General What is possible to make offline/AI racing better

corona56 · Feb 9, 2023

I have seen some posts on this subject, but most go unanswered. I want to love Assetto Corsa and use the nice NASCAR mods available for it. Rfactor seems pretty dead with new NASCAR development for nextgen, trucks, etc. However, after running a 20 lap heat race against the AI with AC and then with rfactor, it is night and day. Rfactor AI stay in their lines and are happy to drive inside or outside of me when I don't complete a pass. Not so with AC. There are tools and threads on setting borders and recording a line and I can embark on fixing the AI at various tracks (this was Dover, by the way). My question is can more be done, such as setting individual talent, strength etc. for different cars? Can any adaptive control be applied with scripting etc.? Has anyone reverse engineered the ai files to see if additional values exist? Is there a way to make multiple 'lines' to get some cars to run the high line and some the low line. and so on. For the most part, these are the things I do on rfactor to make the AI interesting to race against. As much as I think online racing is where the real challenge is, it is just hard to find time to really engage on it vs. offline where I can use a spare couple of hours on any evening to run a race.
Thanks to anyone who has info.

Ryno917 · Feb 9, 2023

As far as I'm aware, the only thing that allows different settings for different AI is by creating a custom grid in Content Manager, where you can specify the AI strength and aggressiveness as well as the ballast and restrictor on a per-driver basis.

That's the best we've got, as far as I'm aware. AC doesn't have any coding for smart oval racing AI at all.

AC is a wonderful sim, but oval racing is a serious weak point. Not surprising since it wasn't designed for it, of course.

If you're really keen on oval racing, I think iRacing is probably your best bet, if you can afford it. I think most circuits now have AI options, but I haven't looked in detail as I'm not really in the iR world.

Rodger Davies · Feb 9, 2023

As above, the AI can do what it can do reasonably well - it's solid with occasional 1uirks good and bad (recently found out it handles DRS activation surprisingly well).

But it's certainly not designed for oval racing, it's very much designed for (modern) tracks with a bit of runoff.

corona56 · Feb 10, 2023

Ryno917 said:
As far as I'm aware, the only thing that allows different settings for different AI is by creating a custom grid in Content Manager, where you can specify the AI strength and aggressiveness as well as the ballast and restrictor on a per-driver basis.

That's the best we've got, as far as I'm aware. AC doesn't have any coding for smart oval racing AI at all.

AC is a wonderful sim, but oval racing is a serious weak point. Not surprising since it wasn't designed for it, of course.

If you're really keen on oval racing, I think iRacing is probably your best bet, if you can afford it. I think most circuits now have AI options, but I haven't looked in detail as I'm not really in the iR world.

Thanks for the idea via content manager

rFactor is pretty good for AI as well. But seems to be lacking a lot of updated stock car mods. Caution flags is where rfactor is weak but is even worse with full course yellows in F1.