This week on the Eye Racing down Shift. We're ready to ring in a
new year. Christ wants no more vacations. I'm just gonna delete that out
of the HR portal. It's special events season. Or if I'll actually set
me on the team and you called me and ask if you could race,
and the AI guys join us to talk about all the ways you can use
I Racing AI. You set the AI really low, you start the back
and make like a three lap race, and you play hero mode. Nothing
wrong with that at all. All this and more, it's strap it.
Welcome to I Racing dash If Tammiels, Greg West, I'm back with the
boys, Kevin Bobbitt and Chris Leone. Got a great show for you to
day. It is special events season here at I Racing. We've got a
lot of opportunities to go race, go race with your friends. Of the
coming weeks, We've got a nice interview with not one, not two,
but the three members of our AI team. They're gonna talk about developing AI,
what's coming, what they've been working on, and just kind of the
whole process. I wish it was a video interview so you could see Nigel's
hair since he you know, as as smart as Einstein and kind of looks
like him too. I got permission to say that sort of, so it's
fine. And then we're gonna tell as long as HR doesn't listen to the
intro, we're fine. Now you were there. He gave me verbal permission.
We're fine. Hey, we're gonna talk about NASCAR free agency, get
kicked off this week and finished off talking about the world of out Car,
world of Outlaw Sprint car series, things that go round and around on dirt,
which is Chris Leone's specialty, or so you think. So if you
listen to this podcast, how are we doing? A voice awesome? Happy
New Year? Happy New Year? Have you written any checks wrong? Or
is that dating myself? Nobody writes check right? One check a month to
my h o A, and I'm angry every month when I write did you
put the right year on it? Or did you write twenty two? Uh?
Well, I haven't returned it, so I'm gonna sue us. There
you go. Actually, I know I dropped it off. It's like the
last day of December. I haven't written the January one yet, so I've
I've got an opportunity to screw it up. I'll report back. The first
news story that I saved of the year I saved the document is twenty twenty
one, so I'm regressive. Wow, how proud of you right now?
That's awesome. You're two years behind. That's impressive, Chris, well done.
Well, you know, how do you even make this meeting? Like?
I you know, I don't know. I mean, but if you've
ever shared a race track with me, you know that two years behind is
pretty modest. And yeah, that's fair. Maybe we shouldn't let you take
all that time off over the holidays. It's too too long for your brain
to just shut down him. Yeah, and and my break was a disaster
too, so I probably should have gotten back to work quicker. Well lesson
learned. That's take a vacation again. Chris wants no more vacations. So
I'm just gonna delete that out of the HR portal and we're all set.
I said, problems solved, creative solutions to complicated problems. What Kevin,
what'd you do over the holidays? Just? Uh, family and friends,
you know, just hanging out to do anything super exciting. Didn't go anywhere,
but the boys are home, which is great. And uh hung out
what about you? Yeah, kind of same old, same old plant plants,
indoor golf and and doing a lot of I racing on on the uh
the current season Race Challenge hosted by Chief Stewart nim Cross Bunch just picked up
a new series in that he guess what I'm racing? Does it have to
do with does it rhyme? Was SCHMOORSA? No? Oh no, rookie
street stocks. I'm in it. Yeah, for those that don't know,
we have we have taken a rule out anybody can race rookie street stocks now.
So it's uh, it's because of my my B level oval license clearly,
UH made me too good for that series. Not um No, I'm
having fun in him though. They're quick, short races, um plenty of
time. I think they're every hour, you know, I just jump in
and go, um awesome any time. Looking updated car model too, so
you should drive that in VR by the way, And I'm giving away lots
so I let you win awards because lots of people are beating me. Kevin's
making it rain rookies day one on I Racing, you can earn an I'll
let you win a word a word. I can't talk. How cool is
that? Right? I'm I'm a community guy. You know I'm doing the
right thing. Magnanimous that's your word of the day, right, Chris,
can you spell? That's no? That's no. No, we're not We're
not doing him. Need to stuff with my agent, hippopotamus, agent manager.
I need seventy two hours clear space so I can get my head in
the game. Leslie, I think we've already lost control of this podcast.
Leslie's addicted to the script spelling Bee, by the way, she's like the
biggest fan. She takes days off. She tweets at them, They tweet
back. It's that's her things. What word did you guys lose in your
elementary school spelling bees as a kid? Because is I lost on plagiarism because
I tried to spell it like plague. I lost on money. I thought,
you guys you copied somebody. But I am never imitated, never duplicated.
And I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is me. I guess I
want to talk about I racing? Sure? Why not? All right,
Well, I'm gonna read directly off Chris's outline. Then he magnanimously supplied to
us thirty eight minutes ago with about ten minutes notice. Uh, latest news
and special events in bold I Racing roar is this weekend one of the most
fun events you can do on I Racing. Uh. Not a team event,
solo. It's two point four hours kind of you know, tis the
season for things that are twenty four hours, as we'll talk about in a
moment, but a really a really fun event for the community. We've got
the touring cars are going to be out there. We've got the brand new
Toyota GR eighty six cup car, and I think we got the GT fours.
