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I just wanted to reaffirm how important it is to make sure that the AI nodes, especially in critical, high speed turns, extend BEYOND the point where you'd expect cars to travel. If a car traveling at high velocity is aimed at a point that is outside the nodes, the car will freak out and stop trying to follow the AI line.

If you're having trouble with certain AI cars not being able to make a corner, even though based on their handling characteristics and your experience with driving that car, they SHOULD be able to make that corner, then make sure you pull the AI nodes away from the corner to give the AI room to breath. That should fix most problems.

To illustrate, here's what I see most tracks doing with track nodes:



When the car's trajectory directs it outside the nodes, even if it is still physically inside the nodes, the car's AI stops responding and the car will careen forward until it crashes into whatever is outside the nodes.

When this happens, you want to expand the nodes in the area where the car's trajectory would naturally lead it to:



For example, if you look at this track map of Sepang, you'll notice that there are areas for the cars to slide into when they lose control on a turn. These areas are usually full of sand so that the drivers don't crash their cars upon losing control. This is what you want to do with your AI nodes.



I've found improvements doing this even with cars traveling as slow as 30 MPH, so don't think that this is only necessary for excessively fast cars.

Are you saying that this method is faster than the property "Slow down: 30mph" for example? If so, I better test this on my track. Unfortunately the area is filled up with trees.

You just have to find a way to get the nodes to go in the general area where you want them. It doesn't have to look nice, it just has to be decently far away from the track. Although I'd recommend trying to keep them as close to ground level as possible - remember, cars respawn at the height of the AI line.

Whether cars will handle it better than slowing down depends entirely on the cars. The way I see it, if you can handle the turn while driving the car without slowing down, then the AI should be able to handle it without slowing down as well. If the AI isn't making a turn that you can make driving the same car, then something is wrong with the AI nodes.

why dont you just move the racing line over farther towards the inside of the turn?

zipperrulez @ Sep 13 2009, 11:59 AM wrote: why dont you just move the racing line over farther towards the inside of the turn?

It doesn't hurt to do that unless it causes cars to slide out of control, but it doesn't fix the problem either. If the car is going fast enough that its trajectory causes it to point outside your AI nodes, it doesn't matter were the AI line is.