So you can make an educated guess why GTR2 is so revered. It had a lot of fancy features that didn't work, almost nobody used, but everybody was hyped about having. Same like AMS2 and ACC. Dynamic weather and day/night cycle are "premium features" - ones that people love to have for the sake of having them, not using them. Customers are like that sometimes. Same goes for "physical tyre model", fancier than empirical, even though it doesn't work most of the time and is hard to tune, as well as general complexity of physics, which has no indication whatsoever on whether the car will actually handle properly, or laser-scanned tracks, which people think is a magical tool that makes track identical to real life, while it's just a helpful reference point and can be easily misused just as well. But the more of those bullet points you market your sim with, the better, regardless of the quality of actual feature. Most simracers are not sophisticated enough to actually tell the difference, but they like to think of themselves as such, so they seek after those features. One thing you need to nail though, and barely anybody in the sim community will admit that, is gameplay. iRacing is the best racing sim gameplay-wise, and by far, though it is tightly focused around online racing. Again, simracers like to think of themselves as being above average gamers, especially those vocal ones, but truth is they're just after a good, fun racing game that happens to have realistic handling. You nail gameplay, you reap rewards. Just look at F1 games.
@@TomLehockySVK In league racing, rain can be more common, but otherwise, people just don't use it... I play ACC, and I haven't seen a single online lobby with rain since the game launched (even cloudy weather is a rare sighy). It's a shame, because wet weather racing can be so much fun
It's not even that the audience loves features for the sake of features. Programming and testing good AI for your game takes YEARS to perfect and requires an entire team for that purpose. And that alone isn't even a 100% given guarantee for the game's AI to function properly. The best examples are the AI in Thief 2 and F.E.A.R 1, games that people CLAIM to have "good AI" in them, yet the enemy AI in both games can be easily exploited and tricked on the hardest difficulty. It's also worth noting that Thief 2 was rushed and underfunded because John Romero's Daikatana took up most of Eidos(the publisher)'s funding in North America, meaning that they were unable to give Looking Glass Software the money and pay required to make Thief 2 the game that they wanted (this is especially demonstrated in the final third of the game, where the level design collapses as a consequence of rushed development with limited funding). And that F.E.A.R 1's development was also blighted by Monolith getting pulled in multiple directions due to the development of No One Lives Forever 2 and The Matrix Online (two complex games from two different genres that were still in their mainstream infancy, Stealth games of the late-90s/early-00s were very spotty in regards to AI pathfinding and "cone-of-vision" sensory development, whereas MMOs are insanely expensive, complex affairs that require multiple teams for one section of the game's design), meaning that F.E.A.R. 1's development team was smaller than it should have been.
iRacing is not the best racing sim gameplay wise, at least not for me. I put my hands on both ACC and RF2 thanks to LowFuelMotorsport, and they both have better force feedback, better tyre model, better recover from a slip, and better contact physics. I mean, this is my impression, after I put some time in different races, and whenever it would have been game over for iRacing, since the cars feels like they are made of bouncy balls, and every tiny contact is recognized as a fucking shunt, or if you try to 'slide' the car (a thing that real drivers do), the switch in iRacing automatically turns to "grip-off", I managed to have really good wheel to wheel races, without the risk of breaking for something that was not even my fault. iRacing is a 2008 game that has been patched until now, but we need an iRacing 2. Also, F1 games are not popular for what they offer outside the dreadful gameplay, they are popular because duh, F1
@@gianlucarisa7726 I think you don't know what "gameplay" means. Gameplay is a set of rules that determine how you play and compete. Physics is just a tiny part of it, and one that can exist outside gameplay. LFM _is_ an actual gameplay system slapped over ACC and rF2, but it's actually the proof of their lacking gameplay that people need LFM to have fun with those titles. iRacing doesn't need third party support to provide that.
The damage is actually to the aero instead of the engine, and this is a well known bug. There are a few AI improvement mods out there which fix this, like SHO Competition AI, by adjusting the damage sensitivity in the .dmg file.
@Crunch Bar It 'alleviates' (not solves) an AI problem by lowering aero damage sensitivity, reducing the mid-race slow down that Austin spoke about caused by aero damage. Not sure how that isn't a 'fix' for the AI? The line is 'AeroMin', bump up the value and you'll find the AI are still somewhat functional after an enduro - as DSW said, this is one of the most well known AI improvements on GTR2. For those that remember - 'Von Dutch'. Iyk, yk.
Another funny thing is if you played this game on the kind of rig from around the year it came out, driving in heavy rain or at night would make your framerate tank so hard that it became unplayable, you went from like 50 FPS with full grid to like 20s, even if you decreased the graphics to low. And I don't remember reviewers mentioning it either.
I'm actually happy about how you criticize the single player in "super serious sims that are not meant to be played offline" by the dumb elitists of the simracing community. Even if the strenght of a game lies in its multiplayer, that doesn't change the fact that the developers introduced a Single player mode THAT DOESN'T WORK. Fucking hell, this is what still keeps me away from darn good games, ACC on top of that. I needed to wait for a bunch of German nerds to make LowFuelMotorsport in order to start playing it, whilst all they could have done is to introduce a good career mode. Why do nobody seems to be able to develop a good single player experience? AIs can draw whatever you ask a search bar, I'm sure they know how to drive a fucking car in 2022.
its crazy how you ran into this problem with the ai in gtr2. because gplaps has videos on his channel where he's done multi hour races and never had ai issues like this. also someone in his discord said they've run multiple multi hour races in both gtr2 and power & glory with no weird ai issues like this.
It's a bug that can never be fully fixed. One thing that definitely helps in GTR2: Don't save sessions or load saved sessions. That often breaks the AI. But I, too, can't really complain about having AI that suddenly slows down 10 or more seconds a lap. It can happen, but it's definitey not happening in *every* race.
@@eugensechel5095 i feel in reality is you close the game, then when you load the save, do 2 o 3 laps and exit, return to menu, load the race again and AI gona race fine. i think due that AI adapt to the track and reset each time you exit the game. for that is important do ctrol+t in qualy instead of skipin for make AI learn the Line
"Did anyone notice this glaring fault with the AI?" Nope, because people who review games don't play them for more than 4 hours max. And on modes that take very little time to complete, on builds that are NOWHERE NEAR the finished gold, V1.0 build of the retail finished product you and I play. It's been documented with MMOs when one writer for Eurogamer (who was sacked shortly after) was caught by the developers who used a keylogger for his review key accounts and found out that he only spent at least 45 minutes to three hours pissing around with the menus, not even making any meaningful progress to formulate an educated, objective review. I also spotted this when I was a kid when looking at old UA-cam footage of people crashing their cars in the game, like Rfactor, the AI are never, EVER coded to behave like actual drivers. The reason for this is that so much time is spent on the physics (if any time is spent AT ALL on the physics), that they have little to no time to focus on AI mechanics and routines. Even though AI is the MOST important thing you need to tweak in a computer game with multiple characters, vehicles and opponents, no one really touches them unless it's an input-reading AI in a Fighting game. In fact, fighting games as it stands are the ONLY games that have had any advancement in AI development with the exception of Bioshock Infinite with Elizabeth's bespoke AI (so much time was spent on her AI in fact, that Irrational Games were unable to fix her leg articulation bugs and skirt physics, leading to some bizarre bugs and animation-related shenanigans).
Alien Isolation also had advanced AI. But AI and a lot of game mechanics have somehow regressed in games as a whole, and I feel that is not to dumm down games, but more developers cutting corners
@@dergeneralfluff I wouldn't call Alien Isolation's AI advanced, since most of that development was on the Director AI, not the Alien AI itself, giving out hints and cues for where the player MIGHT be located(it's the same system that Left 4 Dead uses, only on a more singular focus and personal scale). It's very simple, and expectedly so, considering that Creative Assembly has never made a game with good AI since Shogun 2 back in 2012. With SEGA and Games Workshop fucking everything up on top of CA's own stupidity on an internal basis. I also wouldn't say that AI has regressed, if anything, AI development has not developed at all past 1991 outside of Fighting Games, and even then, people can argue that the AI in that genre consist of input-reading because there's so much you can really do with the software at hand and the hardware available. For AI to be as advanced to emulate human behaviour, you need a ton of memory, data, hardware space and leagues of complex variables at hand from the start, otherwise, you're just lobotomising everything as you progress with development.
The AI can't pass each other issue has been there forever. At least since F1 Challenge 99-02, possibly earlier. ISIMotor's AI was designed to be conservative, well. "conservative" in terms of attacking. It can be fixed, but apparently it takes significant jankiness and AIW editing experience that the average player doesn't have. It should not have to be that way. As for the AI being slow after a few minutes, legend has that it isn't engine damage, but aero damage. GTR2's devs wanted to showcase the game's damage model, another big, fat selling point. At some point they did acknowledge they overdid it.