I made this series and I just forgot that sounds correct? Yeah right,
you got it. I did it. Yeah yeah, shaking off the
holiday rust yeah yeah, well the ten pounds you know, either either one
of those, but yeah, that kicks off this weekend. Details in the
forums. We've got four races going off, four time slash I should say
going off and once again that's that's two point four hours of solo. Good
times around Daytona and the low powered cars and Kevin. That's that's kind of
the dress rehearsal for the Eye Racing Daytona twenty four powered by Vco the first
race of the the VCO Grand Slam. They're back this year. Vico's big
sponsor of our special events. Great to have them on board. They have
got Daytona this year, which has traditionally been our biggest event. I think
right number ye, So looking forward to that. Several staff teams UH participating.
We'll see if Greig can twist my arm or not, if I can,
or if he'll actually set me on the team. Is really called me
and ask if you could race. We made room for you. I was
begging to be on the team and that they're gonna let me like so,
man have some more so so you might see some staff out there and maybe
we'll get a win or something. Who knows, maybe we'll just finish.
Probably not art. We're driving the P two and the staff one of the
staff cars, and we have everybody from I think Brian Lockwood's got like an
eight thousand I R two and I'm not trying to pick on you, Kevin,
but to Kevin Bobbitt, who's got what two thousand? Being nice,
you're being nice. If we want to round up, sure, but we'll
be right there in some middle split. It'll be it'll be entertaining. You
guys love me being on the team because I bring the average down. Yeah,
sure, well we'll go with that. No, but it should be
a VCO, right, And so they're sponsoring again. They've got Sebring as
well, Watkins Glenn and Petite Lamp, so they're in for the four pack
this year. I wanted to finish that thought. Sorry. Happens to be
the very similar to the Mitchelin Endurance Cup. Interesting how that works. Funny
how that works. So pretty excited for those races this year too. I
mean it's pretty much one for one to what MPs is doing with the the
GTP car, the BMW being debuted in December. We have the LMP two
class covered with the dlar P two seventeen, and we have the GTD or
GT three class as very well represented as well. So three classes are racing
this year in the Daytona twenty four. Really excited. I saw Doug on
Twitter having fun conversations with the with the the Daytona twenty four Twitter handle.
It's it's pretty entertaining to watch them go back and forth. So yeah,
very excited about that. So we have once again this week we've got the
Roar next weekend, we've got the Dayton of twenty four. Lots of opportunity
to spend way too much time on I Racing, so remember to spend a
lot of time. There's significant others during the week, so you're not in
trouble on the weekend. Pro tip on that. But we have our special
events calendar that there's a lot more to it than just the special events.
And by just the special events, I think there's twenty six out of fifty
two this year or something like that, but we fifty two weeks. But
we also have a bunch of returning series that are going to have their calendars
announced in the coming weeks. Nerburgring and Durance Championship, one of the most
popular series we have on I Racing, averaged over a thousand people every few
weeks racing around the Nerburgring, so that will be back with nine races this
year. We've got the BMW M sim Cup, which details to be announced
coming soon unless Kevin wants to can you remember from the negotiation, they're gonna
be BMW's in the series. There you go. That's all the details we
can share right now. But it's coming back. It'll be good, yeah,
very excited notice, he said, BMW's it's almost like there's more than
more than one. So maybe maybe a format change from the series formerly known
as the the BMWSMGT Cup and then of course very popular the Crevintic series the
twelve hour in durance races. There's four of those throughout the season, so
all of those calendars will be announced in the coming weeks. I think my
favorite part about these calendars none of these events overlap, so you can do
all of them without any of them overlapping. We have no more room in
the calendar. We are out of space. Anything after that, something's got
to give, but a lot of we need to make the year longer,
is what you're saying. Man, they're going by so fast. Go for
it. Happy, happy to forties around the corner, my friend. So
all right, well we have a great panel for our interview today. We
sat down Kevin and I just about twenty minutes ago with our AI development team
of Nigel Pattinson, Alexanders and Brent Foster. This is the team that the
team behind the team that make those little little cars with the big hearts ratio
as hard as they do. But they sat down and discussed you know kind
of what goes into AI and you know kind of what makes a tick.
So, without further ado, yeah, guys, all right, Kevin and
I are back and with a trio of guests. This time we had two
with Nigel and Tyler. We decided to up the ante a little bit this
week with we've got Nigel Pattinson, Alexanders and Brent Foster. You may wonder
what do these three guys have in common. While these are the guys behind
the AI on I racing, this the team behind the team per se.
So guys, welcome, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us.
