http://fatbob56.com/forum/mcomod/viewtopic.php?t=145
Hope to link is ok and please read the whole thread in that forum.
Post from Durod:
Recently I embarked on a mission to make the AI in my game more competitive. I did some searching on the net and found several theories on how to do it. One involved editing some lines in the track AIW file for Worst Adjust, Mid Adjust and Better Adjust. Another was to edit the line for AI corner grip usage in the PLR file. Although both of these methods did produce some improvement in the AI lap times, combined they still left the AI much slower than I would like. For my money, the best way to make your AI competitive is simply to make them use a good setup. There are, from what I can tell, a couple of ways to do this.
The first is to use fixed setups, and can be achieved by editing the following lines in your PLR file:
Fixed Setups="0" // use fixed setups specified in UserData\<plr>\FavoriteAndFixedSetups.gal (based on track and vehicle class)
Fixed AI Setups="0" // whether AI use the fixed setups, only applicable if "Fixed Setups" is also enabled (and can be used in single player to have the AIs use your favorite setup)
By changing the "0" in both line to "1" you will initiate fixed setups. Once this is done, in game when you assign a setup to a track it will be stored in UserData\<plr>\FavoriteAndFixedSetups.gal, and will be the setup used by you and all other drivers in your game, AI or human. The problem with this method is that it does not allow you to tinker with the setup to try to get faster, which for me and the people I race with is unacceptable.
The second method, and the method I choose is to assign default track setups. This is not as easily done as the previous method. but I think the extra work is well worth it. First of all, make sure that the two lines in the PLR file I mentioned in the previous method are unchanged, in other words they are still set to "0". For the purpose of this dicussion, I'm going to use Rouen_1974_94 as the example track.
1-First thing to do is go in game and work on a decent setup for this track, or download one. Once your happy with your setup, save it as whatever name you like, for me it might be du_rouen.svm.
2-Next you have to open the GDB file for this track,(rouen_1974_94.gdb} and find the lines:
SettingsFolder = Rouen_1990
SettingsCopy = Rouen_1990.svm
SettingsAI = Rouen_1990.svm
These lines tell you the folder within your settings folder where the setups for this track are stored, in this case, Rouen_1990. They also tell you the required name for the default AI setup, in this case, Rouen_1990.svm.
3-Armed with this information, go to your settings folder, and the Rouen_1990 folder and locate the setup you made. Now copy and paste it so that you have a copy of it, in my case I would have a file named "copy of du_rouen.svm". Rename this file Rouen_1990.svm.
4-Now you have to place a copy of this file,(Rouen_1990.svm) in the vehicle folders of any cars that you want to use this setup. If for instance you only choose 2 or 3 cars as opponents, you only need to paste it into those vehicles folders. If however, like me, you prefer to let the game randomly choose your oponents, it's best to put it in all the vehicle folders. I created a simple batch file to paste mine for me.
5-The final step is to boot up your game and go to that track. Go into the garage area and select the Rouen_1990.svm setup by clicking on it, and then click on the assign button. Now any AI which you pasted the setup in it's vehicle folder will use that setup at that track. Of course you have to repeat this process for each track you run.
A quick warning, after I did this, the AI went from being too slow, to kicking my butt, so I had to lower the AI strength to my level.
Another in game setting you may want to play with is AI agression. If it's set to high, the AI will crash into you, if it's too low the AI won't attempt to pass, and will just stay in line. I think a good setting is between 50-60%
Finally, another thing you can do is called AI learning, which will teach the AI the best line to use for any given track. Instructions on how to this can be found HERE
In case your unsure, here is the default location of the pertainant files/folders.
PLR file---C:\Program Files\rFactor\UserData\YOURNAME
Track Settings Folders---C:\Program Files\rFactor\UserData\YOURNAME\Settings
Track Folders---C:\Program Files\rFactor\GameData\Locations
I am going to make a little amendment to the previous post, because last night I was planning on running Watkins Glen Nascar V2 online, but the above method was not working for getting the AI to use the assigned set up, yet it did work for the other versions of Watkins Glen. This is what I found. In the GDB files for the 3 tracks, these are the pertainent lines:
Watkins Glen GP:
SettingsFolder = WatkinsGlen_GP
SettingsAI = WatkinsGlen_GP.svm
WatkinsGlen_Long
SettingsFolder = WatkinsGlen_Long
SettingsAI = WatkinsGlen_Long.svm
WatkinsGlen_NASCAR
SettingsFolder = WatkinsGlen_NASCAR
SettingsAI = GlenNASCAR.svm
You'll notice that the Nascar track is the only one where the settings name is different than that of the folder. Although I did have the setup named correctly,(GlenNASCAR.svm), it would not load. As soon as I changed the GDB so that it read :
SettingsFolder = WatkinsGlen_NASCAR
SettingsAI = WatkinsGlen_NASCAR.svm
and of course changed the name of the setup accordingly, it worked fine.
Makes no sense to me, and I suppose it could be some kind of glitch on my PC, so don't take it as gospel, but it did work for me.
I also want to add that changing the lines in the track gdb will cause mismatches with others if you race online, so if you do it make sure that others racing with you also have the edits done............
