Its several days late, you obviously didn't read his post several times complaining about his money situation. Oh and by the way - my dick is fine.

I know enough people are there to give a hand both with servers and administration but the thing is my internet can't handle it, and though I trust Michael and de Souza enough to run things I want to be there, both as an administrator and participant. I know H2H will make a comeback the timing is questionable though.

This is not exactly an InSim suggestion; but it is in a way a programmer suggestion;

I would like very little more control over the input using the current command / scripting system or InSim/a connection itself.

basically my command would be:

/hold [key]
/release [key]

or

/setaxis val //where val is 0 to 1, -1 to 1 or even some other means.

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The request comes from my attempt to use LFS as a platform for the AI project, and with that I believe this will never happen. If there is already a way to do this I have overlooked it - and trust me, I've read the Commands.txt over and over again.

Does the command system have the ability to set the position of an axis?

Like the steering wheel?

I see axis name, steer.
And buttons can be pressed; though I think they are released.
I am ready to run the test of controlling the car but now I can't find a way to do so- which leads me to believe that doing this in LFS will not work; will continue looking but hopefully someone knows.

EDIT: Still have found nothing that works; /press in LFS simulates a key press and release all at the same time which means I can't even make the AI use keyboard.

Last edited by blackbird04217, Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:17.

When I get the real internet back - and then get a server, and get organized for it to happen. It is in the plans, but first I need a job, relocation and the real internet vs what I have now.

Yea, there is a special bit that when in reverse on a screw gun will drill into the old screw, and at a certain point it will grip onto it reversing it out of the position. Besides that I don't know many other ways, though I would probably be using some WD40 to loosen it up if I had to do it by hand without that tool. Also cooking spray works just the same (like Pam). Will hopefully reduce the friction making it come out a bit easier for you. Sorry I am out of other suggestions though, good luck.

Just to be clear what type of telemetry info?

"telemetry" just means getting information remotely. So it doesn't itself explain what information should be received.

That said; OutGauge has loads of useful info: though I assume you guys are talking more like TireHeat / conditions and things of that nature? I ask because if it is going to be implemented it needs to be understood.

I am thinking about using LFS as a starting/testing point for my AI - if and only if I can be sure I can access everything I need.

If anyone wants to help I would be very grateful as it will take some time to get this working. Programming effort is not the only thing I need, although I would love to just have the plug'n'play part done for me.

This inspiration came while watching the 5hr AI Endurance Race last night, and I will be doing more of those; I want to add my own AI player in the mix and see if I can race Scawens AI.

However, step by step:
- Make sure I have all the information needed.
- Get the information working and tested.
- Get the AI to drive the car around a track with normal 'driving line'.
- Add the reference points and the AI can only judge where the driving line is based on these points.
- Add a single AI in a head-to-head style race.
- Add multiple AI once things are going well.

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So the first step is to make sure LFS can handle all the information needed. For that I need to know all the information that I actually do need, vs information that the AI Driver should not be using. Then I need to detect the best way to extract this information from LFS using InSim or other means. A track will need to be picked for the testing grounds;

The new algorithm;
Well, it has been said over and over again that I didn't want to tell the AI where to go and what to do. IE; don't have a line to follow from point to point. After really thinking about this, the AI needs that line. Humans get it from intuition or feeling - they just know. The AI could calculate the best possible line using some algorithm knowing the left and right edges of the track; but to eliminate that complication for now I have decided to give in and give the AI the driving line. After putting thought into it I have decided that this is not cheating for the AI IF the AI does not have GPS positioning on these driving points.

Basically, if the AI knew their exact world position and the exact world position of their DriveTo point they will behave exactly as LFS AI does at this time. Which in my mind is cheating. The first stage will be to get the AI to work using this cheating method, but then the reference points will be added, and the only thing the AI can do after that is know that the DriveTo point is to the left of Cone A by X distance. And they will scan for Cone A, which will give them an estimation based on some of the things discussed in this thread. Then the AI will 'triangulate' or know approximately where they should DriveTo, but that point will change slightly each lap based on random variance and other things that effect the Drivers judgement.

