Rubberband AI: pro or con?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Maxitsu
  • 83 comments
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Rubberband AI: pro or con?

  • Pro

    Votes: 18 10.8%

  • Con

    Votes: 138 82.6%

  • Don't know

    Votes: 11 6.6%
  • Total voters
    167
On Daytona the AI does a lot of bump drafting and they will catch you for sure but there is no rubber band effect and if you pay attention and drive it right you can win with ease even there.

I ran the race this morning. ABS=Off is mandatory in this race.
I did a little drafting of my own to slingshot around the pack in the corner on the low side and held the lead for the entire race. I would pull ahead a bit and move over so the AI could not catch my draft whenever possible which kept them at bay for a while.

All the while I would keep an eye in the mirror. Several times I could see the car behind me lunge forward and start gaining on me almost overtaking a few times but by then I was begining the corner and pulled away again. It was very clear however that this lunge by the AI was due to the car behind him coming up fast in his draft and bumping him up about 10-15 mph.

If and when the car started gaining fast on me on a straight I would move over a bit and let him into my draft and make sure he bumped me which would give me a little burst of speed and allow me to pull away more in the corner.

It was a fun race actually I cross the line .083 seconds ahead of the car coming up in my draft at the end.
 
It's as if since they didn't have the remaining power to allow a rewind function, they made the AI do this lazy thing.
I'd prefer unforgiving AI over anything.
 
Chairman7w
I haven't noticed it either.

Actually, I've noticed the lack of it. I get far out in front and stay there. They don't catch up. That satisfies my "no rubberbanding" criteria.
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Same here. With the exception of the bump drafting on Daytona the only way they catch up is if I slow down or make a mistake.

There are times when one of the fastest cars starts in the back and it takes him a while to get past the slower guys then it may appear that the AI has some kind of rubber band effect but in reality it is just the cars on the track causing the effect.

I miss the little icon from GT4 that would show you which car was in 2nd place or 1st if it is not you. I remember several races where you would see a Viper or a Vette popping up 1 second down, 2 seconds down, 3 , 4, 5, then the icon changes to the 2J and it is 4, 3, 2 ... Once that car gets in clean air it is beast. On some races if it gets to start on the pole you better bring it or it'll be gone and you will end up with a very distant 2nd.
 
I pretty much tossed when I saw rubberband in the MULTIPLAYER of Prologue, that's just a hideous feature!
 
Con. It's just silly and unrealistic. Near the beginning of the game, when I couldn't afford a car that was much faster than the AI cars, I'd spin out, take 30 seconds of going back and forth at full throttle to get back on the track, and a minute later I was back in the lead. LOL - I should have never been able to catch up with them at all.

Considering you can just buy a car that goes twice as fast as anything you're racing against, the rubberband AI couldn't be more unnecessary.
 
Rubber band as an option in online lobbies is a good thing. I race with people who are not as fast as I am and who make more mistakes. It gets boring when I just run away with most of the races and it gets discouraging for those who are loosing all the time. With a bit of a boost to the guy in the back it is more likely to be an entertaining race realistic or not. Since it can be turned on or off as an option and even weak or strong I think it is a very good addition for head to head racing for the fun factor.

Once again I think you guys who say the AI is rubber banding are seeing things that are not there. I've ran every race up to level 30. I've ran in fast cars and slow cars and I have yet to see any such thing in any of them.
 
Con. There's no incentive to run multiple perfect laps in a car that's outmatched when on the last few laps the AI gets super human and gains on you in leaps and bounds even if your lap times are still improving
 
I haven't noticed any to be honest. In every race when I'm ahead the gap to second keeps increasing unless I make a mistake. How does rubber banding apply if I am finishing laps ahead of 2nd place in endurance races? It's only a matter of time even in a comparable car.
 
yaywalter
That said, I personally haven't noticed rubber-banding in GT5. I haven't played online yet, so I don't know if it's implemented there. But there was definitely some rubber-banding in GT4.
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online as a lobbyleader you can set the slipstream, between 3 settings. Real and 2 others wich i dont know.

level 23 without any rubberbanding so far.
 
I can't believe that so many of you claim to have not noticed rubberbanding in GT5. Of course it is there. And it is super strong.
Just start a B-Spec race, give your bot an overpowered car and watch the lap times of the opponents get better and better the more distance it builds up. Then send the bot to a pit stop and see the lap times of the opponents get much weaker again.
In the Fuji race of the GT event for example the lap times of the opponents change by about 13 seconds depending on the position of your own bot (1:43 if the bot is far ahead of the pack, 1:55 if it is at the end of the pack).
And the rubberband is active in A-Spec as well. I can easily catch up to the bots if I made a heavy mistake. But driving the same lap times after getting the 1st position does not get me away from the pack.
The rubberband is limited, though. If you take the Minolta to the Sunday Cup, then you will get away from pack.
 
