Source
r/iRacing•
DeficitDisordered

I'd like to see some AI Stewarding in iRacing

Discussion

First of all just want to be clear, I'm fine with the no-fault incident points. I'm not suggesting incident points be assessed for blame. If you're involved it's reflected in your SR, and that should encourage us all to avoid incidents. That's fine.

However just because you can't assign blame 100% of the time doesn't mean you can't ever assign it, and in blatant cases a drive-thru penalty or DQ could be appropriate.

The game has lots of data it can use, and it doesn't need complex machine learning, it's just a list of the most common scenarios to check. For example "Was the lead driver going at roughly the normal pace at the time of contact? Yes. Did they break at roughly the right location? Yes. What about the trailing car? No, they were way over the normal speed and missed the usual braking point by 100m. Had they been punted themselves by someone? No. Then rear car judged at fault."

Rolling start idiocy where the leader checks up the field also wouldn't be difficult to spot, and the threat of a drive-thru should act as a deterrent.

Assuming rules can be written to detect the worst offences without false positives, would anyone else want to see it?

Posted Aug 3, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

028
waflop•

I don't want to see anything like that. Have you played GT7 or GT Sport? They have an AI steward and it's awful. Most of the time it penalizes the wrong person because it's much more complicated than you think.

If you can make an AI that can properly steward a race then you'll have car and tech companies knocking down your door because you've made something more advanced than what they've been working on for years

15
DeficitDisorderedOP•

Some developers write bad code, and some games are bad. As a dev myself, I'm pretty confident the team at iracing could implement some rules like that if they wanted.

-13
waflop•

If you think it's that easy to code then I'm sure google, tesla, and anyone else trying to develop a self driving car would love to talk to you because the level of understanding that would be required to properly steward a race would be greater than anything they've made for their cars.

11
DeficitDisorderedOP•

Not sure why you're comparing it to self driving cars, I'm talking a collection of functions which are called after an accident, which check various parameters like car speed vs typical car speed in the few seconds before the incident, looking for things outside a normal range and making a few decisions.

-10
waflop•

That decision making is what self driving cars are struggling with which is why I'm comparing the two. You're asking for the most advanced automotive AI in the world and acting like it's a simple task that will take a single programmer an afternoon to do

5
Harbring576•

Honestly I don’t. I’m a developer with a specialization in AI. Context is so incredibly important in these situations that a computer can’t make an informed decision. There will always be info outside of the context of a in/out type model where it could determine stewarding decisions.

8
DeficitDisorderedOP•

I think you're imagining something more complex than I was aiming for. I'm not talking neural networks. I'm just talking code and logic. There are scenarios, like when one car doesn't brake for a corner everyone else always brakes for, where you can be pretty confident that caused the accident.

1
Puzzleheaded-Ad-2746Porsche 911 RSR•

And I think you don’t understand anything about programming.

6
Harbring576•

Nope. I definitely understand it. You’re asking for something that can’t be done. Every Motorsport has at least investigated it at this point, and considering not even feeder series without permanent stewards don’t use it.

6
duck74UKFord Fusion Gen6•

0x a car, dramatically cut a corner, they get your penalty.

This is why the current system is faultless.

5
DeficitDisorderedOP•

I'm really not talking about incident points. I'm talking about drive-thru penalties when it can be confidently determined they were to blame for causing a wreck.

-4
91TwilightGT•

And what happens when it doesn’t work like it should?

1
franknferter•

The whole lobby gets a drive through?

1
d95err•

Once you start to break down and analyze a few of those ”common scenarios”, you’ll find that each has a huge number of parameters. It becomes an exponentially increasing set of cases and scenarios. It’s way too complex to control with simple logic and algorithms.

Attempts to do it become crude approximations, leaving extensive gaps, anomalies and exploits everywhere.

Even at the top levels of professional racing and professional stewards, the results are highly inconsistent and always contested. So how could you even decide what the outcome should be for each of the virtually endless number of scenarios?

3
DeficitDisorderedOP•

I'm not proposing creating a full steward, just adding more black flag rules which look for a specific situations, like the existing Qualifying Scrutiny logic looks for inappropriate burnouts or tyre heating behaviour. They could add more checks along those lines, for example logic which reviews race stats looking for leaders slowing dangerously after the pace car goes in.

1
NiaSilverstar•

Okay. If there were absolutely no false positives. Maybe why not. Here's the problem you won't get rid of false positives unless you heap so many restrictions on it that it won't happen that often

2
DeficitDisorderedOP•

For things like P1 behaviour on a rolling start you'd have to tune the value but as a starter, if they halve their speed on the straight on the approach to a green flag, and it wasn't a reaction to another driver getting in their way, they get a penalty. I can't think of ways that would be triggered unfairly.

1
NiaSilverstar•

You already said it thought if it wasn't in reaction. You won't be able to program all those scenarios programmed in

2
DeficitDisorderedOP•

It's a sequence of decisions. Did P1 slowdown unreasonably coming to the green? If yes, might someone else have caused it? Check the speed of P2, 3, 4...if they were being consistent and maintaining position at a reasonable space behind P1 then no, probably no-one caused it so P1 gets a black flag for breaching starting rules.

0
Harbring576•

That’s not how it works at all. Plus that’s not even AI. I’m really questioning your “dev” background right now.

3
tee_ran_mee_sue•

It can be done but it’s a huge project and the false positives may hit a nerve that will cause people to unsubscribe.

As for the P1 behavior during a rolling start, I think it would be really easy to determine a minimum speed before green and, if reached, it would turn all cars into ghosts until green. This would eliminate the accordion effect and it could potentially add another lap before green if many cars are overlapped. It could also give P1 a “jump start” penalty.

The logic is already there as the car already turns into ghost when in the pit stall so it’s a matter of determining a different trigger (speed in this case).

They could even place a ghost car of the leader that only P1 would see showing where he should be.

2
TargetWoodsLastLoc•

The ONE thing I'd like to see is automated penalties for overtakes under local yellow flags in road racing. Too frequently does someone sees a crash as an opportunity to pass others, and not to slow down and avoid an even bigger pileup.

1
Puzzleheaded-Ad-2746Porsche 911 RSR•

Difficult to say who’s involved in the incident and who’s not. Still not perfect black and white.

5
d95err•

That seems simple, but it also breaks down to an exponential number of scenarios and parameters.

1
iF1_ARDallara F3•

It could at least prompt a warning to say you could be protested. Applying penalties too difficult like people say but if it jolts some people, can’t hurt I guess?

1
ShinsukeNakamoto•

No way. People already bitch enough about losing SR when it “wasn’t their fault.” This entire place would turn into replays complaining about the stewards giving out penalties.

1