24h races in real-time

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If I remember right, I have never seen a forum post about this type of races and believe, it is much underappreciated.

Is it boring? Only if you are a fan of quick victories, but if you drive for the pleasure of driving, then not.

Most impressive is the change of lighting during the course of 24 hours (day to dusk, dusk to night, night to dawn, dawn to day).

Not only do you see pictures like this:

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but you see also the gradual change toward it and from it away, like lengthening and shortening of shadows, and the changing colors and hues of the sky, which can all impact your mood.

For the past several years, I have made exclusively this kind of races, preferably Le Mans, and of course, with lots of different cars.

I have set AI to be the least annoying (both sliders for AI capabilities and aggressiveness to the far left), just to be able to concentrate on my driving and the environment.

Unfortunately, one cannot make mid-race saves in PCARS 2, so you have to put the box into sleep mode, and actually, I have unintentionally abandoned races a lot by switching the box off or pulling the (wrong) plug, but this is just a matter of wakefulness 😄.

Additionally, I use the UDP interface to grab some race data and store it in a database, from where I create reports, like this (excerpt):

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(the first race is pending, the second one an accidental cancellation as described above)

and this:

3.png


Anyway, if you finish a 24h race in real-time, you get a very satisfying sense of accomplishment.
 
If you find a large enough group of buddies to share driving duties you can do a real real-time 24 hours race. It's great fun!

If you don't have such a group you should consider still doing it in real 24 hours using a feature in the game that allows you to surrender your car to the AI and reclaim it again at any point later. It'll be like having a team mate that doesn't get tired. I would however suggest you define the AI to be a litle more competitive, whatever the end result I guess the race will be more rewarding (and a good finishing position sweeter).

Happy racing! :cheers:
 
If you find a large enough group of buddies to share driving duties you can do a real real-time 24 hours race. It's great fun!

If you don't have such a group you should consider still doing it in real 24 hours using a feature in the game that allows you to surrender your car to the AI and reclaim it again at any point later. It'll be like having a team mate that doesn't get tired. I would however suggest you define the AI to be a litle more competitive, whatever the end result I guess the race will be more rewarding (and a good finishing position sweeter).

Happy racing! :cheers:
Does work on consoles?
 
If you don't have such a group you should consider still doing it in real 24 hours using a feature in the game that allows you to surrender your car to the AI and reclaim it again at any point later.
Yes, but this feature is seriously broken.

I tried that twice. First, the car drove significantly slower than the other AI, and the second time, it did not even accelerate past the 2nd gear.

No way to build up a large enough gap to compensate for passing the car to your AI mate for a considerable long time.

I would however suggest you define the AI to be a litle more competitive, whatever the end result I guess the race will be more rewarding (and a good finishing position sweeter).
That's why I spoke of "the least annoying" AI behavior.

I tried the sliders in different combinations (a lot), but I always got quickly "attacked" by the AI, although I do not believe that these attacks were deliberate.

I did not find anything better than "far left" 😄

kjb
Does work on consoles?
If you mean this "passing the car to AI", yes.

You need to press d-pad right and select "race strategy", then "swap driver" (on PS4)/

If you find a large enough group of buddies to share driving duties you can do a real real-time 24 hours race. It's great fun!
Oops, sorry, I read your post too quickly at first. I thought you were taking about some online stuff 🙄

Now I know what you mean.

I read a post some years ago, where three guys did that with 2-hour stints each, so they had periods of 2 hours driving, 4 hours rest or sleep, 2 hours driving ...

Amazing

They will tell their grand-children about that 😁.
 
Hi, I never had an issue with AI controlling my car and being slower then the rest of the AI field, but I am an avid user of races against AI (offline AND online) and after trying different settings I now think the best setting is aggression to the far right of the slider (100) and skill set at 79 (if us humans don't setup the cars them AIs don't either! :D )

Here's a clip of a 3-lap battle I had with an AI at Spa using these settings. Without introduction people could be fooled into believing this is a battle between two human players.

 
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4 consecutive posts could get you attention from the moderators @nst0022, they don't like multiple posts - it's part of the acceptable use policy (AUP). Use +quote button to reply to more than one person at a time. And use the edit button to add further text if needed. 😉

I tried that twice. First, the car drove significantly slower than the other AI, and the second time, it did not even accelerate past the 2nd gear.
I think you'll find that was because of
I did not find anything better than "far left"
Unfortunately there's no set and forget figures with Pcars, a lot depends on the car and track combinations
But generally the AI will only potter around the track very slowly and not actually race each other or you if set to zero skill. They become more of a slow moving roadblock. You could perhaps try the aggression on zero but I'd suggest moving the skill up to get them out of 2nd gear. (Your swapped driver would also then be faster since it uses that skill level too)

They will tell their grand-children about that
I know @Hun200kmh has a 24 hour race with a lot of members of his family every year, so maybe at some point those grandchildren will actually be involved in the same race. 🙂
 
I've tried using the AI driver quite a few times (on PC not console), and while it doesn't tend to just DNF your race like was common in PC1 it is still quite flawed.