Hey, yep, gould to be hit. All right, so let's go
around the room first of all and just kind of introduce everybody. Uh So,
first of all, we'll start with Nigel. Uh, you're a senior
software engineer. What do you do? Uh you know, what do you
do with AI? Well, I guess I've done the coding, taking it
on from originally the codebase that was came from NASCAR two thousand and three and
bringing it up to where it is is now just on the eyeslide. You
make that sound so simple. Um, yeah, it's it's been a challenge
at times, but it's it's it's more more hard slog than anything too too
deep or perceptive. I think, what what did you do before or you
were here? Like what was your job? Oh, I've just said programming
jobs in recently C plus plus but in various different industries. Nothing not more
strict casing anything boring stuff. Again, I started kind of mucking around with
games, going back at least a kind of Indy Car one and so I
don't know, I looked at the file formats and did a few few tweaks.
Like I think in those days, the games had palettes and when you
try to take a track from one of the games to another game, all
the colors would be wrong. So I think I came out with some program
to fix up the colors. But then when GPL came out, that was
a pretty cool game, and so a lot of modifying that in various ways.
Supported some of the mods like the sixty nine cars that have got wings,
that have downforce, and it was had a big system for changing the
code and making all kinds of changes, and they were trying to make the
Isle of Man TT circuit for GPL, and it turns out that there were
limits on how long the track could be, because I only needed to make
it long enough for the Nerboogring, which is not long enough the Aile of
Man, so that being too short. But you were doing all that for
fun. This was It's just the fun I spent. Well, yeah,
it became just about my life at some point. I spent way too much
time doing it. But you weren't getting a paycheck for it. I was
not getting a paycheck for it. Absolutely not. So you are a regular
sim racer, got it? Yeah, except not racing, just yeah,
modifying stuff. So yeah, that was my background. And then I ended
up moving to the States, transferring over the States with one of my previous
companies, and my pure coincidence, ended up about ten minute drive away from
Eye Racing's office. So when I ended up looking for a new drab,
that's where we went. Yeah, until, where where are you from?
You're obviously not from the US. I'll come on, that can't be that
obvious. I am. I'm from New Zealand. I was going to get
South Boston, but no similar accent. It's worse. It's worse, all
right. Next we have Alex Sanders, Senior production associate. Alex, you
have an interesting way of getting started with the AI on I Racing, mainly
because I'd be rated you. You got started building some basic lines for us,
right yeah, um, way way back in the day, almost three
years ago. Now, I guess m I Racing wanted to start doing the
AI and we just wanted to make sure that uh kind of the idealized line
for where the cars was was faster. So, um, me and me
and you met through a racing league and you said, hey, can you
try doing this? Um And from what I thought was going to be like
a fifteen minute project once now I have a job and been m have been
doing it three years and there's like no end in sight. There's still so
much more to do. Yeah, and and the specifics on that Alex had
to piece together the AI lines for the Norch Life, which is we had
nobody on staff that could do it, and so he started out contracted out
that big project. The next thing you know, Yeah, he works at
Eye Racing, so that's uh, that's pretty cool. We'll get into the
nitty gritty of some of that stuff a little bit later. And then last
of all, we've got Brent Foster, who's the newest guy on the team.
He's a vehicle production assistant and really has grown from somebody that we thought
was just going to drive lines into Now Brent, you do a lot of
car work, right, Uh? Yeah, probably at this point. Most
of what I do is working on cars for for the AI. Uh And
but yeah, basically I just try to make sure that their car behaves the
same way that your car does. And how did you have an interesting background
as well? You kind of applied for this job out of your comfort zone,
a little bit from your your classical training. Correct those words very strategically.
Yeah, to say it was out of my comfort zone, it's probably
a bit of an understand ement. Um. Yeah. So before starting at
Eye Racing just over two years ago, UM, I worked as a bassoonist.
Um. I played the bassoon and I made a living by um playing
in orchestras and um, you know, traveling around, uh, freelancing,
taking auditions. Um, That's that's what I did. But then when when
COVID started, all of that kind of work was non existent for quite a
while. Uh. And that's when I started on Ie Racing as a member.
And I saw your job posting, Greg, and I read the description
and I thought why not, I'll send my resume and and I thought for
sure that would be the end of it. But then shortly thereafter I was
getting phone calls from you. I'm annoying like that. I guess that was
gonna say, Greg and be persistent, but annoying is probably a better lady
haveing Kevin Bobbitt joining the podcast. Brent was a Brent was a lot of
fun to hire. I remember the night I called him. Leslie was a
big fan of his just because his background was so off the wall, and
I remember when I called him off from the job. I made him work
for it a little bit, but uh definitely earned it. He's that we
give a pretty pretty hard test to those that have to drive drive the car
on I Racing in any capacity, and it happened. The old test was
the portion of nine one cup car at Summit Point as part of it,
and you had to do a quall lap, which, Brent, that was
your car, right, Yeah. I mean it hadn't been for long,
but it was I think maybe maybe a couple months before before this, I
decided that that was the car that I wanted to race on I Racing.
