (Like Ann Peebles).
It brings such an atmosphere to the race, just watching the transitions (especially with accelerated day to night transitions) can be spectacular by itself!
I remember doing a few one hour races with a full accelerated 24hr cycle and changing conditions in VR with my friend Pete, we were both just blown away by the experience!
The amount of time and work the developers must put into these amazing features must be absolutely mind boggling!
Just the artwork alone for the changing textures, seasonal foliage, rain, cloud and sky animations must be a monster task!
With some sims having real light sources and sun rays that beat down on certain parts of the track warming it up, where other parts are in the shade, are cooler and take longer to dry out after a shower. Even large tracks like the Nordschleife where it might be raining on one part of it but not the other, the level of variation is simply amazing!..........
But what if all these amazing features and hard work by the devs are rendered completely redundant and useless for anything other than hotlapping because of one major problem???
What if you can't race online due to an unsuitable internet connection or being just too far away from the servers you'd like to race on? What if you work unsociable hours and by the time you do get online there's hardly anyone around to race with, or you simply just prefer to race offline?
Have you ever bought a sim based on the fact that it has all these great weather capabilities? You're really excited for an amazing race with changing conditions and pitstops, so you've set yourself up a two hour endurance race. You've chosen your track and car combo, you've put in many practice laps getting to know the circuit, spent time tuning your car, planning your pit strategy and you are absolutely raring to go!
You put in the first hour of hard racing, you're doing pretty well and holding position, there's been some amazing moments already and you're feeling totally immersed in the competition!
As it gets to the end of the hour it starts to rain so you all pit for wet tires, you pull out of the pits and the track is now soaking wet but you are prepared and ready to concentrate!
Then all of a sudden, the car infront that you've been having a fantastic battle with all the way through is a bit slow through the first corner and you pass it with ease, you're feeling pretty pleased with yourself but now you're thinking about the challenge now in your rear mirror, but it never comes! Infact, you pass the next car, then another, and another, has there been some sort of problem?
Three laps later and you've overtaken the whole field like they were on a pace lap, the cars have disappeared and you're on your own, you've even slowed right down and they're still not catching. You're dumbfounded, all the challenge has gone from this great race you were having, the feeling of utter immersion has gone and you feel totally deflated! What's just happened???
Well, simple... You've just experienced poorly calibrated A.I.
This is a major problem affecting many otherwise great sims! It may not even be that as soon as it starts to rain the A.I. suddenly act like they've lost 20HP, it could be that they become unrealistically fast in the rain and no matter how well you drive you just can't get anywhere near them and off they go into the distance.
The difference in the A.I.s ability in different conditions can be so large that you are forced to ditch all of these amazing weather features and stick to just racing in one condition, unless you have the time to trawl through servers looking for an online race with changing conditions against other players.
Maybe you're a very busy person and you don't have time for that and just wanted to set up a race and go in your two free precious hours, but now you realise all that money you spent on the sim and it's amazing features has gone to waste, all because of bad A.I. Such a shame!
So, what can you do to solve this?
Well, if your A.I. skill slider goes from say 50% to 120% and you are as fast as the A.I. in the dry at 100%, when you want a race in the wet but you know the A.I. are too slow or fast in the wet, you can then adjust the slider up or down by up to 20% either way to compensate, problem solved, but it's not ideal.
What if you are really fast and your slider is already at 120% in the dry but the A.I. are slow in the wet, there's no further you can turn it up to compensate for that. Not only that you can't change the slider value mid race for a session with changing conditions, so racing with varying conditions is completely out of the window anyway!
The problem is further compounded by different players abilities in the wet. You may be an absolute God in the wet, or you hardly race in the wet at all, so on the odd occasion you do fancy a race that changes from dry to wet it's not possible as you just can't keep up with the A.I. in the wet, even if the A.I. in that sim are pretty well calibrated.
Custom A.I. files
There are certain sims that offer custom A.I. files (like Automobilista 2). These are files within the games program folder that allow you to change certain values of individual A.I. driver's attributes, such as their ability in the rain, usually called something like "Wet Skill". These files can be opened and edited with Notepad.
In AMS2 this ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and is good for fine tuning, for cars that are only slightly faster or slower in the wet this value is very good for fine tuning, however in cars with large differences between the conditions it is not enough.
There is information on how to do this here.
Rfactor 2 has something similar but its a lot more complex and involves MAS files, information on the process can be found here.