It does tend to be a fair bit slower than the other AI cars in my experience but its pace(like theirs) is not the same every time. Sometimes it may only be a couple seconds slower than me per lap which can be offset by its consistency, other times at the same track it's way off. I don't recommend using it at the Nordshleife specifically, every time I've tried that it has bled time on the order of nearly a minute per lap.

Some of that can probably be alleviated by adjusting the other cars(I don't think your driver is affected by their speed but it could be), I've usually managed to make up at least most of the time it loses. But the other issue I've encountered cannot: it simply refuses to pass any cars in your class no matter how much faster it is. I've observed this reliably and with multiple track/car combinations. So if you do use it, don't use a class that has an extremely wide spread of car pace(like vintage GT for example). And then you have to hope you don't get a glitched opponent car that is damaged but won't pit. I watched Bob follow a dead car around Daytona Road at about 50mph for 10 or 15 minutes in one test I ran.


I have absolutely had good fun races when using my co-driver, but it can be a headache at times. I do a lot of endurance races but eventually gave up on him unless I'm just looking to cruise without any concern for how competitive we are. Being able to take a break and do something else for a while and make some food while he's driving does make for a fun experience while racing all day in actual real-time. It is worth a try, but don't expect too much and you should do some testing with it to make sure you know how it will work for you. Oh, and always ALWAYS give him a fresh set of tires.
 
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AI aggression, anything over 65 & they will hit you.

I personally run 105/65 & I find I get pretty close fair racing against the AI with these settings.
 
Thanks to @Hun200kmh and @IfAndOr, who shared their knowledge about the player's AI driver, I had to revise my attitude towards this feature, namely, it does not appear to be "totally broken".

I made a "quick" test during my current 24 hours:

I intended to let the AI driver takeover for one or two laps to make a longer observation than in the past 🙄.

In the end, these "one or two laps" turned out to last about 2.5 hours, explained below.

I switched Swap Driver to On and entered the pit-lane. After the service, my AI driver continued.

I checked the Swap Driver status, which was switched back to off (of course) and turned in on again.

At the end of the lap, the AI driver passed the pit-lane. Well, I thought, then let's switch back after two laps.

Nada, AI drove on and on.

I thought it will pit either, when the tires were worn down, or when the fuel tank threatens to get empty.

Well, the tires took no role. The HUD showed totally empty rectangles after about 1.5 or 2 hours and the driving was unaffected by it, as opposed to my own experiences when driving got wobbly.

Even the fuel would have lasted another to laps, when the AI driver finally pitted (17.2 liters left at a consumption of about 6.4 liters per lap)

So, this was the overall situation:

My AI driver was significantly slower than I (6+ minutes per lap as opposed to my 4+ minutes), but so were the other AI as well.

Tires wore down much quicker (strange, if you drive slower, tire degradation should be slower as well).

During the 2.5 hours, I was overtaken twice by a car of my own class, and overtook two cars of a lower class.

All in all, I had not the impression, that I loose a significant amount of time, but this needs further testing.

As one can only change the AI sliders before a race, not within, and any single test will probably last several hours, I postponed these tests, because I do not see an immediate need to use this feature.

Anyway, that's why I like these forums, you learn a lot all the time 😄.
 
Unless you manually request a pit stop they will always drive until their tires and fuel are basically completely gone. They do stop a lap or two earlier than in PC1, probably to help avoid running out if the pit box is occupied. And by default they will keep driving on their own until you manually select to change drivers again(unrelated to calling them in for a stop). That way you can leave them unattended and sleep/run errands/etc.

The way the AI uses tires is quite different from the player. Both tires & fuel seem to deplete at the exact same rate, so one set of tires will always be completely used up when the tank is empty. This is why I mentioned always giving them fresh tires. Even if your tires will last 4 stints with 40% left the AI driver will completely destroy them in one tank. Their times drop off tremendously as the tires go below half-way — you can generally see this loss of pace in the other AI cars at the end of their stints too. You can probably make them much faster overall by only giving them half a tank of gas but I've never experimented with that.

They also have an odd feature of brake temperatures skyrocketing while they drive. At least two if not all four brake rotors will be glowing like the sun for their entire stint but it doesn't seem to be related to their times or to the condition of the car when you get it back.

Even still... if only they weren't SO SLOW and refusing to pass same-class cars it would be such a great feature. It's as if at the last minute some genius was worried that people would somehow "cheat" by getting the AI driver to win races for them so they decided to cripple the feature instead of removing it entirely. I think mine basically cost me a full lap of the N24 in less than 2 stints(so probably losing a lot more than a minute per lap :lol: )
 
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Guys, since you all seem to like endurance racing, about that 2h30 enduro race I'm organizing, I have 3 slots still available. And @nst0022 you'll be free to conduct your AI-testing at will in that race (AI will be set at 100/100 by the way).