Pretty much every racing game I have played have AI that have issues (to varying degrees) passing other cars. It seems to be really difficult to code correctly because the AI need to consider lots of variables, the relative speed and distance to the car in front of them, how much space there is, how far until the next braking point, how long that breaking point and also taking into account other cars simulationsly. If these variables need to be continuously measured and calculated, for all cars at any given time, it might requires absurd amount of computing power make it not feasible. I don't code for games, but I would imagine it being difficult to code good AI which is why they struggle so much for something seemingly so simple for human intuition. Or maybe they devs just cut corners and don't actually bother to create good AI, since it does not necessarily generate revenue.
This failure in AI performance is prevalent in so many titles even today. I'll constantly see people praising AI in AMS2, ACC, rF2, etc and almost always their "tests" for the AI are like 20 min races max. Like the idea of doing a race longer than an hour doesn't even enter their mind, and these are guys that think of themselves as hardcore sim racers. PC2 AI couldn't execute proper race strategies at all for endurance races. They'd usually pit twice as often at minimum. I remember trying to do an Indycar race and the AI started pitting like every 5 laps for new tires because they'd only take the soft reds. In rF2 the AI will literally destroy each other in longer races with multiple classes, to the point that the field basically retires after a certain point. I've tried GTR2 and while it has a better focus content wise than like almost every sim out there now, it has features that are seemingly too difficult to implement now like mid race saves, it has immersive elements that are nonexistent in a lot of sims today, but overall it still has game breaking issues that prevent it from being really enjoyed. Like the AI are literally broken like you stated and it completely kills any motivation in wanting to invest time in it. I really find it hard to understand how a sim developer in the year 2022 hasn't figured out that providing a cohesive focused package, with good AI, and immersive options/settings/experience would be extremely popular. I'm sick and tired of the a la cart style of sims that only provide a small handful of cars from a class, completely disregard fleshing out series, and provide shitty broken AI
I noticed if you skip the sessions, the AI doesnt recognise that you've even gone around the track. Like you have already said in the description, the AI doesnt even see you and just rams you hard from the rear, and straight off. Pretty sure that youve got to go through all the sessions for the system to realise that youre a player. Before the race, its best to do a few laps in the warmup session. This changes the way the AI acts towards you and the other cars. Skipping sessions is the bug i think. See, if the AI is following you tight into a corner, and you slightly miss the apex, the AI will follow your line and then probably bang into the wall, causing an engine fire. Its like the the AI seems to learn from your laps and lines. Thats actually pretty realistic. Ive also noticed if you select more than 30 cars, the AI doesnt seem to be able to determine the other cars locations, like theyre not even there.
I tried to do full championships way back but encountered this exact problem. After an hour, 1 stint the AI became incredibly uncompetitive. They couldn't pass back markers. They ran a very different pace quali to race. They would sometimes pit 1 lap after the other and on and on. I twice tried to do the 3 hours of Barcelona but results were similar each time. I guess I understand that it's really hard to bug test racing a 24 hour race but it was so deflating after doing a lot of practice and preparation to find the game actually want fit for purpose. I still love it though.
At first I wanted to watch this to see what I disagreed with. After all, I still love this sim to this day, and have put countless hours into it. However, after watching and listening, your point is entirely valid. I would do the season, meaning 3 hour events at the different tracks. I never did make it to the Spa 24 hour race, but I did notice the AI fall off after about an hour and a half. The second half of the race was always child's play. Usually it wouldn’t even remain competitive beyond the first pit cycle. It really is a shame, because without that issue, it's probably top 3 racing sims ever created.
I remember playing the game back in the day in arcade mode on controller, mechanical damage off, normal damage on (to allow the destruction of headlights), most assists on, AI at like 90% and just crushing the opponents. I feel like a lot of people played the game like this.
I've encountered so many game-breaking bugs by actually playing games to their full extent. It's annoying that developers, testers, and reviewers can't be bothered to do that.
Time is the biggest enemy of any media. Particularly during production. As there's so much you CAN test and sort out in the time allocated by either your publisher or your boss/managers within the developer you work for. And with technology becoming more advanced, complex, convoluted and even bespoke, what DOES go wrong, goes wrong in a spectacular, catastrophic manner, as history has proven time and time again. Reviews, on the other hand, are very easy to complete. All you have to do is finish the game and once you've done that, push it to its absolute limits, like editors do for Car Reviews. It's that easy.
Used to run in a GTR league and then a GTR2 league back in the day that would do 1-1.5 hour races, and the game was great for online multiplayer. Probably a bigger problem than the car damage to the AI in single player was just the fact that the AI was so timid to pass, as seen in your video, so you could make up ground once lapped traffic hit the AI, regardless of their car’s condition. Running single class races helped alleviate this but this was a problem with the GMotor engine itself that went back to the EA F1 games, and in those games like F1 Challenge it could be absolutely devastating to gameplay. The AI would often rather feather the gas pedal than go around a car on a long wide straight with plenty of room.
Off the top of my head F1 games have it and GT5 had it for endurance events only (which was actually patched in and wasn’t in 1.0). Maybe it’s a really hard thing to implement or maybe because very little people bother with endurance races due to the severely diminishing attention spans. I myself am guilty of this too, if I’m driving in a quick race event in the F1 games I just put the race to 3 laps or 5 laps to be done with it and move onto the next race
I remember doing longer races in this game at the time. 90% of the time when I handed over my car to the ai it would randomly go to the pits and retire the car after 1,5-2 stints. But I like to revisit it with the HQ mods installed and do 1hr races starting from the back, it's probably the best offline racing game experience to this day.
I grew up on gtr2 for nearly 8 years now and my god I hate how realistic this is going back to gtr. I always had a rule of the first lap being a other formation lap and that helped my sessions pace wise. But after installing the anniversary patch I'm having so much more fun. I love this game with all of my heart, its still my favourite racing game and I thank it for introducing me to the bliss that is mouse steering
Good ole isiMotor2 and it's terrible AI that was so bad that Reiza had to do it from scratch for AMS1. Pretty sure even Reiza had to compromise and make the AI not have tire wear because it bogs down the entire game engine otherwise. GTR is doing nowhere near the amount of stuff Reiza's AI was and is still much worse in every regard. I honestly wonder how much better the GTR games would've been if they waited after rFactor 1's launch like they did for Race07. ISI basically opened up to third party developers and let them license the engine and have good documentation. Meanwhile the first two GTR games were using the still in development isiMotor2 engine that F1 Challenge and NASCAR Thunder was using, which meant a lot of features found in rF1 and R07 straight up didn't exist officially yet. The ability to adjust your FOV was in GTR but not in the games its based on. Their FOV multiplier bullshit is still used today and is limited as all hell. And I know for a fact there's a ton of things flat out missing in config file that is present in rF1 and every isiMotor2 game made after that. They jumped on the bandwagon too early.
very, very few people actually care much about a LOT of realism. i think the pinned comment is correct, they like the idea of having the stuff, but not actually using it. i'm one of the ones who's just after the most realistic driving experience possible in terms of car dynamics and setup, and i happened to find that in my favorite racing category in richard burns rally (w ngp7 ofc.) i dont give a shit about fancy graphics or day-night cycles that much, i jus wanna drive a virtual car that feels like real life to the best of it's ability. when i hear praises of RBR from WRC drivers, saying some use it to test setups in sim, it's really exciting to me and i think that's something really cool and unique. that is what i'd want every sim to chase, this should be the goal of a """simulator""" i think. when i get a class record or very high time in rbr, it feels really great because much of the praises above from real rally drivers. but, also because a VERY large part of the top-rated community actually rallies irl; from wrc, to erc to local stuff to everywhere in-between. it's a pretty unique thing that's not really cultivated elsewhere afaik. i, however, am not in the norm and sadly i don't think people really care that much about an actually real sim. they want fun gameplay, maybe as well a hence of progression, hence why iracing is so popular despite not being real feeling and having notoriously awful ffb they REFUSE to fix despite making a ton of money. i think as well, as you've noted in past, people want to chase the "sim will make me a professional racing driver" thing more than they want to admit.
Yes, the AI had to be massively massaged for it to work. But people caught this back then. Mods exist to correct this. But 15 years on, people involved are not around anymore, and its all forgotten. This is why i never said GTR2 AI was good. For me, good AI is GP4 and GPL.