Some of the more obvious things that this will need from LFS:

Controller I/O
- Get and Set Steering Position; an axis control is required.
- Get and Set Throttle, Brake and Clutch Position; axis control req.
- Get and Set Gear Position (for H-shift cars)
- Get and Set Up Shift Button (for sequential)
- Get and Set Down Shift Button (for sequential)
- Ignition control.
- Pit request controls; ability to change pit schedule.
- Pit Speed Limiter.
- Possibly need the handbrake? To apply when parking.
Car Information
- Detection of the accurate position of the car.
- Detection of the accurate velocity of the car.
- Detection of the accurate direction of the car.
- Detection of tire traction at each tire.
- Current Fuel Level
Track Information
- The left edge of the track all the way around.
- The right edge of the track all the way around.
- The optimum driving line - perhaps passing lines?
- The left edge of the pitlane from entrance to exit.
- The right edge of the pitlane from entrance to exit.
- The driving line of pitlane;
- The start of pit speed limit.
- The end of pit speed limit.

*Quite possibly a few things that I can't think of at this moment.

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I already know there are a few things I can not get from LFS for my algorithm; like whether the AI driver can see another driver behind them in the mirror. But I don't even have confidence that that would matter; the attempt itself would be quite a fun challenge.

I believe all the track information can come from making a layout and setting yellow cones on the left track edge, red cones on the right track edge. blue and green cones for pit lane. And so on... This assumes that the LYT format allows different IDs per object / or at least so that I can tell the difference and where the exact position is. Need to look into that a little more; but I believe that will be sufficient for Reference Points and Track Lines. From what I've read it should be possible using the Index of each object, this however brings up the problem of the driving line possibly not being in the order as placed; which would be a requirement to know which point to drive to.

This is not a statement to say I have started, far from it. But it is a statement saying that I may actually start this if I find the motivation to do so - this would likely be something I would share. I don't know about open source sharing as its likely I use the AI code on other projects in the future.

@Widowmaker - it started out as some research, but yes it was entertaining once I started rooting for a particular AI, and more so as the pit strategy almost placed him second. . . (Third by 50ft, it was a close race out of pitlane).

EDIT: Also meant to say the AI in LFS do not learn anymore, this was evident in the 5hr race as the skid marks stayed in the same place and the AI did the same exact thing. The AI in LFS use to have learning, but not anymore.

And yes, this is also amusing as I have no true access to multiplayer racing. Satellite internet sucks, but apparently its the only option for my location besides dial-up. And whereas I am sure dialup would be better for racing online, I am also sure it would suck for checking my mail. Also - I don't pay the bill so I can't complain too much.

Last edited by blackbird04217, Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:50.

Don't tempt me - hah...

No but that was the results of the 5hr race.

Oddly the AI Drivers behave just like most of the LFS users on a server after a race: Crash into each other and stopping on the road. . .

Not that anyone cares much about someone silly little AI watching:

But the FXO did pit again, not quite at the 10 min remaining mark where I expected; nor with the requests I expected. They took on 100% fuel, with only 60 laps they could have used only 60%. And of course tires. The XRT I was rooting for was about 50 feet short when the FXO got back on track ahead of him - talk about excitement. The XRT that was in the lead is still in the lead, by 5 seconds now over the guy I'm rooting for.

It seems the AI is a little wonky at pitting, I had to spectate a few more cars due to them getting stuck in the garage and strange things. It looks like the final place is going to be third, which isn't too bad of a position from starting 8th. Though this race is lacking the passes. . . Everyone follows each other in a great line, very uniformly. I expect that nothing major will change for the remaining 40 minutes, so this can be assumed the final positions unless I come back

I've decided I am not going to risk the outcome because:

The AI I am rooting for is second in an XRT. Another XRT leads by 4 seconds. But they need to pit in 50 laps or so. In third is an FXO, by my calculations should need to pit somewhere like 10 min before the race - my rounding could be flawing the calculation but I believe if anything its helping it... The original plan for the FXO was 2 stints, 1 stop 100% fuel. So if he has to pit it will get really interesting right near the end. If he doesn't pit, he should easily be victorious over the XRTs when they go in for their stop in a little less than an hour.