So you know, it was still definitely new to me, but I at
least had my mind wrapped around and I think you put down a big que
number, so that was that was helpful in you getting the job for sure.
So but do you still play? Do I still play? Yeah?
Yeah I do. I mean obviously not not like I used to, um,
you know, before my life revolved around it, and now obviously with
a full time job here at I Racing, that's a bit different. Um.
But you know I still do play. I still enjoy it, um,
And I mean yeah, it will always be a big part of my
life. And I love playing music, love playing the bassoon. So yeah,
cool apartmental meetings start with him playing the masterpiece of theater theme song.
Yeah every week we should national anthem, we should bring that in. Actually,
yeah, we need talent show during the production meeting on Mondays. All
right, So let's get into the iRacing and AI. It's a fairly new
addition to the service. Definitely had a lot of opinions on it when it
first dropped, but now we have got a pretty substantial percentage of our of
our cars and tracks on there. If Saunders can probably quote it off the
top of his head, But what makes AI on Iye Racing different than maybe
on other titles, and it's just a roundtable discussion. Maybe kick it off
with Nigel what have what have you? Would have been some of your goals
as you did the base programming with our AI. Sure, so, I
guess um, you know it doesn't basic goals we do as bring up particulars
talked about we want the cars that the II are driving to behave the same
ways as the cars that you are driving. And that's the challenge in itself.
And obviously we have a large variety of cars in eye Racing, you
know, the range of capabilities. But I guess well, one thing that
I really wanted was for the AI do not act too much like kind of
robots for a single thing that they're doing, you know, exactly the same
lines lap after lap, So I kind of wanted them to have a bit
of variety between them and also to make the odd mistake here and there,
and for that not to be too kind of canned that they go too fast
into a corner, and they were too too fast into the corner, then
they would slide off things like that. So that's that's one of the things
that I've aimed for I think one of the things that you've also accomplished better
than a lot of titles, and that makes it more lifelike to play is
I preferred our little Ai folk as cheeky little guys because they'll press you.
They will not you know, and other other sims you can just you kind
of can figure out what they where they will fight you and where they won't
fight you. Ours pretty much will fight you all the time. I remember,
Alex, you're building the defend lines and trying to figure out what was
realistic and what made them, you know, want to fight almost too much.
But what do you think, what do you think? I don't know
separates our our aire the like one of the things that you've been proud to
work up. Yeah, I mean I kind of would would echo what Nigel
said. I like that they're they're less robotic in than in some of the
other titles that I've played with. I don't have a ton of experience um
on other racing games, but um, for sure, when you screw around
with some of those, you see that, you know, the lap ones
can be very robotic. Um, there can be you know, the other
the other cars are basically all the same whereas we have a lot of a
lot of customization you can do to the opponents to make them act differently.
UM and we really we can make a fun experience for the user kind of
regardless what kind of AI experience you want to have. UM. You know,
if if you want to set them up to be like an official race
where you're, um, you know, running something longer and you want the
skill spread to be very tight, like it's you know, doing a real
race, you can do that. UM And if you want to do the
Greg Special where you slap a race together, you set the AI really low,
you start at the back, you make like a three lap race and
you play hero mode, it works too. Nothing wrong with that at all,
No, And I think that's I think that's the point. Um.
AI can be anything you want it to be, UM and it and it
can do that. It can be more flexible than you know, like our
official series racing. UM, You're you're gonna get kind of a very specific
experience doing that, and AI can be more UM And I think I think
that's what's what's the neatest to me. And also UM seeing how it's how
it's grown over you know, the three years that I've been involved in it.
Obviously, when we put out a build, the the new content gets
a lot of attention, you know, new cars and new tracks going on
AI. But behavior wise, like we're constantly tweaking on this, We're constantly
working on making it better, um and that that may not be as obvious,
it may not get as much attention. But yeah, I'm impressed at
at how we've how far we've come um in the in the time that we've
been doing it. Yeah, it's been interesting to see how it's grown as
a whole. As is kind of an aside. When we started out,
we almost didn't know what to do with it. Now it is a major
function of vehicle development, and we do our best when we have new vehicles
coming out to to make our new vehicles and tracks to make them AI available
when it's appropriate when the dev cycle allow us for it. You know,
sometimes, as we saw with like the Mercedes W thirteen, you know,
like the car was was done so close to the to the release date,
there was no way to build AI in a form that was up to the
standard that you guys have developed and hashtag soon, hashtag soon. Yeah,
burying the lead there did you check that in. It's in, it's being
tested now confirmed from March, sure, yeah, I can. I'll confirm
it from March. Just don't don't give out my address or oh number or
anything like that in case something goes wrong. So, what are some of
the things that let's go back to production on this and anybody can chime in,
you know, what are some of the things that make developing AI on
iRacing some challenges and what are some of those those improvements that you're talking about
that we've made recently that has really just improved the overall experience. I'll chime
in with a challenge. So, how's an eracing a very dynamic the you
know, the tie is a dynamic. The track heats up, um,
then the tires start wearing out and the cars slow down, and trying to
get that to match across the AI is a huge challenge for the production guys.
