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How is AI driving in the latest patch?

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The OFP1 AI drivers have been driving on the rails, literally. In Arma 2 it is all much more dynamic. However, if you really do some effort in testing it you can see massive improvement from Arma 2 as shown on the video from 2009 and current shape of OA.

If there is a driving problem, a CIT ticket with clear reproducible steps is best way to tell us about it and let us check if it could be improved.

Then rails made me happy :)

I think its important to find a nice balance. If to dynamic AI cause these problems I think its better to script more.

---------- Post added at 05:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:16 PM ----------

i already explained in several threads and skype and irc channels that OFP driving was different as the roads were single lane (in A1> then two lanes) and there was way way more spacing (between vehicles, between object on side and road edge etc)

and yes I do agree driving AI should be improved more ... but that's task for next title ...

Next title, that means ArmA 3 ?? :)

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Is it too much to expect from ArmA 3 that AI will finally be able to drive properly after 3 iterations of the game engine?

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I understand the ‘rail’ format being preferred by some, even though I’m a massive fan of letting them do what they want (them of course being the ai), I would think its maybe a good idea to consider that type of arrangement for Arma 3. Spacing, speed and getting the ai from A-B for those who don’t want to spend the time making a mission and going over the routes to be used to know where problem points are, for them it would be a lot easier. I think its really not that bad as it stands at the moment, but there again, if it can be made better by back tracking a little to the past, then maybe that’s a good thing. That said, I wouldn’t want them to loose the freedom that makes the game what it is.

When I see the ai inhabiting buildings the way they do when using GL4 (GL series are outstanding mods), spacing themselves out in the building, be it on several floors or balconies and rooftops, standing in windows, doorways etc, finding the best positions, then I think if that type of thing can be done for the ai, still whilst having the freedom to move from building to building or changing position within the building they are in, then the driving could well be improved. As I said in an earlier post, I have little problem when they are on safe mode, they will go where you want them to go, provided you check the route whilst making the mission.

However in GL4, when an attack starts they generally keep position if they feel it’s the best position they have and fire from where they are, i.e. go into combat mode without getting lost or sidetracked. The driving could be done in a similar way whereas they either speed up if they feel they can outrun an attack or evacuate the vehicles altogether, to try to defend the vehicle or basically run for cover. I know that’s similar to how they do it now, but they all don’t evac the vehicles, some just drive around until they are picked off.

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ArmA 3 will have better physics then ArmA 2. It should make the AI able to just drive trough some of the stuff that is blocking the road. Its much better then getting stuck.

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ArmA 3 will have better physics then ArmA 2. It should make the AI able to just drive trough some of the stuff that is blocking the road. Its much better then getting stuck.

thats physics, not pathfinding. If the nodes and resolution remain the same, then it will be the same pathing issues (unless the roads are made much wider) also have to wonder how they will take into account destructable objects blocking paths? Might require dynamic node resolutions or procedural generation of some kind. Currently the resolution for the nodes is a little too big for vehicles (cant seem to drive through semi-tight spaces). They will need alot of nodes for buildings though. If any sort of CQB is going to take place with AI.

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ArmA 3 will have better physics then ArmA 2. It should make the AI able to just drive trough some of the stuff that is blocking the road. Its much better then getting stuck.

Those have almost nothing to do with each other...

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The AI are still terrible @ driving.Make a simple convoy from point A to point B. The best way to describe AI driving is either that of a small child learning to drive or an extremely elderly person who just doesn't care. LOL... but it's true.

Edited by Iceman77

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The AI are still terrible @ driving.Make a simple convoy from point A to point B. The best way to describe AI driving is either that of a small child learning to drive or an extremely elderly person who just doesn't care. LOL... but it's true.

I am starting to doubt this: I can have 4 trucks drive at full speed down a road without getting stuck or crashing (barely) by having them all ungrouped from each other. They Drive better ungrouped then grouped. apparently when you set the speed mode to FULL, the convoy behaves the same way as above. It gets messy when there are alot of intersections to pass through, but one or two turns is not a big deal. I can insert an entire platoon by trucks without much hassle.

Just need to play around with the settings, in my experience, AWARE, FULL, and ungrouped is the best convoy

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i had to laugh when testing yesterday ,

if a vehicle driving up a road passed a civ unit 5 meters to the side of a road they both stopped for 10 - 15 seconds then moved on

but if the civ unit was on the road they just got plowed over by the truck it didnt even slow down :) - im sure AI drivers sometime target units and run them over just for fun -

but this slowing down to 10 kph to take a slow corner is kinda anoying

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So a quick video done today, which I’m terrible at, recorded with msi_afterburner on 50% quality, so its not great quality, a bit juddery but at 50% it takes less time to upload so there you go. But it can be viewed in 720hd, recommended.

