I suppose high downforce and grippy cars allow for a better AI behaviour in AC. I haven't tried your championship, will def do (i'm still stuck in the early 70s).
From my experience, most issues i have with AI are with low grip cars. The AI just... sucks, and i'm just 10 secs ahead whatever the track.
I'd be pleased to be proven wrong with a vintage car/track combo that would leave me in the dirt, but i haven't found one yet, and i don't really think current hardcoded AI limitations allows for more room on the matter.
I think you're 100% spot on here.
Some people complained to me that cars in my 1982, 1983 and 1984 (and 1988 in some extent) seasons have unrealistically high corner speeds. And yes they're right. Because increasing DX ref (traction of the tyres and using the qualifying tyre model only) was the ONLY WAY to make these SD cars to race safely and still keep them fast and competitive. Had I been better car modder I'm sure there could have been other ways to do that but that was the only way that worked for me after rigorous testing.
I outqualified the vanilla SD cars by 3-4 seconds before the adjustments and they constantly ran out of tracks and caused havoc. Increasing the grip solved all the problems. It was a mess and I can see why people hate SDD. They probably don't even test anything before releasing. I mean I've seen F1 releases that don't even turn at Monaco Loews hairpin because the wheels don't turn enough.
I compensated the excessive grip by reducing their high speed in aero.ini settings. Now the top cars only reach about 315 km/h with lower rear wing which is about 10-20 km/h too low (esp. on Monza, Spa. Paul Ricard Mistral straight etc). Now the lap times are extremely accurate in 80% of the races but the cars are 1-2 seconds too slow on some faster tracks.
When you have that grip it makes the cars easier to drive and AI is way quicker and safer because you eliminate the randomness that comes from the understeer and slide in the corners. Sure it reduces the realism for these older cars but I believe that would be the only way to make the 70's cars competitive.
One quick option (if you have individual cars) is simply to make your car (and team) slower with CD GAIN aero setting and increase DX REF grip only for the ai cars. Compensate the slower car by increasing your teammates' AI level.
I have some real life karting experience from my youth and I know how much grip even those cars have. You can't drift open wheelers. You have the grip or not... it's almost on/off. Of course nobody of us has ever driven a F1 car but you can see from the footage that 2000's F1 cars have ENORMOUS grip. So driving them is "easy" in that sense. Look at the cockpit view footage of any race and those guys can drive the cars with incredible consistency and have racing lines that are centimeter-like accurate for 70 laps. Sure they're ultra talented but
for them they're relatively easy to drive on the limit.
When Keke Rosberg retired from F1 and went to DTM and the press asked him "how do these cars feel after F1"? He answered "It feels like being a cab driver". The grip and brake power difference to GT cars is ridiculous.
Creating F1 cars like on AMS2 (where they constantly oversteer and have controllable slides) is extremely unrealistic. Some people think that more difficult automatically means more realistic which is certainly not the case in sim racing. The only thing more realistic on AMS2 is that you have to drive those old F1 cars "more actively".
As you said AC ai is at its best with these 2000's F1 cars. VRC and CIM 2008 cars drive so well. I think not so much without the TC which decreases the grip to very unrealistic levels. I adjusted 1998 VS Ferrari rear wheel grip and it made a world of difference.It's super enjoyable to drive now when the excessive oversteer has been eliminated.
Your 70's cars probably have somewhat realistic behaviour and traction... the lap times were like 10-15 seconds slower back then. That's where AC ai fails miserably. Decreased grip brings a lot of AI issues and more randomness and errors. Fastlanes on the 70's tracks might be bad too... I don't have much experience of cars and tracks that old.
PS: Try the 2004 Championship that I created. It's all free and based on Kunos F2004. If you can take poles at Sepang and Melbourne with my settings, I'm genuinely amazed and probably realize how bad sim racer I am. I was 1.2 seonds off Schumacher's pace at Melbourne and almost 2 seconds off at Sepang. It's a small download (skin based package).
cup.acstuff.club