So maybe they want to try men on those since they spend so much
time on it. Yeah, maybe maybe you'd like to talk about your recent
project. Yeah, okay, um, yeah, making sure that the AI
performs consistently, um, you know, relative to the car that they're driving
or the tracks that they're driving on is definitely a big challenge, and recently
I've been working through some of our most challenging tracks that we have. You
can say Darlington, you can say Darlington, so yeah, Darlington is one
of them. Um So, So for Darlington, I I've had to go
through basically all of our big oval cars um so, so like um,
the next Gen, the Gen six NASCAR, the eighty seven's, the Exfinity
car, the trucks ARCA, and the IRA eighteen and tweak them so that
they function properly at Darlington specifically. Um And fortunately I think I've been fairly
successful with that, and I've gone on to work through a few of our
other tracks that are causing us some issues. Well that's that's an interesting segue.
So let's talk about what makes you know specifically? You know, whether
it's the Cup cars you know, and they're running different maybe a different tire
of different tracks, or on some of the open World cars that have track
specific aero packages, that's stuff that all has to be accounted before. Yeah,
for sure, um, particularly with some thing like a complex car like
either the Next Gen or the IRA eighteen. Uh, there's a ton of
different arrow packages that exist, different types of tracks will have different tires,
um, So like obviously you won't run the same tire at Martinsville that you
would add Daytona obviously, So those all those different sort of variables and need
to be accounted for in the AI. That's a lot of what we do
trying to get them to perform consistently across all the tracks. So what are
some of these other incremental improvements other than you know, maybe it's just different
tire and arrow packages. You know, Nigel, you have really you know,
burnt the candle at both ends to improve some of the like I say,
the cheeky behavior, the light. How do you bring AI to life
rather than just playing fallow the leader? Um? Okay, So I mean
obviously you want them to make passing attempts. So it's there's a lot of
basically just hard slog and they're trying to see, you know what getting that
ALI to identify is is this a viable kind of passing opportunity or they're not
getting to dive down and time things right. And I'm sure they're still a
long way off perfect and a lot of that, but it's it's better than
it was when it started. And I think, you know, compared to
other ALI and other games, it's probably pretty good. So it's just m
Yeah, I wish there was a way to do it in some some simple
way we had some deep insight and suddenly it would all work. But actually
it's just a lot of hard slog going through endless situations trying to get them
to do the right thing. But also it's also about the randomness. I
like to have them, you know, in a given situation, maybe sometimes
they'll attempt to move and other times they won't. They'll hang back and leave
it for some other time. So I have a question and it has to
do with so we talk about how we've been improving or you guys have been
improving AI, not just by adding cars and tracks, but you know,
improving the overall system. But what about when because I racing evolves, right,
So cars will get an update, they'll get new tires, they'll get
whatever, a new arrow package they'll get. You know, we just updated
the cup car. We were talking about the nine one cup car, but
we just did an update to the nine nine two cup car, for example,
which isn't a it's a quality of life improvement. It's not a brand
new car. But does that mean you guys have to redo everything on it?
Or like, where's the line? How many? How much can we
change on a car before you guys have to get in and go, oh,
gotta do everything over again? It's an interesting question because it can vary
widely, obviously, So we just put out a patch that had the update
to the nine nine two cup like you mentioned, and also had a GT
three BP update and in in this particular case, because it really depends on
what the changes are. UM, the BOP update for the GT three's thankfully
did not require any additional AI work. The update to the nine two cup
car involved essentially doing the A for that car over again, lovely. So
the short answer is it depends, which means you guys need to be intimately
involved in any time somebody else is messing with one of your cars. Yeah,
and I guess I mentioned before that. Um. You know, behavioral
updates are a big part of what goes in and doesn't necessarily get the attention.
Car updates are a huge part of it too, um and you know
you'll you'll see those in the release notes that you know, the GT three
class got an update to AI Driver training or however we phrase it, um,
that can frequently be a really big deal. Um. Generally speaking,
I would say, how many ever cars we put out in a season that
are new, we've probably worked on at least that many, keeping up with
updates or um just improving them if it's if it's something that that that's required
on. So yeah, they As the catalog of AI content has grown,
Um, you know, we do spend more and more time maintaining things and
updating things for sure, right, So so the real visible stuff in release
notes is, hey, we added this to aim. But to your point,
it's it. You may have had to spend equally equalium kind of the
same amount of time on other cars just to keep them where they were because
a different engineer decided they were going to make that car better, which is
a good thing, right, I mean, it's good that we're making product
better. But at all it has this ripple effect, and I think members
probably don't realize how much goes into that. It's not you just didn't do
a car two years ago and I'll never look at it again. So yeah,
as usual, tires tend to be the complicated thing. So if you're
doing a if GT three goes through some bop and we add, I don't
know, five kilos to one of the cars to bounce a bit. Well,
the ao is probably going to react correctly to that five kilos and we'll
check it, but we probably don't need to do anything. But at the
very least you've got to run some laps to make sure that it is Yeah,
yeah, you mispronounced that. Brent has to run some laps. Yeah,
but if you change a tire, that's a it's a more complicated thing,
and the the AOI will try and do the right thing, but there's
a fair chance that it's going to need a little bit of tweaking. Brent.