OK, so an old simmer here, actually enjoying the GTR upgrade to GTR2 (okay primarily came from F1C99-02 mods and GP2-4 mods before GTR2) and actually did alot of endurance racing from the gun (very rarely race 20 min sprint races, think my habit for full GP distances begun with GP2 and 4&6/12/24 hrs endurance begun with mods for F1C99-02(, just with standard content (not the slim Steam-verson but the full DVD package) doing 2 hour races without rest. It's true the AI offsett of just medium distance is awfull. But just a couple of years later, racing solely tons and tons of classic car- and track mods as the by then new other ISI engine rFactor and mods, it hit me how easy accessible the GTR2 file system was just to cope with endurance AI behavior. Well primarily just using Notepad++ myself, but try just simple tools as the MET tool. Gives you an idea on how to improve setup of your own splendid blend of endurance mod racing.
Maybe I missed it, but did you address what effect playing the game on newer hardware might have? Or are you playing it on a setup that's as old as the game?
ive done alot of stress testing on Rfactor 2 and Iracing AI seems to do the same thing in both game. kinda annoying after doing 150 laps out of 200 then boom the cars start passing the pace car. Rfactor one I was able to do a stable 8 hour race with the le mans mod
AI also cheats in qualy, and then in the opening laps drives very slow, seemingly to simulate warming tires up, when the player can go full bore. I played I think GTR1 (could have been gtr2) not so many years ago, did not like the handling at all, cars were on a razor edge to uncontrollable slide all the time. Also AI 100% was a nightmare to race against, besides the issues above they could be significantly quicker (considering I am usually upper average, that is odd), and on sim mode you can't go any lower on AI.
Wait, this bug is and wasn´t well known? IIRC I first heard about this late 2008, early 2009-ish. For me it was always the reason why I barely ran Multi-Class races in GTR 2, and even Single Class only really works up until the leaders start lapping the slower cars.
This pretty much matches my experience with GTR2. I have a feeling a few user made ai adjustments help, but even when I last ran a 12 hour version of this event, it was still much the same with very limited numbers of ai able to race competitively after an hour. The GT class struggles to pass the NGT at pretty much every circuit without very aggressive ai settings, but at Spa it means the majority of the field retire having been caught up in crashes. You can make it semi work, but it has always disappointed, and surprised me, that this wasn't addressed by the modding community
Yes, I agree with you. The only way to have little fun with the GTR2 AI is to play not for win. This means either increase the AI strenght (+3 means about 1/1.5 seconds faster depending on the track lenght) or choose a slower car, or a car that turns slower than others. Do not expect a revolution, but the GTR2 AI behaviour is exactly this, if you are fast, they do not attack you, and this behaviour become more significant in the endurance races: at the beginning of the race the AI seems to fight better, then it become more and more conservative. Maybe it is also better to set the AI aggression to real.
I’m not a great driver! So maybe, I don’t see it as a problem, because I’m not that “constant pace” driver. In those days, from GTR2, I had a Thrustmaster Ferrari 5 in 1 wheel that didn’t have force feedback, so maybe I was worse because of it. After some time I got a Logitech DFGT (that I continue to use until today) and I got better (constant) but not that better to race online. But most of my races are on Race 07 near 2 hour races nowadays. I like to race GT1 (GT Pro) default cars or a Lemans Mod (I race with Rebellion Lola LMP1) with a mandatory pitstop. Now I race 95% AI spend, on the past I used to race 85 - 90% depending on the track. Also, I race AMS1 with default cars, simulating Brazilian Endurance Series or Formula Classic. I have AMS2 and Assetto Corsa, Rfactor2 but I don’t play much those “newer” sims because my computer can’t handle full grid sizes. I like to race with a lot of AI drivers, to be or pass backmakers and racing agist other drivers. Once, I did try an 24 hours race in GTR2 (it was like 10 years ago, I wasn’t married), it was the Porsche race at Hockenheim (with all AI drivers available, I think it was 35). I was alone for a long weekend (holiday + weekend 4 days off) and my family traveled but I stayed at my hometown. I had the DFGT so I wasn’t that mistake driver I used on the Thrustmaster days, but not that fast. I did play the first 3 hours and got tired, so I pitted outside the pit window just to change with the AI driver. I think I went for a shower and a walk in the sun, then I returned and my AI driver was a lap down… much slower than I… But it was great fun, I used to switch with AI all day long. I was much faster than him, I used to do faster laps than the AI drivers (the AI was 85% or 90% speed) but lost time when AI driver raced… I think we got 8th during the race, but never near the lead. But the goal was to have fun… and it was a lot! In the beginning of the night, my friends called to go have dinner in town… My (now) wife was with that group… so I accepted and left home for it. When I got home, after some hours, the AI driver had crashed and was out of the race. I think we did something like 16 hours of the 24 hours. The rest of the weekend, I did smaller races, but I went out a lot with my friends. I never tried 24 hours races after it, as my life changed a lot after I got married and had kids. But I look for a day, when I can do a full endurance with my kids driving alongside me!
It worked for me, I used to do custom races 30 minutes to 2 hours and was pretty good. Ok, most of my races were 1 hour. But when GTR Evolution came, I started racing there, because I felt it was better (or easier) to drive there. I didn’t play GTR2 from release date, I started playing it some years later, I believe Race07 was already launched. GTR2, Race07 (in fact was STCC) and GTR Evo I bought on CD, so I didn’t had it from launch date as it was sold here in Brazil sometime after its release date (also, it was much cheaper than an EA or Codemaster game). Just a quick curiosity! I learned about Steam after GTR Evo. Those CD’s form those games had a code to enter on steam, but I didn’t use it because I never wanted to race online. But when GTR Evo CD came, I decided to try it. It was an open world for me! To have access to games that I couldn’t find it here in Brazil on CD! Also, I could buy Rfactor 1 (I used to have a downloaded pirated version, but I never was comfortable with it)! I’m not a “gamer”, I’m a racing fan that uses the computer to try to simulate something I can’t do in real life. I’m not a great driver! So maybe, I don’t see it as a problem, because I’m not that “constant pace” driver. In those days, from GTR2, I had a Thrustmaster Ferrari 5 in 1 wheel that didn’t have force feedback, so maybe I was worse because of it. After some time I got a Logitech DFGT (that I continue to use until today) and I got better (constant) but not that better to race online. But most of my races are on Race 07 near 2 hour races nowadays. I like to race GT1 (GT Pro) default cars or a Lemans Mod (I race with Rebellion Lola LMP1) with a mandatory pitstop. Now I race 95% AI spend, on the past I used to race 85 - 90% depending on the track. Also, I race AMS1 with default cars, simulating Brazilian Endurance Series or Formula Classic. I have AMS2 and Assetto Corsa, Rfactor2 but I don’t play much those “newer” sims because my computer can’t handle full grid sizes. I like to race with a lot of AI drivers, to be or pass backmakers and racing agist other drivers.
I'm having the same problem doing 3 hours races. On some tracks after just 20 minutes the AI starts getting slower and slower. What I did to solve that is saving the race and rejoin it every 20 minutes. It's not the best solution, but it works if you play with the AI at 100. Sometimes loading the race, the AI starts crashing into each other, in that case I load it again and usually it's fine. Doing that the AI seems to reset itself and I can have good races.
Don't think there is a single racing game on the current market that had actual decent Ai that don't get stuck behind a slower car or rams you out of the way cause you are slower than them. They all seem to start following that Forza AI shit where they just keep following the shitty race line that most racing games gets completely wrong.
Its funny because I started playing GTR2 again this year and have been having some of the most enjoyable races. However, to confirm you point. I am only doing sprint races between 10-20 laps. The intensity of the AI is great and the drivability is amazing, it may suck at what its designed for (endurance races) but when it comes to sprint races, this game is great.
Now this may be the Mandela effect but I'm fairly sure I remember GTR2 being a big, big deal when it launched in Europe, especially since the FIA GT series was still, at the time, hugely popular and GTR1 was well. S so the Mandela efect part is, I remember a big GTR2 display with cases for the game and it being by the counter where you'd pay or your games, you had the walls worth of PS2/3/Xbox/X360/et al games, then PC, then the clearence bin, then you had this big GTR2 display with a blue MC-12, alright it was more purple/blue, that color the MC12s ran in the FIA GT, but that was sweeping downhill on the display with shelves of GTR2 copies and the folks at the counter trying to sell wheels and pedals, with boxes of such under the counter. I swear this was a thing at the time. It may just have been my local Electronics Boutique/GAME store at the time, since years earlier the then cashier, at the time of GTR2's release was running the store, was a racing game fan and was insanely knowlegeable about racing games and when they were coming out, what platform they were on, features they had. I distinctly remember him saying to me he wouldn't do the SPa 24h because he wanted to get through a full season in the (rankly nuts) Lister Storm to win a title for a British team.