1hr 15 min remain

If my calculations are correct the leading FXO will need to pit at about 10 minutes before the end of the race anyways. . . So much for only 2 stints; although maybe my math was wrong; if the FXO doesn't need another pit it should be the winner even after starting behind all the XRTs. Maybe that is the reason the pit strategy was made that way?

I can't believe how entertaining this actually is - the only annoying thing is the cars are robots. Which goes back to my AI thing, but these guys hit the exact same mark each lap perfectly.

Quote from logitekg25 :

make it longer midrace

if they do calculate at the begginning then i guerantee it wont work. they know how they are going to drive for the most part because they are computers, and that allows them to calculate in the begginning. so i do not think it will work

Well I had assumed after 5 hrs I be bored, but I've found all sorts of neat things to watch while I work on other things that aren't as CPU intensive, so after learning that it would be nice to watch the race go on I thought I would ask here to see if anyone knew that it would be ok to increase it before I actually did.

I can't guarantee that it will work and I have big doubts that it could work, but there is still question there - and 2hrs 50min 30seconds to go.

Yea that is exactly what I am wondering. It might be possible to run a test like this:

Get two AI in FXO and two in XRT and run them 5 laps around a track with forced pit. Before they make that pitstop change the laps to 10. and it will be evident what happens; problem is LFS is consuming my system and I know starting another copy of LFS will ruin the AI timing based on FPS drops. (They seem to hate it as much as us players). FXOs are pitting now.


EDIT- POST: 1500
not the real reason I edited, but I did notice it just the same

FXO's were way better at their pitstop... Though 1 Ai decided to try pushing another before the pit was over, it seems one of them did get stuck though and therefor another DNF. (Race started with 10 XRT and 10 FXO. Down to 8 vs 9 at the current time.

Last edited by blackbird04217, Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:35.

I searched and found one thread back when the AI didn't pit at all, but it doesn't help me.

I am currently running the AI on an endurance race, XRT vs FXO at Aston Cadet for 5hrs. I want to up the time on that to like 10 or 12 - but I do NOT want the AI to fail. Currently there has been just under 2 hours of the race, so I only have 3 hours to get this question figured out.

I know the AI calculates their number of stints, and fuel loads at the start, if I do '/hour 10' they don't seem to recalculate. My question is; will they pit properly and continue racing or will they run out of fuel if I turned the race to a longer race.

-Also do the AI pit for tires if needed?

Interesting side not: XRT pit strategy was 67% onboard fuel and 3 stints where the FXO strategy was 100% fuel 2 stints.


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Side note, XRTs just made their first pitstop while writing this message- I almost missed the excitement! They got four tires and 67% fuel. 2 XRTs DNF while pitting though, both stuck against the pit garage with burned out clutches.

I'm sad that the realms of information provided there is gone, but I can't say I am surprised as most topics that I was interested in had newest post in 2005. Hardly any real activity there from my experiences, though it was a convenient spot and the information it had will be missed, though I can't say much about the community there because as far as I am concerned its always been too inactive.

The developers don't care about more money, nor do they care about their development speed. They are doing their own thing at their own speed. I've offered my skills and help, and I am sure other people have as well, but the devs set out to do their thing and they get billions of props from me and some around the community here, however there are always people who want more, and want more faster.

More and faster only lead to half done content / patches; and that is one thing the LFS developers have been great to defend against.

Quote from Gutholz :

I only read the first page and then randomly some of the following postings so this might have been said before.
Imo the whole idea of recreating line-of-sight-vectors to reference points is a waste of effort and time. It might be interessting from a math point of view but does help very little with making a realistic/good ai.

Well you are, like everyone else, entitled to your own opinions. But remember I wasn't trying for 'good' AI, or AI that drives in realistic manners. Just that they use information in a far different way than they have in previous attempts. I don't know if you read my post previous to yours where I have put the project on hold for the time, but currently that is the situation as I need to focus on finding a job.