How many times have you been doing a tire run to measure falloff and
and wadded it up two laps from the end and had to start all over?
Oh more than Yeah, Yeah, that's right. We're professionals here,
Greg, come on, Oh, that's That's one of the cool things about
I think there's role and not just with Brandon Alex but with all the vpas
is the level of detail that goes in to take you know, tire development,
whether it's for the player car or whether it's for the AI. Is
they do the long runs and and sometimes you waded up twenty nine laps into
a thirty lap run and there is no close enough. It is step away,
grab a drink, come back and start it over. Because our members
are going to find this out. They're going to do the thirty lap run
times ten thousand or you know more people on a nightly basis, So we
have to do our due diligence or we will be found out. And we
were not going to be found out. We're definitely going to put in the
effort because our members deserve that. Whether it's on the player car, whether
it's the AI, we want to provide the best experience possible for however you
want to partake in eye racing. And I'm incredibly proud of the group that
we have. Everybody's bought into that philosophy and truly believes it on a daily
basis, and it's a it's a really cool group to work at because they
bring the lunch pail every day to get the job done. Alex, you
said you had you had another thing as far as behavior that that you think
is it's definitely worth pointing out. Yeah, I mean, I think one
of the things that's that's a really good example of how behaviorally we've improved over
time. UM. When I first started working on AI, the I didn't
defend at all. UM And if you've ever been in an official race,
you know that's that's not realistic. UM. And over time we added kind
of our first iteration of the the AI defensive behavior UM, where we added,
you know, the ability for them to move over take a defensive line
into corners. It was kind of rough. It was very you know,
it is on or off. They they moved all the way over or they
didn't move over at all, UM. And that's something that we looked at.
UM. You know, we got community feedback. We do pay it
tention to that. You know, we I saw some of the guys that
create the videos on YouTube talking about reviews of our AI in particular and pointing
out strengths and weaknesses. And so we we put in kind of our our
second major iteration of AI defensive behavior in this this last build. And now
AI defensive behavior is a lot more varied. They don't necessarily go all the
way to the other side of the track. They'll be variation between what cars
will do, how far they'll go over or even if they'll defend at all.
And I think that's just a really nice example of the sort of behavioral
improvements that we make over time. You know, AI is is still very
much a work in progress where we're not looking at any part of it and
saying this is it, this is good enough, this is as good as
we can ever make it. We're always trying to make it better, and
uh, yeah, I think I think that's a really nice example of it.
Yeah, I mean think you you know, follow that up with what
Nigel's talking about, even future improvements where they will they'll do sins on you
will be a really nice touch, unless you're getting sent on and then you'll
probably be annoyed. But you know, realism, that's what That's what that
reset button for reset to previous session right there. I feel like it's a
common misconception about our AI is that everything is completely line based in their slot
cars. You know, that's something I see people talk about every so often,
and our our AI is a lot more complicated than that. Um you
can you know, if you just run an AI race and you look at
the cars out there and where they're running, there's variations between them. It's
something Nigel's done a great job on making them so that they're not just you
know in that Congo line going through like I've I've seen in some other titles.
Um, you know, they're not They're not going to take lines that
that don't make sense. But you will see variations even when all they're doing
is you know, cruising and circulating. I mean, obviously you'll see more
when they're trying to pass each other defending, but there is always some variation.
It's these are not lot cars. Yeah, I think that's you know,
you hit the nail on the head. It's one of those one of
the things that it makes us. It makes it so much more lifelike.
I said, you can you can join an AI race and you if somebody
was looking over your shoulder, there's they would not know for the most part,
whether you were online or whether you're playing. It's the the AI.
So that's that's a huge tip of the cap to you to the three of
you on you know, the level of detail that you guys go into on
on everything, whether it's tracker production, car production or or whatnot. It's
uh, it's pretty cool. Yeah, the lines you can cool them guidelines
really that's a bit more what they what they are. There's no line that
they follow. It's a line that they think about. Oh well, what's
some without giving away the farm here and if we have to, But what
are some things that we're working on an AI and you know, to come
for the future. I know I've bothered Nigel. I'm trying to get Nigel
to code it so when the AI bumps you or you bump the AI that
they flash their lights at you. But what are some other like cheeky improvements
that you know we've talked about doing or dare I even say other forms of
racing that we have thought about doing? Well, clearly, uh did racing
is on the on the roadmap. It's it's been a challenge, to be
honest, and that's that's the only reason that it's not out there yet as
we haven't got it to a point where it can be released, but it's
it'll be there at some point in time. I don't think we can say
when. I guess Rallycross will probably come come with that too. Well.