It shows the ai driving, there are three waypoints:

1/ to pick me up =‘Load’

2/ half way = ‘Move’

3/ end = ‘Transport unload’

The settings for the whole trip is ‘Safe’ mode. He does overshoot a junction not far into the drive, but on the whole he’s not bad. Now, I would have put in a few more waypoints had this been for a mission of some kind, which would have avoided him overshooting and also cutting corners a little, apart from that it’s a good trip. Other than the video quality, its not good and lags some but that’s just the vid looked great in-game, but there you go, just gives you an idea. I don’t like doing vids much.

50ezYpgQOh4

____

Get them to drive as smart as these ai take up positions, then it would be first class, GL4 is the mod doing the smart ai work below, all ai apart from the first you see and the one I switch too, (he's a man of the cloth) all ai inside buildings etc .:)

Essx_TzCvTw

However all that said, they are not really that bad.

Edited by ChrisB

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Thanks for the vids. I hardly see any LOD switching or instability. May I ask what video settings you are using?

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Thanks for the vids. I hardly see any LOD switching or instability. May I ask what video settings you are using?

Yes, did warn you, they tug substantially at my performance while recording, that’s why I don’t like doing them, but they give the general idea, even if there is a significant performance drop. But I am yet to see an arma2 vid that doesn’t cause some problem when recording.

Or of course you could put one up yourself to show how perfect yours record.. Can’t wait to see that..:p

Most settings are on very high other than:

'object detail' on very low (probably adds to this prob when recording, helps get rid of grass, I hate too much clutter).

AA in-game on low with FXAA on Sharp Filter High setting.

V-sync = disabled

PP = disabled (hate blur as well)

Think that's it..

Edited by ChrisB
added

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I still think its really sad that AI driving path finding dont have higher priority. Operation Arrowhead recived good reviews, better reviews than vanilla ArmA 2 did. I think some of the reason for that is improved AI, but in almost evey review I read there is: AI drivers still terrorize the roads. ++++ ... Its pretty much in every review.

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The single driving AI is pretty good IMO. The real problems begins in Convoy driving.

I've placed 4 Motorized Infantry sections in the editor. I've grouped them to 1 group only . . . platoon size. There is the point where the problem really starts. As you can see the group leader never boards the first car. This causes havoc in the formation. In this case the group leader boards the last humvee out of 8 humvees placed in the editor. What happens is that the group leader tries to reach the leading convoy position, meanwhile all the others try to get the f*ck back in formation.

As you can see the fact that the group leader boards the last car in formation get's the AI confused. Once the get the right sequence in formation the AI driving is good as you can see in last minute of this vid.

Nm-49LnnrMw&list=UUpx3LVA2aCGYX55_q8kJLdg&index=1&feature=plcp

The failure of AI driving in the second setup is very obvious. I let the video running just to check how much time it would take for the AI to get unstuck.

Unfortunately I was unable to embed the 2nd video please watch directly on you tube.

To avoid this problem you can assign the group leader to the first car in the convoy by assignAsCargo command. Here you go.

As you can see here the AI does a good job in driving convoy.

In my opinion the whole reason for difficulties in large group convoy driving is related to the fact the group leader is boarding the wrong vehicle in convoy formation.

Edited by nettrucker

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Good videos, thanks for sharing. I see that the convoys actully is good, but there are to many problems before the actully driving part starts.

---------- Post added at 02:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:12 AM ----------

Dwarden;

Is it possible to make a change so the group leader always mounts the first car in the convoy by default?

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The ai driving imo is reasonable. Alone and on the road it is quite good and I can deal with the occasional wide turn or knocked over mailbox. Offroad they are not so good, and seem overly cautions of rocks and what not, constantly zigzagging instead of just going straight to the waypoint. This is similar to the pathfinding problem ai infantry also seems to have. They say its evasivce maneuvres, but I think its just poor pathfinding as it occurs when the ai is in careless or aware mode with no enemies around.

But I can live with that. The real problem is ai convoys, as mentioned before.

The ai convoys take way to long to actually get in position. It takes about a minute to two minutes to just get on the road and rolling.