I did last night a test to check on weather settings (I posted about it HERE). Offline race, I did one lap and retired into the pits so the AIs could have a go themselves at a race with the event's settings (and I could go to sleep lol).

I did watch the racing for a bit. The AIs are very poor at race strategies and it shows but otherwise they were having a very believable race among themselves. Their faults were mainly keeping the wrong tyres in longer than they should (some more than others curiously, they must have a hidden "smartness" setting apart from skill and aggresssion), or going for tyres when scheduled and picking the tyres for the track condition in that moment when it would be bvious for a human player that that condition was about to change.

You can check whatever moments you prefer (it's a long race) in the post I linked above.
 
I’m not a fan of handing off to the AI. If you are simulating a true 24 hours, you need to be resting/sleeping during the time off, and AI issues don’t really allow a completely unattended stint.

However, if you want to get real, do your four or so hour stint and pause the race, take your rest period, then resume. Two or three of those, you did what a real driver would have done.
 
If you are simulating a true 24 hours, you need to be resting/sleeping during the time off, and AI issues don’t really allow a completely unattended stint.
That is true, you definitely loose time, if not much. With Gran Trurismo 5, you could not even walk away, because you needed to give your AI driver a push from time to time, who was tending to fall asleep, but if you pushed too much, he got over-excited and made driving errors, so you needed to calm him down again. That was really interesting and funny 😄.

So, you have to pause the box and then there is no need to handover the car to AI. After all, you drive for your driving pleasure and not want to watch AI circling around 😄.

@Hun200kmh: I tried your suggestion of skill/aggression 79/100 (actually I use 80/100 😄) and this is perfect. Far more realistic behavior of AI and my advancement is reasonable: I started a new 24h race and am halfway thru, my gap to the 2nd place is merely 7 minutes, while it was several hours before (with both sliders to the left).

Just to make it clear: I first thought that "aggression" meant aggression toward the human driver and learned only later that is is aggression when approaching a turn and the like, so, although it looks sometimes so, there is no deliberate bumping into the player's car by AI.
 
No matter what the aggression level is set to, there’s still the issue of the AI being on a totally different tire model to the player, which I believe is the root core of much corner contact between player and AI. They can outbrake you on certain corners, out accelerate you coming out of some corners, but then brake way early on others and be slow out.

There’s only one real way round this… learn from hard experience where they are most likely to hit you, and let them by, and learn from experience where you have the easiest opportunity to retake the list position, and get aggressive there.

Trouble is, it’s different for every track, and to a lesser extent, every car. There’s no magic bullet, no ‘set it and forget it’ setting. You just have to find it out for yourself. So, before any sizable stint against the AI (hours), I like to run a quick sprint (ten or so laps) to get the feel of the AI. Is my pace competitive, where am I strong and weak against them, where are the spots they are most likely to make a late dive and hit me, etc..?

Then I am set for a longer stint without being surprised and my pace is similar (hate being laps ahead!).
 
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No matter what the aggression level is set to, there’s still the issue of the AI being on a totally different tire model to the player, which I believe is the root core of much corner contact between player and AI. They can outbrake you on certain corners, out accelerate you coming out of some corners, but then brake way early on others and be slow out.

There’s only one real way round this… learn from hard experience where they are most likely to hit you, and let them by, and learn from experience where you have the easiest opportunity to retake the list position, and get aggressive there.

Trouble is, it’s different for every track, and to a lesser extent, every car. There’s no magic bullet, no ‘set it and forget it’ setting. You just have to find it out for yourself. So, before any sizable stint against the AI (hours), I like to run a quick sprint (ten or so laps) to get the feel of the AI. Is my pace competitive, where am I strong and weak against them, where are the spots they are most likely to make a late dive and hit me, etc..?

Then I am set for a longer stint without being surprised and my pace is similar (hate being laps ahead!).
Yeah I agree. Best is to do a lot of practice and spend time behind AI cars to learn their strengths and weakness. I did a 24h endurace (2hrs realtime) on the Nordschleiffe with AI cars but it was kind of ruined because they bumped me off the road on multiple occasions. Off course on this track its hard for me to be perfect on the brakes every single time, especially on 2h endurance with night and rain etc.

Your best bet is just to give them space when they get close. Still theyre infinitely more fun than the AI in Gran Turismo..
 
I have found that treating the first lap as a fake formation lap allows the AI to settle down (they can’t do starts worth a damn!) and you don’t feel like you’re picking on a cripple at the start! It’s easy enough to pick up 5-10 places in the first lap with aggression, and how realistic is that?!

Start at the back, and don’t overtake until lap2. You’ll get far better racing from the AI…
 
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