@@Rmagid bad wording on your site: GTR2 works easily without the HQ mod in 2022 aswell. The HQ mod doesnt just fix things, it also brings new problems with it.
@@theeeMitchi this is true, but i think on balance that the HQ improvements make up for it. Its just a shame that the installation is a bit complicated, and that fans had to make these improvements 15 years after the devs gave up
I've never had this problem. I find the AI will not only put up a good fight and can pass, if you're dicing with them, they'll come back at you. The AI will even do switch backs and under cuts. I've never seen AI crash full throttle into the back of other cars. One criticism i do however is on some occasions, (and thankfully they're rare), if a group of lead cars are all fighting, and come upon a backmarker that's keeping pace with them ( for example having recently exited the pits) then AI will often struggle to pass the backmarker. Unfortunately the AI backmarker will not yield. If you, or only one of the lead AI pass the backmarker while the others get held up for several corners, it can ruin an otherwise great race. A mod which makes backmarkers more realistic in obeying blue flags would be an improvement.
Yeah I can pretty much only play this game, with the Crew Cheif plugin nowadays and with the HQ packs, then it becomes the game it should have been, cars actually overtake and the racing is good! But yeah as default, it's not good, AI fall behind because of damage accumulated and that they never get back, and they struggle to over take without crashing into one another. But modded yeah it's still my no.1 SIM game
Is this with the HQ Anniversary Patch or no? I know it improves the game, but I don't know by how much. You should do a review of the game with the HQ Patch mod, and see how it goes.
In terms of simulation, feelling of the car is on par even better than modern simulators. The bumps of tracks you feel that. I played online races and was the best fun i ever had in racing games, specially because i could play with keyboard lol, and did it fine online
Guilty - love short AI races (10-30 mins)...pick up and play - yet I could not fathom picking up PC3... Apart from the obvious drop in quality in general - I want to feel like I am part of it - the immersion of GTR/GTR2/PC1/2 was fantastic. Removing pit stops, magic tyres, crazy car class mixes, buying/upgrading cars like NFS, neon lights, big fat imaginary arrows telling me Im going left or right, dude bro tents all over the place like Forza Horizon and its no longer what I want. I dont want to feel like Im playing a game for 12 year olds... I want to feel Im taking part in believable simulation of motorsport and I want it to be pick up and play - for a quick race at the end of the working day - PC2/AMS2/ACC fill that niche nicely but for sure PC2 needs impriving on the FFB/consistency part (appreciate the FFB files - hope that stays going forward as that made a massive difference on both PC2 and now AMS2).. I doubt we will get the amazing roster we saw in PC2 going forward and thats ok.... I dont mind Ferucci, RUF etc... Keeping fingers crossed for what you guys are doing .
I don't think it's engine damage, I always thought it was splitter damage. I played some 6 and 3 hour races and I remember specifically on one 3 hour race where I was a gt2 class, I won because all the ai started smashing into lapped cars and breaking their front splitter. Then they wouldn't put until they needed fuel and for some reason, would decide not to fix the damage. It's crazy because before that, the game seems flawless. I love it but you do have to watch out in the longer races
Arent most of these things fixed by the community or patches? I was late into the simbin world of games back in around 2010, so maybe that skewed my perception, but one of the key things to the gtr2 success at that point was the ease of modding and baked in plus features on top of rfactor. Btw what is the qrd on the simbin slightly mad studios relation?
You obviously do not know what you are talking about and were neither sim racing back then, nor spent any time looking at the breadth of community addons made for this sim over the years. Name me another comparable sim during the period. You probably have no idea just how many of us GTR sim racers have run both single long endurance races and championships since the beginning. There have been countless updates to the sim, constantly improving off-line endurance racing. This sim was so far ahead at the time it came out compared to what was available, that complaining about realistic AI behavior is silly. Try a realistic 50 car field race against AI in a current sim today and report the results 😆
@@AustinOgonoski Perhaps you could share your sim racing experience between say 2005-2008? Or tell us what sim choices you have to run realistic full endurance ai grids?
Yeap indeed. I played this game rly late,1 month ago, and i did an official championship and in the first race in spain i was leading after 50 minutes while starting from 10th with a pitstop inbetween. It is rly bad tho considering that this game had sooo much potential and ,as u said, it has rly good physics
I played the game for online. I did SP a few times and had 0 issue with AI hell lot of the times it was good battles. i did a few hour races a few times and I've Never had issues. maybe ya mod it or tweak it to a point it breaks it. I never had a problem.
If it had been caught back then, perhaps, it would've been patched and fixed. But, I fall into the more "average" sim racer who was never, ever, going to participate in a 24 hour race. In fact, I'm the guy who never cared about weather or day/night cycles. My typical race is in the 20-30 minute range. This explains why RaceRoom is probably my all-time favorite sim, while so many other sim racers have long since abandoned that title. I never really cared about all the bells and whistles. I hear that Reiza/AMS2, for their latest update (V1.6), are adding FIREWORKS. Seriously, who gives a f*&k? It adds NOTHING to sim racing, IMHO. Give me a good feeling sim with good content, graphics, FFB, etc. and I'm happy. I won't pretend I know what a real race car feels like but I know I like the feel of games like RaceRoom, rF2, AC and AMS2 better than that of Forza.
I've been telling everyone for the past 10 years that the most important aspect of any racing game is the AI. I can't stress enough how the AI will make or break any racing game. Physics are clearly very important, but nobody buys a racing game to turn laps by themselves.
During multiplayer I always crash backmakers out of way. Isnt that the whole reason to drive so fast during endurance racing? Guessed every backmaker sended into walls gives me ten points exta :'D
why so many brought it?....Ian Bells hype train!...which hes fired up again with the latest crap hes spewing atm...you need Xzibit-As physics mod for the cars to work right in races! (if you can find it!)...oh and we did catch this crap back in the day..hence the mod
"Wow look at me I'm Austin Uglyoski and I'm sooo good I can beat 112% AI in a 2006 game, let me make a video thinly veiled as actual criticism of a major function of the game in order to show how good I am"
The official funny nickname is Autism Boogernoski, thank you PS: Austin is 100% right, A LOT of racing games fail at basic racing stuff the moment you actually pay attention
Ive played this for more than 14 years. So let me tell you, It works. You have problems I have never had, except for the problem AI has with passing other cars.
So basically Bell made a crap game and only now is it coming out. It stands that anything Ian Bell makes is absolute rubbish. Just look at the P CARS RUBBISH.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
So you can make an educated guess why GTR2 is so revered. It had a lot of fancy features that didn't work, almost nobody used, but everybody was hyped about having. Same like AMS2 and ACC. Dynamic weather and day/night cycle are "premium features" - ones that people love to have for the sake of having them, not using them. Customers are like that sometimes.
Same goes for "physical tyre model", fancier than empirical, even though it doesn't work most of the time and is hard to tune, as well as general complexity of physics, which has no indication whatsoever on whether the car will actually handle properly, or laser-scanned tracks, which people think is a magical tool that makes track identical to real life, while it's just a helpful reference point and can be easily misused just as well.
But the more of those bullet points you market your sim with, the better, regardless of the quality of actual feature. Most simracers are not sophisticated enough to actually tell the difference, but they like to think of themselves as such, so they seek after those features.
One thing you need to nail though, and barely anybody in the sim community will admit that, is gameplay. iRacing is the best racing sim gameplay-wise, and by far, though it is tightly focused around online racing. Again, simracers like to think of themselves as being above average gamers, especially those vocal ones, but truth is they're just after a good, fun racing game that happens to have realistic handling. You nail gameplay, you reap rewards. Just look at F1 games.
in my Racing Engineer AMS2 league we always used several random weather patterns in 45 minute races. Races with rain were some of the best !
@@TomLehockySVK In league racing, rain can be more common, but otherwise, people just don't use it... I play ACC, and I haven't seen a single online lobby with rain since the game launched (even cloudy weather is a rare sighy). It's a shame, because wet weather racing can be so much fun
It's not even that the audience loves features for the sake of features. Programming and testing good AI for your game takes YEARS to perfect and requires an entire team for that purpose. And that alone isn't even a 100% given guarantee for the game's AI to function properly. The best examples are the AI in Thief 2 and F.E.A.R 1, games that people CLAIM to have "good AI" in them, yet the enemy AI in both games can be easily exploited and tricked on the hardest difficulty.
