Hi all, I just wanted to pop on and share my happy (hopefully ongoing) R3E experience! A bit of background; I considered myself to be a fairly accomplished single-player arcade racer (using a pad). Gran Turismos & F1 games were my weapons of choice in the battle against boredom. I decided a couple of years ago to build a DIY sim-pit, get myself a nice wheel & pedal set (Logitech G29 + Shifter) and start taking on the likes of R3E and multiplayer competition. Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I was finally able to start using my sim-pit. (Incidentally, I am already planning the mk2, but at least now I can race!) I started with a single player event, in the free BMW 134 and on the free RaceRoom Raceway. I don't recall the realism settings, but after a practice session & quali, I had a good race, battling with the AI and I was hooked! I bought a few cars and tracks and began my quest to graduate from arcade racer to sim racer, obviously 'Get Real' is my end-goal, so that's what I set. Imagine my horror when I jumped into the F3 car and even driving carefully could not post a valid lap-time during a 30 minute qualifying session around Suzuka - due to my inability to keep the damned thing going where I wanted. Same story when I took out the DTM BMW M4 around Eurospeedway. My only conclusion was that I'd been hoodwinked with free cars and tracks which did not reflect the gameplay at the other side of the pay-wall. Disheartened, I plugged the wheel back into my PS3 and decided I would re-play Gran Turismo 6 while I wait for #7 to come out. After a couple of hours of easy and unchallenging game play, I was bored again :-( I already know that a massive area for my improvement is consistency. Historically I would prefer to wipe the floor with a medium difficulty AI, racing-lines all over the place, etc - than have a harder time and struggling for good results. This inevitably means that when I play multiplayer, or the time I went Go-Karting IRL, I fair terribly, get frustrated and don't enjoy it. So I gave myself a good kicking and fired R3E back up, forgot that I am a multi-time world champ in the F1 game series and took it back to basics. I test-drove and bought the Formula Junior, set the realism to Amateur and locked myself in the man cave while I pounded round Suzuka. Even in the space of an hour I went from spinning every other turn or having to drive like a granny just to post a valid lap-time, to actually feeling like I was pushing hard, and setting valid (and consistent!) lap-times more often than not. This morning I departed my comfort zone of 'Practice' and went for the Leaderboard Challenge instead (wish I had done this sooner!) and within 5-6 laps had the fastest time for that configuration. Satisfied, I went back to the settings and upgraded to 'Get Real'. The fastest time on the leaderboard here was already 3 seconds faster than I had done on Amateur, so I wasn't expecting to be anywhere near the top. After a few invalid laps (braking into Turns 1/2, the Degnas and Spoon are hard! - and my lead-foot did not cope well with the exit from the hairpin!) I was eventually able to post a valid laptime, I was about 8 seconds slower than I managed on Amateur, however over the next few laps, I was getting quicker and quicker, and got to within 1.5s of my Amateur time, P6/13 on the leaderboard and just 4.3s away from the leader. My R3E fire has been well and truly stoked, and I am thankful to the Formula Junior car for being so gentle with me while I get to grips with what is a whole different world to what I was used to. Now I can't wait to jump back in to the cockpit and carry on seeing improvements, taking on different tracks and cars, and eventually competing with you fine folk. If anyone is still here, thanks for reading my story! JB
Good for you! Too many people come from single player games and expect the same results - these are the people causing the first corner pile ups, and divebombing at every opportunity. (Probably) The formula junior is probably my favourite car; not too powerful, but without the massive downforce that you are used to from the F1 games (I played an F1 game earlier in the week and was shocked at how 'on-rails' it felt) The forums are the second best place to be when looking to improve lap times/race craft. (I reckon the track is still #1) Loads of good advice. A few laughs. Massive amounts of speculation. Even more good people to share your achievements and frustrations with. Welcome to R3E.
Thanks Mr Mints! I am loving what I have seen so far. I just want to work on my race-craft a bit more - particularly not binning it on the exit of slow corners when I get a bit too excited on the throttle - and then I'll be seeing you guys on track :-D I improved my time a little further on Sunday in the FJ at Suzuka, before getting cocky and trying the M4 again. I was surprised at how much better I did than the first time, just after 2-3 hours getting up to speed in the FJ first. I am both humbled and dying for more. Just damned "real-life" and "work" and "responsibilities" getting in the way. eugh JB
Humbled? You don't know the meaning of the word until you've gone online and been lapped by half the field! But you know what, finishing 10th in a field of 15 is more satisfying than winning against AI that you have set the difficulty of. Once you've had a few close battles online, and chatted with your 'rival' the whole thing becomes much bigger and more satisfying. I still play against the AI 90% of the time on this game - It's just so good! There are several threads about the adaptive AI that are well worth a read. I am seriously looking forward to the ranking and licensing system that is coming to R3E - it should be a gamechanger.
I did play around a little with the AI in the FJ's around Suzuka (don't worry, I do know other cars & tracks exist... lol) and I found the adaptive was too easy - however I presume this had more to do with my lack of consistency than anything else. Setting the figure directly, I found 97 gave me a good challenge (for as long as I kept it out of the kitty litter). I must remember that just because my PC can handle 40+ cars on track - I can't, yet! lol I am looking forward to the ranking system too. I stupidly bought a 2-year membership to iRacing in the Christmas sale 2015, and I haven't even used it besides the odd test lap. I don't find it very welcoming to newbies. It would be good to be there from the beginning with R3E and the friendly bunch on this forum
The AI takes a few races to adapt to your speed. It is slow to start with. But knowing what sort of AI difficulty you can race against is useful too (see my signature!). The only trouble is, 90% might be too slow at one track, and too fast at another..... This thread : http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/training-the-adaptive-ai.121215/ is by the man known here as CheefullyInsane and is definitely worth a read. Especially if you specialise in one car type. Look for the Snoopy Avatar. Skim read the first few pages, as he is just getting to grips with it..then he nails it. PS - I wanted to say "Talking rubbish" but I am new around here, and "just getting to grips with it" seemed politer.
That's a great article, my day job is as a Data Analyst, so I love stuff like that! Definitely some tips worth bearing in mind if/when I start training the AI, like using rolling starts to prevent the average lap time being dragged down. I started last night on the Leaderboard Challenge with the M4 @ Nordschliefe. Oh boy, that was good fun!
<Edit> I just realised what you meant. By 'dragged down' I meant 'made worse' rather than 'reduced'. Bad choice of words on my part </Edit> Perhaps he covers it in the article, but surely the obvious solution for Sector3 is to have the A-AI ignore the first lap when calculating the average. But hey, I'm new here too, so what do I know