Quote :

For example a human driver can just have a look and see he is 2 meters from the right side of the track. The ai should just be able to get all informations about position, speed etc by calling some functions, the geometric way just makes things alot more complicated but adds nothing new.

Well, again in my opinion it *could* add a lot of new things as I am solving a problem in a different way, decoupling the AI from the physics system as much as possible and originally I was attempting to not give the AI known information, though a few posts up you can see that my idea is starting to conflict a bit.

Either way, it adds new knowledge to me showing me why this would or would not work, show the benefits of such a system as well as what it lacks, and again it is a new algorithm. Whether or not it is better, faster, more realistic - all of that can't be known unless I go through with the idea and test it out. It is very likely that one disadvantage to this system is the cost of the algorithm, the AI constantly checking it's reference points. Though it might not be too much cost if done correctly.

About RARS and TORQS I've heard and seen them but not used either.

--------

I do propose a question though, if you understood all of the above and can see that it is for the attempt of a _new_ way to try things vs doing the same old proven routine.

If using reference points, and the line-of-sight somehow magically make the AI have a better understanding of driving would that be worth the effort and time of this test? (Basically if after creating this algorithm the AI drove like they do using the existing and in my opinion cheating/wrong AI algorithms)

As I stated in the paper I wrote, the AI routines that are common for racing games is great; for games. But when accuracy is required I think th AI need to behave more appropriately as well.

@apo3d: There is no need to send the replay, I understand that your situation was the car in front disappearing; I am just explaining don't think it is the 'color' that would help as much as you're hoping as it is still a huge change on the screen and that can lead to the "GO" trigger. I am not saying that in your case it wasn't the color, but simply explaining the problem is bigger than the color.

This is the third thread that *I* have seen where you are saying you are too poor to buy the game. Then deal with it! Sorry for the harshness here, but I am sick of reading about your financial statement where I am in a "poor" friggen position myself, but you won't see me complain because I have food, and a roof. Not to mention lights, electricity, a computer and the internet to respond to this.

Here's a solution: Cancel your internet for 3 months, buy S2 then reenable the internet. Just shush it already- PLEASE.

Sounds like a very interesting, and new idea. I might even be willing to add some help on behalf of SRS. Though I don't know anything about the courses or anything. I don't have any internet connection available to me where I could actually race or participate on online things though Unfortunately the ping of this connection is far to crappy!

Anyways, I like the idea and wouldn't mind learning along the way, even if I will never use the skills!

A blinking car would distract you exactly as the "green" text. It has nothing to do with the color green really but that your waiting for a "go" signal and sometimes that signal is any thing that changes.

In the Head-to-Head league we have had several people get eliminated because of other uses disconnecting at the wrong moment, or even when someone connects at the wrong moment - the change on the screen is caught by your eyes and your trying to react fast so you don't care what changed you go... only fractions of a second later do you realize what you've done but by then it is too late.

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A blinking car, yellow text or anything of the sort wouldn't really fix it because it is still a visual change. Perhaps the car stays where it is but the collision disappears or something? I don't think that option is that great either but there is only so much that can be done.

VT-1 - That was quite an interesting video; although the AI of that car uses GPS to know position rather then using the cones as reference points. From what I gathered in the video. So basically that would be like attaching an AI technique that most games use, to a real car - just compute the best line, then follow it. If all the cones were removed a human driver could not drive the same course again, but that AI could nail it perfectly.

I've decided to put the project on hold for my own lack of interest in continuing right now. I got a LOT of useful information from this thread, and will likely continue the project sometime. Who knows, next week I might come back with some sort of update :P But for the time being I don't have the interest because other things are being more interesting to me, and I still need to find a j-o-b. Getting quite stressed because of the lack of a job.

I've noticed that the right turn doesn't work on the gauges, in either "Turn Right" mode or the "Hazard / 4 ways" mode. However the blinkers on the cars are working for me - just not the interface/gauges display.