It's also worth noting that Thief 2 was rushed and underfunded because John Romero's Daikatana took up most of Eidos(the publisher)'s funding in North America, meaning that they were unable to give Looking Glass Software the money and pay required to make Thief 2 the game that they wanted (this is especially demonstrated in the final third of the game, where the level design collapses as a consequence of rushed development with limited funding). And that F.E.A.R 1's development was also blighted by Monolith getting pulled in multiple directions due to the development of No One Lives Forever 2 and The Matrix Online (two complex games from two different genres that were still in their mainstream infancy, Stealth games of the late-90s/early-00s were very spotty in regards to AI pathfinding and "cone-of-vision" sensory development, whereas MMOs are insanely expensive, complex affairs that require multiple teams for one section of the game's design), meaning that F.E.A.R. 1's development team was smaller than it should have been.
iRacing is not the best racing sim gameplay wise, at least not for me. I put my hands on both ACC and RF2 thanks to LowFuelMotorsport, and they both have better force feedback, better tyre model, better recover from a slip, and better contact physics. I mean, this is my impression, after I put some time in different races, and whenever it would have been game over for iRacing, since the cars feels like they are made of bouncy balls, and every tiny contact is recognized as a fucking shunt, or if you try to 'slide' the car (a thing that real drivers do), the switch in iRacing automatically turns to "grip-off", I managed to have really good wheel to wheel races, without the risk of breaking for something that was not even my fault. iRacing is a 2008 game that has been patched until now, but we need an iRacing 2. Also, F1 games are not popular for what they offer outside the dreadful gameplay, they are popular because duh, F1
@@gianlucarisa7726 I think you don't know what "gameplay" means. Gameplay is a set of rules that determine how you play and compete. Physics is just a tiny part of it, and one that can exist outside gameplay. LFM _is_ an actual gameplay system slapped over ACC and rF2, but it's actually the proof of their lacking gameplay that people need LFM to have fun with those titles. iRacing doesn't need third party support to provide that.
Considering you're GTR Revival's main designer, this video makes me feel that the game's gonna be in good hands
It's a long road but all of these little attention to detail issues are the main things I want to ensure we don't fuck up.
@@AustinOgonoski I hoping it’s going ok!
@@AustinOgonoski wait gtr revival?? That a mod he's making or like a full on game or something?
@@Nitro_Blitzen he put out a community post on it. its a full racing sim with the original dev team that made GTR2
It's gonna take a lot of work to get rid of Ian Bell bad rep after project cars.
The damage is actually to the aero instead of the engine, and this is a well known bug. There are a few AI improvement mods out there which fix this, like SHO Competition AI, by adjusting the damage sensitivity in the .dmg file.
@Crunch Bar - Yep, they're just turning AI opponents into tanks, LoL
Sadly, modding out the damage still slows them down sometimes.
Ill informed replies- There are several parameters that control AI behavior. Pretty well known to anybody that has spent time looking into it
@Crunch Bar It 'alleviates' (not solves) an AI problem by lowering aero damage sensitivity, reducing the mid-race slow down that Austin spoke about caused by aero damage. Not sure how that isn't a 'fix' for the AI? The line is 'AeroMin', bump up the value and you'll find the AI are still somewhat functional after an enduro - as DSW said, this is one of the most well known AI improvements on GTR2. For those that remember - 'Von Dutch'. Iyk, yk.
Another funny thing is if you played this game on the kind of rig from around the year it came out, driving in heavy rain or at night would make your framerate tank so hard that it became unplayable, you went from like 50 FPS with full grid to like 20s, even if you decreased the graphics to low.
And I don't remember reviewers mentioning it either.
rF1 and AMS1 do as well. Even on modern systems. Pretty sure isiMotor2 just can't handle all the headlights
I'm actually happy about how you criticize the single player in "super serious sims that are not meant to be played offline" by the dumb elitists of the simracing community. Even if the strenght of a game lies in its multiplayer, that doesn't change the fact that the developers introduced a Single player mode THAT DOESN'T WORK. Fucking hell, this is what still keeps me away from darn good games, ACC on top of that. I needed to wait for a bunch of German nerds to make LowFuelMotorsport in order to start playing it, whilst all they could have done is to introduce a good career mode. Why do nobody seems to be able to develop a good single player experience? AIs can draw whatever you ask a search bar, I'm sure they know how to drive a fucking car in 2022.
Sim racing elitists get very angry at all the meme vehicles made for AC lol.
its crazy how you ran into this problem with the ai in gtr2. because gplaps has videos on his channel where he's done multi hour races and never had ai issues like this. also someone in his discord said they've run multiple multi hour races in both gtr2 and power & glory with no weird ai issues like this.
Maybe it's the aggressiveness? If you lower it, AI drivers might give each other more room and allow themselves to not ram each other
It's a bug that can never be fully fixed. One thing that definitely helps in GTR2: Don't save sessions or load saved sessions. That often breaks the AI. But I, too, can't really complain about having AI that suddenly slows down 10 or more seconds a lap. It can happen, but it's definitey not happening in *every* race.
@@theeeMitchi I've read the opposite actually: that saving and loading might fix the AI. Now I'm confused.
@@eugensechel5095 i feel in reality is you close the game, then when you load the save, do 2 o 3 laps and exit, return to menu, load the race again and AI gona race fine. i think due that AI adapt to the track and reset each time you exit the game. for that is important do ctrol+t in qualy instead of skipin for make AI learn the Line
"Did anyone notice this glaring fault with the AI?" Nope, because people who review games don't play them for more than 4 hours max. And on modes that take very little time to complete, on builds that are NOWHERE NEAR the finished gold, V1.0 build of the retail finished product you and I play. It's been documented with MMOs when one writer for Eurogamer (who was sacked shortly after) was caught by the developers who used a keylogger for his review key accounts and found out that he only spent at least 45 minutes to three hours pissing around with the menus, not even making any meaningful progress to formulate an educated, objective review. I also spotted this when I was a kid when looking at old UA-cam footage of people crashing their cars in the game, like Rfactor, the AI are never, EVER coded to behave like actual drivers. The reason for this is that so much time is spent on the physics (if any time is spent AT ALL on the physics), that they have little to no time to focus on AI mechanics and routines. Even though AI is the MOST important thing you need to tweak in a computer game with multiple characters, vehicles and opponents, no one really touches them unless it's an input-reading AI in a Fighting game. In fact, fighting games as it stands are the ONLY games that have had any advancement in AI development with the exception of Bioshock Infinite with Elizabeth's bespoke AI (so much time was spent on her AI in fact, that Irrational Games were unable to fix her leg articulation bugs and skirt physics, leading to some bizarre bugs and animation-related shenanigans).
Lmao link me
@@AustinOgonoski ua-cam.com/video/xKNs_4OZQzk/v-deo.html Here's Guru Larry describing the whole affair in summation.
Alien Isolation also had advanced AI.
But AI and a lot of game mechanics have somehow regressed in games as a whole, and I feel that is not to dumm down games, but more developers cutting corners
@@dergeneralfluff I wouldn't call Alien Isolation's AI advanced, since most of that development was on the Director AI, not the Alien AI itself, giving out hints and cues for where the player MIGHT be located(it's the same system that Left 4 Dead uses, only on a more singular focus and personal scale). It's very simple, and expectedly so, considering that Creative Assembly has never made a game with good AI since Shogun 2 back in 2012. With SEGA and Games Workshop fucking everything up on top of CA's own stupidity on an internal basis.
I also wouldn't say that AI has regressed, if anything, AI development has not developed at all past 1991 outside of Fighting Games, and even then, people can argue that the AI in that genre consist of input-reading because there's so much you can really do with the software at hand and the hardware available. For AI to be as advanced to emulate human behaviour, you need a ton of memory, data, hardware space and leagues of complex variables at hand from the start, otherwise, you're just lobotomising everything as you progress with development.
The AI can't pass each other issue has been there forever. At least since F1 Challenge 99-02, possibly earlier. ISIMotor's AI was designed to be conservative, well. "conservative" in terms of attacking. It can be fixed, but apparently it takes significant jankiness and AIW editing experience that the average player doesn't have. It should not have to be that way.
As for the AI being slow after a few minutes, legend has that it isn't engine damage, but aero damage. GTR2's devs wanted to showcase the game's damage model, another big, fat selling point. At some point they did acknowledge they overdid it.
Pretty much every racing game I have played have AI that have issues (to varying degrees) passing other cars. It seems to be really difficult to code correctly because the AI need to consider lots of variables, the relative speed and distance to the car in front of them, how much space there is, how far until the next braking point, how long that breaking point and also taking into account other cars simulationsly. If these variables need to be continuously measured and calculated, for all cars at any given time, it might requires absurd amount of computing power make it not feasible. I don't code for games, but I would imagine it being difficult to code good AI which is why they struggle so much for something seemingly so simple for human intuition. Or maybe they devs just cut corners and don't actually bother to create good AI, since it does not necessarily generate revenue.