Even in B-Spec, I haven't noticed a single ounce of rubber banding. I'm playing one right now, and the guy in last place isn't turning any faster laps than the guy in 11th, etc.

Championship races are pretty stable, and the guy in last tends to get lapped over and over, the guy normally in second has made mistakes and got sent(and stuck) back in 8th, etc.

I've had races where no matter what, I couldn't catch up. Didn't matter how much I drafted or cut corners, I still lost.

Rubber banding not found.
 
Same here, haven't seen rubber banding. Alltough there is allways 1 or 2 car(s) in the field that can take on with you. But dont have the feeling it does it because you have a lead. Think its because you have a faster car bhp wise. Cause when i stay in the pack it gets a lot in front as well.
 
sparrow_ger
I can't believe that so many of you claim to have not noticed rubberbanding in GT5. Of course it is there. And it is super strong.
Just start a B-Spec race, give your bot an overpowered car and watch the lap times of the opponents get better and better the more distance it builds up. Then send the bot to a pit stop and see the lap times of the opponents get much weaker again.
In the Fuji race of the GT event for example the lap times of the opponents change by about 13 seconds depending on the position of your own bot (1:43 if the bot is far ahead of the pack, 1:55 if it is at the end of the pack).
And the rubberband is active in A-Spec as well. I can easily catch up to the bots if I made a heavy mistake. But driving the same lap times after getting the 1st position does not get me away from the pack.
The rubberband is limited, though. If you take the Minolta to the Sunday Cup, then you will get away from pack.
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yep noticed it 👍:guilty:

Rubberbanding protects bad AI' Difficulty levels. also (and you see it in alot of racing games) on each track there is 1 or 2 turns where IA is very slow. but on the other places of the track the AI will still be challenging. for example at Laguna seca just after the "corcscrew" the IA is very slow there.
 
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The perfect rubber-banding would be unnoticeable rubber-banding, simply because without it the game could never cater to so many varying levels of skill from players.

Unnoticeable rubber-banding also does not exist. It's pretty much a necessity from a logical point of view, but no one has done it correctly.
 
MidianGTX
Unnoticeable rubber-banding also does not exist.
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Huh, how would you notice unnoticeable rubber banding.
If you did notice unnoticeable rubber banding it would no longer be unnoticeable.
 
Spagetti69
Huh, how would you notice unnoticeable rubber banding.
If you did notice unnoticeable rubber banding it would no longer be unnoticeable.
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I guess it's something of a paradox, since you'd notice if rubber-banding wasn't there... but then maybe it would be and you just don't know.

Really I supposed what I imagined was that you'd notice if you were specifically trying to exploit the game somehow to get it to reveal it's secret, but in the normal event of a race it was too subtle to rear it's ugly head.
 
Never seen rubberband effect in GT5 offline.

There is a boost option for online races, wich I gues is some sort of rubberband effect.

Never used it though, I hate it like the plague. It was a real downer that there was no way to turn it off for prologue online,
 
Definitely con. But I wouldn't want to have a "rewind" function either as that would take away the fear of blowing of that corner and ending up at that gravel.

Basically it should encourage practice and setting short-term goals. 👍
 
I haven't noticed any rubberbanding
When i did the daytona nascar i used drafting to get a 3 second lead and then mept that lead the whole race. Only noticed them gaining on me when one of the ai used drafting on the straights to just get a higher top speed but never any unrealistic rubberbanding.

Haha in nfs hp i always just tailed in 2nd place till the last 9 km and then blast passed the ai and win the race quite easily xp
 
There is no rubber banding. People are mistaking a faster car which starts in the back as a rubber band effect when in reality it is just that the AI has a hard time working it's way up through the slower cars.

This combined with drafting takes care of any perceived rubber band effect. The AI cars do not go faster than the car goes in fact they never even wind it out and always drive corners slower than they could.

I have yet to see any AI car gain on me even a little unless it was being pushed by another AI car, Like the Nascars for example. Or a faster car was trapped behind a slower car for a while like for example the Toyota 7 on Deep Forest. Or I did not drive as fast a lap myself allowing the AI to close up on me.

When the fastest AI car is running second and there is no other AI car with it yet it is to far to get in my slip stream I have never in hundreds of races saw the AI gain even an inch that was not my fault.

Rubber band effect. In the mind of the player not in the game.
 
I've not seen any rubber banding, AI does nurburg laps within seconds of each other regardless of if I'm in front or behind of the A.I.

The A.I does try harder on the last lap and does everything you see in B-spec. It's a cop out to call the A.I routines rubber banding
 

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