Once the convoy gets going it is usually pretty good but is very easy to mess up. Often I see one ai in a convoy accidently take a turn at and intersection, or stop for a bunny, try to swerve to avoid a fence that was not really a danger etc. this forces the enitre group to wait for him to get back in formation and we once again start from scratch - taking a couple minutes just to get on the road.

But even convoys are bearable. I can easily set up a mision where players have to ambush an ai convoy. They are only unbearable when the player is in the convoy and has to wait a couple minutes to just get on the road. That is a real immersion killer.

But overall, although I welcome any ai changes, I think there are more pressing issues with the ai that need to be fixed, especially concerning their combat behaviour. Better driving would be nice, but the fact is driving is not really a life or death situation for an ai so imo is not as important as say better self preservation tactics/techniques.

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There is one fix regarding AI driving I'd like to see, currently if there are infantry on foot and are using the side off the road, most times vehicles cannot pass even though the road is clear, I see they attempt too but it just gets messy and they end up following behind infantry, this is a game breaker as they will follow like that until infantry move of the road path.

Other than that they are ok, even though the beggining can be a mess they sort themselves out eventually, even 2 convoys coming towards each other is no problem, mostly they move over and pass each other no problem... For convoys I always use moveincargo for everyone as nettrucker suggests.

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Good videos, thanks for sharing. I see that the convoys actully is good, but there are to many problems before the actully driving part starts.

---------- Post added at 02:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:12 AM ----------

Dwarden;

Is it possible to make a change so the group leader always mounts the first car in the convoy by default?

I personally believe that, in case BIS can fix the default AI behavior mounting the last convoy vehicle and change that so that AI group leader will mount the lead convoy vehicle, you will improve vastly their driving skills, and it will take less time for the AI to get rolling. What happens now is that, when AI group leader boards the last convoy vehicle the formation gets messed up. AI in group are not in the right formation anymore and they try to adjust and get back into the right formation. This is the crucial point which messes up the driving procedure. In the 2nd vid I made, the set up is exactly the same the only thing I changed was forcing the AI group leader to board the lead convoy vehicle and the AI driving is excellent. Formations don't get messed up and the AI doesn't feel the urge to adjust his formation position. As soon as all AI's have boarded their respective vehicles the convoy got rolling without any problem or hick ups. I don't think that I'm wrong with my findings. I've made some other test with respective vids that I will post later on.

cheers

Edited by nettrucker

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I would like to have a function that enables the user to assign Positions in the Convoy for the vehicels in this group.

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You mean for mixed vehicle convoy driving? I did some tests on that too and made some videos yesterday but I was unable to upload them so far and currently I'm dl the ACR expansion. I still need to do some testing in form of what impact rank has in convoy driving there are still some things which are not really clear. It should have some impact the same as waypoint behavior does.

In any case the driving is good in general. The flaw IMO consists in what I've described above. Fix the group leader default behaviour in boarding the last convoy vehicle and convoys will improve. When the group leader boards the lead convoy vehicle it takes the convoy just the time until all AI have boarded their vehicles and they are rolling. In the 1st video I made it took the AI nearly 3 minutes or even more to get unstuck. In the second video the convoy rolled out as soon as every AI was on board on their vehicles. No insane AI driving.

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Yeah proper mixed vehicle convois would be welcome. A Russian convoy could look like this

armed UAZ...BMP3...T90x3...Trucks... BTR90

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I am starting to doubt this: I can have 4 trucks drive at full speed down a road without getting stuck or crashing (barely) by having them all ungrouped from each other. They Drive better ungrouped then grouped. apparently when you set the speed mode to FULL, the convoy behaves the same way as above. It gets messy when there are alot of intersections to pass through, but one or two turns is not a big deal. I can insert an entire platoon by trucks without much hassle.

Just need to play around with the settings, in my experience, AWARE, FULL, and ungrouped is the best convoy

yeah convoys are doable.Aslong as your not having to send it through towns/intersections, even then they are BAD drivers in comparison of how a normal person would drive down the road.I usually use safe mode, so some armor crew are turned out..because it looks cool. Still, Bottom line... The AI drivers are BAD.Always have been, always will be.Period. Tell me there good...

Edited by Iceman77

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personnaly, when I need to make a convoy, I use unitplay/unitcapture, and it works perfectly well.

it's better than the AI driving/pathfinding.

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personnaly, when I need to make a convoy, I use unitplay/unitcapture, and it works perfectly well.

it's better than the AI driving/pathfinding.

Do you get any sound, I do for aircraft but not for vehicles.

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