This failure in AI performance is prevalent in so many titles even today. I'll constantly see people praising AI in AMS2, ACC, rF2, etc and almost always their "tests" for the AI are like 20 min races max. Like the idea of doing a race longer than an hour doesn't even enter their mind, and these are guys that think of themselves as hardcore sim racers.
PC2 AI couldn't execute proper race strategies at all for endurance races. They'd usually pit twice as often at minimum. I remember trying to do an Indycar race and the AI started pitting like every 5 laps for new tires because they'd only take the soft reds. In rF2 the AI will literally destroy each other in longer races with multiple classes, to the point that the field basically retires after a certain point.
I've tried GTR2 and while it has a better focus content wise than like almost every sim out there now, it has features that are seemingly too difficult to implement now like mid race saves, it has immersive elements that are nonexistent in a lot of sims today, but overall it still has game breaking issues that prevent it from being really enjoyed. Like the AI are literally broken like you stated and it completely kills any motivation in wanting to invest time in it.
I really find it hard to understand how a sim developer in the year 2022 hasn't figured out that providing a cohesive focused package, with good AI, and immersive options/settings/experience would be extremely popular. I'm sick and tired of the a la cart style of sims that only provide a small handful of cars from a class, completely disregard fleshing out series, and provide shitty broken AI
I noticed if you skip the sessions, the AI doesnt recognise that you've even gone around the track.
Like you have already said in the description, the AI doesnt even see you and just rams you hard from the rear, and straight off.
Pretty sure that youve got to go through all the sessions for the system to realise that youre a player.
Before the race, its best to do a few laps in the warmup session. This changes the way the AI acts towards you and the other cars.
Skipping sessions is the bug i think.
See, if the AI is following you tight into a corner, and you slightly miss the apex, the AI will follow your line and then probably bang into the wall, causing an engine fire.
Its like the the AI seems to learn from your laps and lines. Thats actually pretty realistic.
Ive also noticed if you select more than 30 cars, the AI doesnt seem to be able to determine the other cars locations, like theyre not even there.
I tried to do full championships way back but encountered this exact problem. After an hour, 1 stint the AI became incredibly uncompetitive. They couldn't pass back markers. They ran a very different pace quali to race. They would sometimes pit 1 lap after the other and on and on.
I twice tried to do the 3 hours of Barcelona but results were similar each time. I guess I understand that it's really hard to bug test racing a 24 hour race but it was so deflating after doing a lot of practice and preparation to find the game actually want fit for purpose.
I still love it though.
I'm sure as a dev you can create "scenarios" so you can force-test how the AI laps each other and such
No one plays vanilla GTR2 period, not even when it was first bought, I still have my disc copy and vividly remember modding the shit out of GTR2.
At first I wanted to watch this to see what I disagreed with. After all, I still love this sim to this day, and have put countless hours into it.
However, after watching and listening, your point is entirely valid.
I would do the season, meaning 3 hour events at the different tracks. I never did make it to the Spa 24 hour race, but I did notice the AI fall off after about an hour and a half.
The second half of the race was always child's play. Usually it wouldn’t even remain competitive beyond the first pit cycle.
It really is a shame, because without that issue, it's probably top 3 racing sims ever created.
I remember playing the game back in the day in arcade mode on controller, mechanical damage off, normal damage on (to allow the destruction of headlights), most assists on, AI at like 90% and just crushing the opponents.
I feel like a lot of people played the game like this.
I've encountered so many game-breaking bugs by actually playing games to their full extent. It's annoying that developers, testers, and reviewers can't be bothered to do that.
Time is the biggest enemy of any media. Particularly during production. As there's so much you CAN test and sort out in the time allocated by either your publisher or your boss/managers within the developer you work for. And with technology becoming more advanced, complex, convoluted and even bespoke, what DOES go wrong, goes wrong in a spectacular, catastrophic manner, as history has proven time and time again.
Reviews, on the other hand, are very easy to complete. All you have to do is finish the game and once you've done that, push it to its absolute limits, like editors do for Car Reviews. It's that easy.
They probably know, it's just probably too hard to be bothered to fix it with all the other shit they need to do.
Used to run in a GTR league and then a GTR2 league back in the day that would do 1-1.5 hour races, and the game was great for online multiplayer.
Probably a bigger problem than the car damage to the AI in single player was just the fact that the AI was so timid to pass, as seen in your video, so you could make up ground once lapped traffic hit the AI, regardless of their car’s condition. Running single class races helped alleviate this but this was a problem with the GMotor engine itself that went back to the EA F1 games, and in those games like F1 Challenge it could be absolutely devastating to gameplay. The AI would often rather feather the gas pedal than go around a car on a long wide straight with plenty of room.
Honestly why doesn’t more games have a mid save feature for 24 hour races?
Off the top of my head F1 games have it and GT5 had it for endurance events only (which was actually patched in and wasn’t in 1.0). Maybe it’s a really hard thing to implement or maybe because very little people bother with endurance races due to the severely diminishing attention spans. I myself am guilty of this too, if I’m driving in a quick race event in the F1 games I just put the race to 3 laps or 5 laps to be done with it and move onto the next race
I remember doing longer races in this game at the time. 90% of the time when I handed over my car to the ai it would randomly go to the pits and retire the car after 1,5-2 stints. But I like to revisit it with the HQ mods installed and do 1hr races starting from the back, it's probably the best offline racing game experience to this day.
I grew up on gtr2 for nearly 8 years now and my god I hate how realistic this is going back to gtr. I always had a rule of the first lap being a other formation lap and that helped my sessions pace wise. But after installing the anniversary patch I'm having so much more fun. I love this game with all of my heart, its still my favourite racing game and I thank it for introducing me to the bliss that is mouse steering
I was aware of the issue with ai cars unable to pass backmarkers properly, but i still haven't experienced that issue with engine damage yet
It's actually aero damage
Good ole isiMotor2 and it's terrible AI that was so bad that Reiza had to do it from scratch for AMS1. Pretty sure even Reiza had to compromise and make the AI not have tire wear because it bogs down the entire game engine otherwise. GTR is doing nowhere near the amount of stuff Reiza's AI was and is still much worse in every regard. I honestly wonder how much better the GTR games would've been if they waited after rFactor 1's launch like they did for Race07. ISI basically opened up to third party developers and let them license the engine and have good documentation. Meanwhile the first two GTR games were using the still in development isiMotor2 engine that F1 Challenge and NASCAR Thunder was using, which meant a lot of features found in rF1 and R07 straight up didn't exist officially yet. The ability to adjust your FOV was in GTR but not in the games its based on. Their FOV multiplier bullshit is still used today and is limited as all hell. And I know for a fact there's a ton of things flat out missing in config file that is present in rF1 and every isiMotor2 game made after that. They jumped on the bandwagon too early.
"Part of my day job now entails studying GTR2 as a product"
you sir have just described my actual dream job.
While you're on a trip on memory lane, try investigate Race07 AI It seemed more polished than GTR's back in the day.
Probably because it was based on rFactor 1's updated isiMotor2 instead of F1 Challenge like GTR1 and 2 were.
very, very few people actually care much about a LOT of realism. i think the pinned comment is correct, they like the idea of having the stuff, but not actually using it. i'm one of the ones who's just after the most realistic driving experience possible in terms of car dynamics and setup, and i happened to find that in my favorite racing category in richard burns rally (w ngp7 ofc.) i dont give a shit about fancy graphics or day-night cycles that much, i jus wanna drive a virtual car that feels like real life to the best of it's ability. when i hear praises of RBR from WRC drivers, saying some use it to test setups in sim, it's really exciting to me and i think that's something really cool and unique. that is what i'd want every sim to chase, this should be the goal of a """simulator""" i think.
when i get a class record or very high time in rbr, it feels really great because much of the praises above from real rally drivers. but, also because a VERY large part of the top-rated community actually rallies irl; from wrc, to erc to local stuff to everywhere in-between. it's a pretty unique thing that's not really cultivated elsewhere afaik.
i, however, am not in the norm and sadly i don't think people really care that much about an actually real sim. they want fun gameplay, maybe as well a hence of progression, hence why iracing is so popular despite not being real feeling and having notoriously awful ffb they REFUSE to fix despite making a ton of money. i think as well, as you've noted in past, people want to chase the "sim will make me a professional racing driver" thing more than they want to admit.
Yes, the AI had to be massively massaged for it to work. But people caught this back then. Mods exist to correct this. But 15 years on, people involved are not around anymore, and its all forgotten.
This is why i never said GTR2 AI was good. For me, good AI is GP4 and GPL.
