Glad I'm not the only one mystified by this behavior. Especially since I've spent quite a bit of time learning how to not end up in the gravel when racing the ai. I've been able some serious fender to fender, bumper to bumper battles and not get wrecked. So to be in the midst of that and suddenly find myself spinning off the track at what barely amount to a kiss. well..... Still my favorite sim though. It seems to happen when you are almost perfectly lined up side by side at some point. So all I can think is maybe the tires are touching. Like shardshunt said, there are more important things to work on than that. Also, I tell myself almost daily "it's only a game" What I'd rather see is work on the ai mixing it up with each other in the race. that would seem more realistic to me. I think that is my favorite part about GTR2, the ai race each other as well as me.
GTR2s ai was really good, from memory I seem to remember it being able to push for a bit and catch me up (or pull away) and drop back. Not quite sure if I'm remembering that right! It wasn't perfect though as I remember the GT1 cars often got stuck behind the GT2s! (or was it GT and NGT?!) Ai needs to be more "human", make mistakes (some small, some big!) and I wish Ai was susceptible to minor car faults too. I've never played a game where I have been following a car only to see it's engine blow or get a puncture.
no they are quite concrete too but the collisions are very simplified so it didn't matter too much. the ai were fantastic in gtr2 but understand that they were also very simple physics wise.
Indeed, is that the main problem with modern Sims? The more advanced the physics gets the harder it is for collisions?
I've never been too great at collision coding but in broad general terms the more complex the collision is the more there is to go 'wrong' or 'wonky'. So as the complexity of the colliding objects increases so does the likelihood that something unexpected or 'funky' will occur instead of a natural collision & reaction.