As already mentioned, this may not be useful if the range of changeable values is too small. Also, if you are not prepared to go digging around in program files this may not suit you, or you may simply not have the time as usually values would have to be changed for each individual A.I. driver.
It must be an absolute nightmare for developers to program how fast the A.I. are in different conditions in the first place, let alone taking into account the problem of a players individual skill level mentioned above, they of course have no idea what your individual skill in the wet is!
One might suppose all they can go on is the cars level of capability in either condition, but with many sims using A.I. that don't use the same physics as the players car this again must make things rather difficult.
Even with great calibration, because of varying abilities between players in such conditions, one player may still find the A.I. are a bit out of whack with them when it rains where as another might find them fine, so how do the developers please everyone?
How about this.... Let the player decide!
In the video below there is an idea for a possible solution to this problem, the video is fully time stamped so you don't have to watch the whole thing, you can go straight to the idea by clicking on the timestamp titled:
"Idea for possible solution to the big problem!"
This section is only a couple of minutes long and should not take up much of your time (but hey, if you've managed to make it this far through the article, I guess times not too much of an issue!).
There are other points in the video however that you may find useful, such as why I personally find that Assetto Corsa Competizione (you may of course disagree) has the best A.I. calibration between conditions, out of all of the examples used
Also, there are two examples of how big the difference between dry and wet can be in the same sim, using exactly the same skill level.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the idea as Sim racers. Maybe you know something about A.I. programming and could expand on whether it's a feasible idea or not. Maybe you even have a better idea?
Also, which sim (or car class within a sim) do you find suits you best when it comes to racing against the A.I. in the wet and changing conditions?
Any discussion is good as at the end of the day, a problem solved is beneficial to all of us!
There are even sims now that have real-time weather so you can experience the actual weather in that location on the day you decide to race there, it really is quite amazing!
You can choose to race in the dry, race in the wet, or even have a race where the weather changes several times throughout your session, so you may experience all types of weather during the course of a race, this is great for long endurance races.
Having these changing conditions adds a whole new element to the experience, allowing you to plan your strategy, think about tires, wear, pitstops and adapting you're driving style to each different situation.
Feeling the difference between a very cold track and a hot track, gauging how long a change in weather might last and if it's worth staying out on slicks if it starts to rain, but may not last long.
There are even sims where you have to change your driving line as the rubbered in parts of the track go from grippy to slippery as the weather changes from dry to wet!
To be honest It really is quite astonishing to see how far the software has come over the years, and even older titles that do not yet have these capabilities are developing them for the future, for instance iracing announced last year that rain will be coming to the popular simulator at some point.
I love to jump into a server which has a varying weather forecast and seeing who turns into Ayrton Senna in the rain and who can't stand it (Like Ann Peebles).
It brings such an atmosphere to the race, just watching the transitions (especially with accelerated day to night transitions) can be spectacular by itself!
I remember doing a few one hour races with a full accelerated 24hr cycle and changing conditions in VR with my friend Pete, we were both just blown away by the experience!
The amount of time and work the developers must put into these amazing features must be absolutely mind boggling!
Just the artwork alone for the changing textures, seasonal foliage, rain, cloud and sky animations must be a monster task!
With some sims having real light sources and sun rays that beat down on certain parts of the track warming it up, where other parts are in the shade, are cooler and take longer to dry out after a shower. Even large tracks like the Nordschleife where it might be raining on one part of it but not the other, the level of variation is simply amazing!..........
But what if all these amazing features and hard work by the devs are rendered completely redundant and useless for anything other than hotlapping because of one major problem???
What if you can't race online due to an unsuitable internet connection or being just too far away from the servers you'd like to race on? What if you work unsociable hours and by the time you do get online there's hardly anyone around to race with, or you simply just prefer to race offline?
Have you ever bought a sim based on the fact that it has all these great weather capabilities? You're really excited for an amazing race with changing conditions and pitstops, so you've set yourself up a two hour endurance race. You've chosen your track and car combo, you've put in many practice laps getting to know the circuit, spent time tuning your car, planning your pit strategy and you are absolutely raring to go!
You put in the first hour of hard racing, you're doing pretty well and holding position, there's been some amazing moments already and you're feeling totally immersed in the competition!
As it gets to the end of the hour it starts to rain so you all pit for wet tires, you pull out of the pits and the track is now soaking wet but you are prepared and ready to concentrate!