OK, so an old simmer here, actually enjoying the GTR upgrade to GTR2 (okay primarily came from F1C99-02 mods and GP2-4 mods before GTR2) and actually did alot of endurance racing from the gun (very rarely race 20 min sprint races, think my habit for full GP distances begun with GP2 and 4&6/12/24 hrs endurance begun with mods for F1C99-02(, just with standard content (not the slim Steam-verson but the full DVD package) doing 2 hour races without rest. It's true the AI offsett of just medium distance is awfull. But just a couple of years later, racing solely tons and tons of classic car- and track mods as the by then new other ISI engine rFactor and mods, it hit me how easy accessible the GTR2 file system was just to cope with endurance AI behavior. Well primarily just using Notepad++ myself, but try just simple tools as the MET tool. Gives you an idea on how to improve setup of your own splendid blend of endurance mod racing.
Maybe I missed it, but did you address what effect playing the game on newer hardware might have? Or are you playing it on a setup that's as old as the game?
ive done alot of stress testing on Rfactor 2 and Iracing AI seems to do the same thing in both game. kinda annoying after doing 150 laps out of 200 then boom the cars start passing the pace car. Rfactor one I was able to do a stable 8 hour race with the le mans mod
Great review and explanation. This kind of opinion we all missed these days.
AI also cheats in qualy, and then in the opening laps drives very slow, seemingly to simulate warming tires up, when the player can go full bore.
I played I think GTR1 (could have been gtr2) not so many years ago, did not like the handling at all, cars were on a razor edge to uncontrollable slide all the time. Also AI 100% was a nightmare to race against, besides the issues above they could be significantly quicker (considering I am usually upper average, that is odd), and on sim mode you can't go any lower on AI.
GTR 1 have this problem with physics, if you loose minimal grip, you lost entirely. GTR 2 fix this.
Wait, this bug is and wasn´t well known?
IIRC I first heard about this late 2008, early 2009-ish. For me it was always the reason why I barely ran Multi-Class races in GTR 2, and even Single Class only really works up until the leaders start lapping the slower cars.
This pretty much matches my experience with GTR2. I have a feeling a few user made ai adjustments help, but even when I last ran a 12 hour version of this event, it was still much the same with very limited numbers of ai able to race competitively after an hour.
The GT class struggles to pass the NGT at pretty much every circuit without very aggressive ai settings, but at Spa it means the majority of the field retire having been caught up in crashes.
You can make it semi work, but it has always disappointed, and surprised me, that this wasn't addressed by the modding community
Yes, I agree with you. The only way to have little fun with the GTR2 AI is to play not for win. This means either increase the AI strenght (+3 means about 1/1.5 seconds faster depending on the track lenght) or choose a slower car, or a car that turns slower than others. Do not expect a revolution, but the GTR2 AI behaviour is exactly this, if you are fast, they do not attack you, and this behaviour become more significant in the endurance races: at the beginning of the race the AI seems to fight better, then it become more and more conservative.
Maybe it is also better to set the AI aggression to real.
Tbh I had some fun playing it but it sucked that there were some cars you couldn't drive and they were just fully black when they were on track
Just install the 1.1 patch exe over the steam version lol
@@AustinOgonoski this
I’m not a great driver! So maybe, I don’t see it as a problem, because I’m not that “constant pace” driver. In those days, from GTR2, I had a Thrustmaster Ferrari 5 in 1 wheel that didn’t have force feedback, so maybe I was worse because of it. After some time I got a Logitech DFGT (that I continue to use until today) and I got better (constant) but not that better to race online. But most of my races are on Race 07 near 2 hour races nowadays. I like to race GT1 (GT Pro) default cars or a Lemans Mod (I race with Rebellion Lola LMP1) with a mandatory pitstop. Now I race 95% AI spend, on the past I used to race 85 - 90% depending on the track. Also, I race AMS1 with default cars, simulating Brazilian Endurance Series or Formula Classic. I have AMS2 and Assetto Corsa, Rfactor2 but I don’t play much those “newer” sims because my computer can’t handle full grid sizes. I like to race with a lot of AI drivers, to be or pass backmakers and racing agist other drivers.
Once, I did try an 24 hours race in GTR2 (it was like 10 years ago, I wasn’t married), it was the Porsche race at Hockenheim (with all AI drivers available, I think it was 35). I was alone for a long weekend (holiday + weekend 4 days off) and my family traveled but I stayed at my hometown. I had the DFGT so I wasn’t that mistake driver I used on the Thrustmaster days, but not that fast. I did play the first 3 hours and got tired, so I pitted outside the pit window just to change with the AI driver.
I think I went for a shower and a walk in the sun, then I returned and my AI driver was a lap down… much slower than I… But it was great fun, I used to switch with AI all day long. I was much faster than him, I used to do faster laps than the AI drivers (the AI was 85% or 90% speed) but lost time when AI driver raced… I think we got 8th during the race, but never near the lead. But the goal was to have fun… and it was a lot! In the beginning of the night, my friends called to go have dinner in town… My (now) wife was with that group… so I accepted and left home for it. When I got home, after some hours, the AI driver had crashed and was out of the race. I think we did something like 16 hours of the 24 hours. The rest of the weekend, I did smaller races, but I went out a lot with my friends. I never tried 24 hours races after it, as my life changed a lot after I got married and had kids.
But I look for a day, when I can do a full endurance with my kids driving alongside me!
It worked for me, I used to do custom races 30 minutes to 2 hours and was pretty good. Ok, most of my races were 1 hour.
But when GTR Evolution came, I started racing there, because I felt it was better (or easier) to drive there. I didn’t play GTR2 from release date, I started playing it some years later, I believe Race07 was already launched. GTR2, Race07 (in fact was STCC) and GTR Evo I bought on CD, so I didn’t had it from launch date as it was sold here in Brazil sometime after its release date (also, it was much cheaper than an EA or Codemaster game).
Just a quick curiosity! I learned about Steam after GTR Evo. Those CD’s form those games had a code to enter on steam, but I didn’t use it because I never wanted to race online. But when GTR Evo CD came, I decided to try it. It was an open world for me! To have access to games that I couldn’t find it here in Brazil on CD! Also, I could buy Rfactor 1 (I used to have a downloaded pirated version, but I never was comfortable with it)! I’m not a “gamer”, I’m a racing fan that uses the computer to try to simulate something I can’t do in real life.
I’m not a great driver! So maybe, I don’t see it as a problem, because I’m not that “constant pace” driver. In those days, from GTR2, I had a Thrustmaster Ferrari 5 in 1 wheel that didn’t have force feedback, so maybe I was worse because of it. After some time I got a Logitech DFGT (that I continue to use until today) and I got better (constant) but not that better to race online. But most of my races are on Race 07 near 2 hour races nowadays. I like to race GT1 (GT Pro) default cars or a Lemans Mod (I race with Rebellion Lola LMP1) with a mandatory pitstop. Now I race 95% AI spend, on the past I used to race 85 - 90% depending on the track. Also, I race AMS1 with default cars, simulating Brazilian Endurance Series or Formula Classic. I have AMS2 and Assetto Corsa, Rfactor2 but I don’t play much those “newer” sims because my computer can’t handle full grid sizes. I like to race with a lot of AI drivers, to be or pass backmakers and racing agist other drivers.
Are there any mods which fix these endurance issues?
I'm having the same problem doing 3 hours races. On some tracks after just 20 minutes the AI starts getting slower and slower. What I did to solve that is saving the race and rejoin it every 20 minutes. It's not the best solution, but it works if you play with the AI at 100. Sometimes loading the race, the AI starts crashing into each other, in that case I load it again and usually it's fine. Doing that the AI seems to reset itself and I can have good races.
Don't think there is a single racing game on the current market that had actual decent Ai that don't get stuck behind a slower car or rams you out of the way cause you are slower than them.
They all seem to start following that Forza AI shit where they just keep following the shitty race line that most racing games gets completely wrong.
Its funny because I started playing GTR2 again this year and have been having some of the most enjoyable races. However, to confirm you point. I am only doing sprint races between 10-20 laps. The intensity of the AI is great and the drivability is amazing, it may suck at what its designed for (endurance races) but when it comes to sprint races, this game is great.
Now this may be the Mandela effect but I'm fairly sure I remember GTR2 being a big, big deal when it launched in Europe, especially since the FIA GT series was still, at the time, hugely popular and GTR1 was well. S so the Mandela efect part is, I remember a big GTR2 display with cases for the game and it being by the counter where you'd pay or your games, you had the walls worth of PS2/3/Xbox/X360/et al games, then PC, then the clearence bin, then you had this big GTR2 display with a blue MC-12, alright it was more purple/blue, that color the MC12s ran in the FIA GT, but that was sweeping downhill on the display with shelves of GTR2 copies and the folks at the counter trying to sell wheels and pedals, with boxes of such under the counter. I swear this was a thing at the time.