I know we've we've talked about UM getting more options available for AI racing that
we have for other things. So UM support for heat racing. It's something
that we're you know, we are working on. We did, we did
not forget about it. We are actually working on that as well as things
like, um, you know, putting in green, white, checkered m
basically any of those options if if you can do it for hosted, the
goal is to eventually let you be able to do that for AI. UM.
We always have, you know, more content coming. Although that that
list is getting getting smaller and smaller. I thought of one more thing in
terms that's the cheekiness you're talking about. One thing I would there's not in
there that I would like to do is if the car has been trying to
pass you for like ten laps and just can't find his way past that,
it gets increasingly bold, desperate, crazy dives down the ind So I take
you out that kind of stuffs. Yes, realism, We're gonna make them
wait ten laps or where I mean two seconds, depending on who you are.
If it's can we code it so if it's Kevin Bobbitt, they just
send it every lap they if then statement really and then if I ever get
the lead, I automatically crashed like I do. I thought that the Kevin
bobb at AI car was coded to only driving the gravel. No, No,
that's his player car. Oh that's just hard to tell. Sometimes it's
so real you just don't know. And I think we'd we'd be your miss.
Uh. It's no secret that we're working on Rain on Eye Racing and
I was in the rain meeting you know this week with Nigel in there.
That's going to be going to be part of AIS. There's no way around
it. I think the ability to to recreate scenarios you know, from races
past or whatnot, or create your own scenario from your imagination, or do
whatever you want. As Alex said, that's the great part about AI on
Eye Racing is you can make it whatever you want, right Nigel, Yeah,
yeah, for sure, Um yeah, we really do want to get
to the point where anything you can do in a racing non you can do
AI as well. So for sure that's the goal. All right, guys,
Well, we appreciate you taking the time. I know some of you
were more exuberant about joining the podcast than others, but we got you all
here and that's all that counts, are all that matters. But yeah,
thanks again for taking the time and uh yeah, Kevin, let's getting back
to the show. All right, great, always great to sit down with
staff and talk about all of the different layers that make I Racing what it
is. AI a fairly recent edition, but as you can see from these
three talking about it, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes
that you can't even imagine. Uh, it's it's pretty cool to be a
small cog in in the production of that. That's yeah, it's it's pretty
great. Moving forward, E Sports, Uh tis the season for free agency,
Chris, for the E NASCAR Cocola I Racing Series, give me the
ding somebody, somebody give me the dingan can you get the bell? Sence
you're upstairs now, Kevin, sleeping right next to me. You're very upset,
you know. Yeah. Post is fine. Yeah, I'll start doing
the bell and post. We'll fix it in post. Oh great, wonderful.
But NASCAR cocole I Racing Series free agency kicked off on Monday, Chris,
what is free agency for NASCAR? Yep? So the way NASCAR free
agency works is every year, all forty drivers that qualify for the series,
whether you're returning, whether you're new, whether you fell out beforehand or go
back in. Everybody's back in the pool. Um. You know, everybody
has an opportunity to either resign with the team they were with or go talk
to any of the teams, whether they're new or returning. And there will
be definitely some new faces in the series that get announced a little closer to
the opener at well, we got the clash at the end of the month,
but then the first point paying race at Daytona in the middle of February.
So the drivers try to get whatever they can get from the team owners.
The team owners try to put together the best teams that they possibly can.
It'll be really interesting this year to see which drivers end up changing teams,
if there were any big names moving around, if we end up with
a lot of some bigger names that just stay in place. But you know,
there were always a handful of just total changeups in free agency. Last
year we saw a handful of big names move around that we didn't expect.
We saw Bobby Zelenski go back to Joe Gibbs, for example, who he
had left a couple of years before, and then ended up paying that off
with a Championship four appearance. Steven Wilson had left RFK and gone to Stuart
Hawes. Same thing also made the Championship four. So it'll be interesting to
see how it changes up, which drivers end up moving around, which ones
end up staying in the same place, and with also a couple of top
driver retirements in the offseason, who ends up filling those seats as well.
So the r Racing socials will definitely have those announcements as they're coming out to
Malillo. I'm sure will be in the entire NASCAR Press corps will be on
the beat this entire week. By the time this show gets out, I'm
sure a few of the first announcements are going to be made, but it'll
be interesting to see who ends up where and how it changes the complexion of
the series. Yeah, I think the free agency, but also just the
sheer number of new drivers that are going to be into the series this year.
You know, curious to see how that's gonna shake things up. Now,
last year was really interesting, Chris, How many individual winners did we
have during this series? Well, we definitely had more than we could fit
in the playoffs because we had a couple of names that we're getting bounced out
and even fell outside of the Top twenty. I mean the biggest one who
if you're a life or your heartbreaks for is certainly ray Al Falla because Ray
is not actually back at the coke level this year, didn't quite make that
Top twenty cut and just had no luck at all in the Contender series.