Then all of a sudden, the car infront that you've been having a fantastic battle with all the way through is a bit slow through the first corner and you pass it with ease, you're feeling pretty pleased with yourself but now you're thinking about the challenge now in your rear mirror, but it never comes! Infact, you pass the next car, then another, and another, has there been some sort of problem?
Three laps later and you've overtaken the whole field like they were on a pace lap, the cars have disappeared and you're on your own, you've even slowed right down and they're still not catching. You're dumbfounded, all the challenge has gone from this great race you were having, the feeling of utter immersion has gone and you feel totally deflated! What's just happened???
Well, simple... You've just experienced poorly calibrated A.I.
This is a major problem affecting many otherwise great sims! It may not even be that as soon as it starts to rain the A.I. suddenly act like they've lost 20HP, it could be that they become unrealistically fast in the rain and no matter how well you drive you just can't get anywhere near them and off they go into the distance.
The difference in the A.I.s ability in different conditions can be so large that you are forced to ditch all of these amazing weather features and stick to just racing in one condition, unless you have the time to trawl through servers looking for an online race with changing conditions against other players.
Maybe you're a very busy person and you don't have time for that and just wanted to set up a race and go in your two free precious hours, but now you realise all that money you spent on the sim and it's amazing features has gone to waste, all because of bad A.I. Such a shame!
So, what can you do to solve this?
Well, if your A.I. skill slider goes from say 50% to 120% and you are as fast as the A.I. in the dry at 100%, when you want a race in the wet but you know the A.I. are too slow or fast in the wet, you can then adjust the slider up or down by up to 20% either way to compensate, problem solved, but it's not ideal.
What if you are really fast and your slider is already at 120% in the dry but the A.I. are slow in the wet, there's no further you can turn it up to compensate for that. Not only that you can't change the slider value mid race for a session with changing conditions, so racing with varying conditions is completely out of the window anyway!
The problem is further compounded by different players abilities in the wet. You may be an absolute God in the wet, or you hardly race in the wet at all, so on the odd occasion you do fancy a race that changes from dry to wet it's not possible as you just can't keep up with the A.I. in the wet, even if the A.I. in that sim are pretty well calibrated.
Custom A.I. files
There are certain sims that offer custom A.I. files (like Automobilista 2). These are files within the games program folder that allow you to change certain values of individual A.I. driver's attributes, such as their ability in the rain, usually called something like "Wet Skill". These files can be opened and edited with Notepad.
In AMS2 this ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and is good for fine tuning, for cars that are only slightly faster or slower in the wet this value is very good for fine tuning, however in cars with large differences between the conditions it is not enough.
There is information on how to do this here.
Rfactor 2 has something similar but its a lot more complex and involves MAS files, information on the process can be found here.
As already mentioned, this may not be useful if the range of changeable values is too small. Also, if you are not prepared to go digging around in program files this may not suit you, or you may simply not have the time as usually values would have to be changed for each individual A.I. driver.
It must be an absolute nightmare for developers to program how fast the A.I. are in different conditions in the first place, let alone taking into account the problem of a players individual skill level mentioned above, they of course have no idea what your individual skill in the wet is!
One might suppose all they can go on is the cars level of capability in either condition, but with many sims using A.I. that don't use the same physics as the players car this again must make things rather difficult.
Even with great calibration, because of varying abilities between players in such conditions, one player may still find the A.I. are a bit out of whack with them when it rains where as another might find them fine, so how do the developers please everyone?
How about this.... Let the player decide!
In the video below there is an idea for a possible solution to this problem, the video is fully time stamped so you don't have to watch the whole thing, you can go straight to the idea by clicking on the timestamp titled:
"Idea for possible solution to the big problem!"
This section is only a couple of minutes long and should not take up much of your time (but hey, if you've managed to make it this far through the article, I guess times not too much of an issue!).
There are other points in the video however that you may find useful, such as why I personally find that Assetto Corsa Competizione (you may of course disagree) has the best A.I. calibration between conditions, out of all of the examples used
Also, there are two examples of how big the difference between dry and wet can be in the same sim, using exactly the same skill level.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the idea as Sim racers. Maybe you know something about A.I. programming and could expand on whether it's a feasible idea or not. Maybe you even have a better idea?
Also, which sim (or car class within a sim) do you find suits you best when it comes to racing against the A.I. in the wet and changing conditions?
Any discussion is good as at the end of the day, a problem solved is beneficial to all of us!
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