You use full damage and mechanical failures?
We were using mechanical failures, but I had to switch that off during the Lotus 40 (Sportscar) series because we couldn't get the cars to last the race - a bit unrealistic for a car that used to run 200 mile races!
I will try the mechanical failures back on next week, but switch it off if it results in premature brake failure - these cars are already hard enough to drive without that.
@jefaais we are not running pit stops because I have been told they are bugged - they don't work when using default setups. Hopefully this will be corrected in Project Cars 2. If we had pit stops available I wouldn't use them with the Lotus 49 - routine stops were used early in F1 history (pre 1958) when the races were longer (3 hours) and the cars used exotic fuels with consequent higher fuel consumptions, then were introduced again a few years into the Turbo era.
It would be interesting to try two short races, one with ai on lets say 30% and the other with ai on around 80% and see what comes out of it..
When I started hosting on Project Cars the original plan was to set the AI at a level which would give the slower drivers such as
@John Wells and myself a competitive race. What tended to happen on GT6 was that the faster drivers such as
@AndreasR and
@Flaco13 enjoyed good battles at the head of the field, but John and I were marooned in clear air further back - not to see another car except when we were lapped at the short tracks on the calendar. I quickly found that it is very difficult to match the AI to individual drivers with the small number of AI that run in our races compared with the big fields that you can run offline. Also we had a lot of complaints about aggressive AI causing accidents - they do become less aggressive the lower the level as we found in earlier championships.
The current concept is to run them at a low enough level so that they aren't too aggressive and in the role of Privateer drivers, with the humans being the factory drivers lapping them before the end of the race. In recent series there have been some races where I have been trying to keep up with a faster driver and when we hit the AI traffic it is very exciting weaving through the back markers trying to keep up and sometimes the two of us going either side of an AI driver.
We had a few problems with AI on Wednesday, but Sonoma is a very tight track and difficult to pass on cleanly as you are constantly going from one side of the track to the other to link the corners together - I am confident that the racing will be better in the rest of the series.
I find the AI quite good actually, the best in any racing game i've tried.
I haven't played many racing games - mainly GT5 and GT6, but the AI are certainly much better than I have experienced before. SMS claim that they have been significantly improved for Project Cars 2 - hopefully this is true because there is always room for improvement. Hopefully they don't drive off the track as much and are also less nervous and jerky in their movements especially when human drivers are near them.
@jefaais - a point that you raised on Wednesday was about using modern cars in order to get a fuller room. (Apologies for not using a microphone at the moment - my mic is a blue tooth, wireless one and it isn't synching to the PS4.) We will be using the Group A cars next after the Colin Chapman Tribute Series ends (currently Season 3 Lotus 49) - those cars should be popular!
I want to try to stick to our current programme and avoid for example the GT3 cars - we may use them at some point in the future - as future classics - I am sure that in 50 years time some of the current crop of GT3's will take on the iconic status currently reserved for Ferrari GTO's and AC Cobras. When Project Cars 2 is launched on 22nd September there will be renewed interest and I think we will find it much easier to get full or nearly full grids - I am planning to start racing on Project Cars 2 ass soon as possible consistent with doing some car and track testing.
Cheers
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