And for the first time he's going to have to go through the road to
pro he has been in every series. And actually, when we were putting
together the driver document for the teams to study before free agency, you know,
he's the first name. And I've got this whole document lined up in
in design, so it's twenty linked pages of text and everything, and so
raise the Ray was the first name alphabetically had to delete it broke the whole
document. So Ray get back in there so I can so I can fix
it for twenty twenty four, please and thank you, and one other thing.
On the e NASCAR Series, I wanted to mention this. So this
weekend we have media Days. So we started doing this back in twenty twenty
where we get all the drivers in the series together and basically we have some
meetings, but we the main purpose is to gather some content so we can
make the broadcast better. You know, you've seen it in our broadcast,
you've seen it in the real world broadcast. You know, the driver intros
and the drivers are coming out and doing whatever. Somebody gets a win.
We'll have some things already already produced and ready to go, really kind of
to elevate the broadcast quality, to bring it to the next level of professionalism.
So nice that we can do that again. We started in twenty twenty
and then COVID hits. It was hard to get everybody together, but we're
back at it. So looking forward to that. Getting to see all the
drivers down in Charlotte this weekend, and then I'll have some great stuff for
the shows once I start. And a special shout out to AUTO for handling
all of the booking on that I did it the first time that we did
it and you almost quit. I do seem to recall we had a closed
door meeting after we got Charlotte. Yes, it was. It was an
adventure. It was I guess I timed my vacation well. Feel I feel
for AUTO. It's it's a lot of logistics to manage. It is well
worth it, though for the amount of content the last time we did it,
obviously you know we were able to get three years out of that use.
And it also speaks to the longevity of the drivers who make the Coke
Series and their ability to keep qualifying back in, keep qualifying back in um
that we were able to reuse so much for so long. But I'm sure
that the broadcast team, Drew Cisco, Sean Cory will love to have some
fresh headshots and videos and things like that for twenty twenty three. So the
broadcast should look great this year. So if you're ANANASCAR driver, then talking
just specifically for you too, when you do your head shot, are you
mean mugging? Are you smiling? That's a good question. Yes, I
think I smile. I think I smile. I think I think you'll get
you You'll get more notices that way, right, because you'd be like one
of the three, right, go against the grain. I don't know whatever
works. We're at just happy to have some, you know, real real
photos of them, things like that. So m however they want to present
themselves, fine by me. I think you give me both and in my
case, whichever one, my beard is less colicky and we go with that.
Klicky. We really really scraped the bottom of websters today, haven't we
Well, I just I remember my head shot from twenty twenty and I had
a beard Colick that nobody told me about, and so I think, whenever
I use that headshot, I have to photoshop it out. I hope we
get to use the lightsaber things again. Those were cool. Those were really
cool. I wasn't there, but I saw the videos, so those were
pretty cool. But we also have World of Outlaws Sprint Cars still close series.
Chris Mondays at nine yep Mondays at nine, I racing World of Outlaws
car Quest Sprint Car Series. Sorry pause for the ding for the bell and
post. I should leave that part in definitely deliberately. Timothy Smith has been
on a tear this year, leading laps, leading laps, getting good finishes,
getting good finishes. Took the points lead after Fairbury couldn't win a race.
Finally got it done at Cedar Lake and held off Alex Berger on you
know, the multi time champion, the guy who's face should basically be on
the trophy as far as the series goes, held him off to do it.
It's still close. They're still within single digit points with only a few
races left, but they are bringing the action with apologies to Lee Diffy when
it comes to that series and they are really making it a close fight.
I can't wait to see what the last few races turn out to be,
because I think it's gonna be I think it's going to be decided by single
digit points. I think it's going to be decided by a couple of spots
at the end. If you, even if you are not a dirt racing
fan or a dirt oval fan, you should do yourself favor if you like
racing and tune in, even for a few minutes and watch one of these
races. It is some of the best elbows out wheel the wheel racing you
can possibly imagine, and it's really a great showcase for you know, what
we can do on I Racing. But it's just a ton of fun.
So they do a really great job of it. So once again, Monday's
nine pm, go and check that out. And I think that's that's about
it. Yeah, I mean it's gonna be a big year, but we're
still kind of easing back in first first couple of weeks of January, but
it is going to be is going to be a heck of a busy year,
you know, It's a lot of news coming out of the NASCAR Champions
to Crown and World of Outlaws, big special events. We are going to
have so much to talk about in the February show. We're gonna struggle to
keep it to an hour and a half. Looking forward to it. Well,
thanks for listening to this episode of the IRAS and Don Schiff, don't
forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere
else Chris has put this thing, Bert, Kevin, Bobba, and Chris
Leoni. I am Greg West and we'll see you at Daytona