It may just have been my local Electronics Boutique/GAME store at the time, since years earlier the then cashier, at the time of GTR2's release was running the store, was a racing game fan and was insanely knowlegeable about racing games and when they were coming out, what platform they were on, features they had. I distinctly remember him saying to me he wouldn't do the SPa 24h because he wanted to get through a full season in the (rankly nuts) Lister Storm to win a title for a British team.
Are they no mods to fix the ai or something? I’d like to give it a shot
Yes there was the HQ mods on racedepartment which are needed to get GTR2 working in 2022, as they fix many of the bugs
@@Rmagid he should give that a shot then
@@Rmagid yeah gtr2 anniversary edition is manditory nowadays
@@Rmagid bad wording on your site: GTR2 works easily without the HQ mod in 2022 aswell. The HQ mod doesnt just fix things, it also brings new problems with it.
@@theeeMitchi this is true, but i think on balance that the HQ improvements make up for it. Its just a shame that the installation is a bit complicated, and that fans had to make these improvements 15 years after the devs gave up
I've never had this problem. I find the AI will not only put up a good fight and can pass, if you're dicing with them, they'll come back at you. The AI will even do switch backs and under cuts.
I've never seen AI crash full throttle into the back of other cars.
One criticism i do however is on some occasions, (and thankfully they're rare), if a group of lead cars are all fighting, and come upon a backmarker that's keeping pace with them ( for example having recently exited the pits) then AI will often struggle to pass the backmarker. Unfortunately the AI backmarker will not yield. If you, or only one of the lead AI pass the backmarker while the others get held up for several corners, it can ruin an otherwise great race.
A mod which makes backmarkers more realistic in obeying blue flags would be an improvement.
Does that big Anniversary pack patch address this issues?
Any community made patches out there to fix said issues?
just wanna say i love ur vids man keep it going
can’t deny this game has the most fire soundtrack tho
Yeah I can pretty much only play this game, with the Crew Cheif plugin nowadays and with the HQ packs, then it becomes the game it should have been, cars actually overtake and the racing is good! But yeah as default, it's not good, AI fall behind because of damage accumulated and that they never get back, and they struggle to over take without crashing into one another. But modded yeah it's still my no.1 SIM game
Rose-coloured glasses are why so many games are still held in great esteem and current games are destined to not meet expectations.
Is this with the HQ Anniversary Patch or no? I know it improves the game, but I don't know by how much. You should do a review of the game with the HQ Patch mod, and see how it goes.
In terms of simulation, feelling of the car is on par even better than modern simulators. The bumps of tracks you feel that. I played online races and was the best fun i ever had in racing games, specially because i could play with keyboard lol, and did it fine online
Guilty - love short AI races (10-30 mins)...pick up and play - yet I could not fathom picking up PC3... Apart from the obvious drop in quality in general - I want to feel like I am part of it - the immersion of GTR/GTR2/PC1/2 was fantastic. Removing pit stops, magic tyres, crazy car class mixes, buying/upgrading cars like NFS, neon lights, big fat imaginary arrows telling me Im going left or right, dude bro tents all over the place like Forza Horizon and its no longer what I want. I dont want to feel like Im playing a game for 12 year olds... I want to feel Im taking part in believable simulation of motorsport and I want it to be pick up and play - for a quick race at the end of the working day - PC2/AMS2/ACC fill that niche nicely but for sure PC2 needs impriving on the FFB/consistency part (appreciate the FFB files - hope that stays going forward as that made a massive difference on both PC2 and now AMS2).. I doubt we will get the amazing roster we saw in PC2 going forward and thats ok.... I dont mind Ferucci, RUF etc... Keeping fingers crossed for what you guys are doing .
I don't think it's engine damage, I always thought it was splitter damage. I played some 6 and 3 hour races and I remember specifically on one 3 hour race where I was a gt2 class, I won because all the ai started smashing into lapped cars and breaking their front splitter. Then they wouldn't put until they needed fuel and for some reason, would decide not to fix the damage. It's crazy because before that, the game seems flawless. I love it but you do have to watch out in the longer races
Arent most of these things fixed by the community or patches? I was late into the simbin world of games back in around 2010, so maybe that skewed my perception, but one of the key things to the gtr2 success at that point was the ease of modding and baked in plus features on top of rfactor.
Btw what is the qrd on the simbin slightly mad studios relation?
You obviously do not know what you are talking about and were neither sim racing back then, nor spent any time looking at the breadth of community addons made for this sim over the years. Name me another comparable sim during the period. You probably have no idea just how many of us GTR sim racers have run both single long endurance races and championships since the beginning. There have been countless updates to the sim, constantly improving off-line endurance racing. This sim was so far ahead at the time it came out compared to what was available, that complaining about realistic AI behavior is silly. Try a realistic 50 car field race against AI in a current sim today and report the results 😆
Having to scour the forums for AI fixes on a per-track basis, says a lot.
@@AustinOgonoski Perhaps you could share your sim racing experience between say 2005-2008? Or tell us what sim choices you have to run realistic full endurance ai grids?
I did a night race in spa with 100% rain tbh AI in the wet is faster than dry. Also the ai has the same back marker problem
I like it because of the cars. So much more interesting then the current GT cars in racing.
I assume you'r not onboard Ian's new simracing endeavor :) Or?
Use LinkedIn, bitch
Yeap indeed. I played this game rly late,1 month ago, and i did an official championship and in the first race in spain i was leading after 50 minutes while starting from 10th with a pitstop inbetween. It is rly bad tho considering that this game had sooo much potential and ,as u said, it has rly good physics
yo bro the game is very good and the anniversary patch fixes all of that i even have 2023 dtm cars in my gtr 2
The PS2 NASCAR games were the ultimate simracing games
I have a hunch that it’s good on multiplayer but the AI is messed up. Sounds like a lot of games Ive played. If you want to see bad AI play heat
I played the game for online. I did SP a few times and had 0 issue with AI hell lot of the times it was good battles. i did a few hour races a few times and I've Never had issues. maybe ya mod it or tweak it to a point it breaks it. I never had a problem.
If it had been caught back then, perhaps, it would've been patched and fixed. But, I fall into the more "average" sim racer who was never, ever, going to participate in a 24 hour race. In fact, I'm the guy who never cared about weather or day/night cycles. My typical race is in the 20-30 minute range. This explains why RaceRoom is probably my all-time favorite sim, while so many other sim racers have long since abandoned that title. I never really cared about all the bells and whistles. I hear that Reiza/AMS2, for their latest update (V1.6), are adding FIREWORKS. Seriously, who gives a f*&k? It adds NOTHING to sim racing, IMHO. Give me a good feeling sim with good content, graphics, FFB, etc. and I'm happy. I won't pretend I know what a real race car feels like but I know I like the feel of games like RaceRoom, rF2, AC and AMS2 better than that of Forza.
wow it hurts
16th anniversary patch fixes this.race department
I've been telling everyone for the past 10 years that the most important aspect of any racing game is the AI.
I can't stress enough how the AI will make or break any racing game. Physics are clearly very important, but nobody buys a racing game to turn laps by themselves.
I love WreckFest, many people praise the AI but they're actually dumbfucks that can't see or remember whenever there's a dead car on course
I think tires are the other massive aspect. If you fuck up either of those, you may as well not bother fixing the rest.
During multiplayer I always crash backmakers out of way. Isnt that the whole reason to drive so fast during endurance racing? Guessed every backmaker sended into walls gives me ten points exta :'D
Assetto Corsa was a sucess without features.
Two project cars games
This dude complaining about a 20 year old game 🤣
Love the energy
why so many brought it?....Ian Bells hype train!...which hes fired up again with the latest crap hes spewing atm...you need Xzibit-As physics mod for the cars to work right in races! (if you can find it!)...oh and we did catch this crap back in the day..hence the mod
"Wow look at me I'm Austin Uglyoski and I'm sooo good I can beat 112% AI in a 2006 game, let me make a video thinly veiled as actual criticism of a major function of the game in order to show how good I am"
An Ogonoski video just isn't complete without a random manchild leaving an inane comment under it, lol
The official funny nickname is Autism Boogernoski, thank you
PS: Austin is 100% right, A LOT of racing games fail at basic racing stuff the moment you actually pay attention
Ive played this for more than 14 years. So let me tell you, It works. You have problems I have never had, except for the problem AI has with passing other cars.
So basically Bell made a crap game and only now is it coming out. It stands that anything Ian Bell makes is absolute rubbish. Just look at the P CARS RUBBISH.