The AI thread

June 19

Watching this video, I noticed that the overall level of detail in the game has improved significantly, so I am very excited and think it will be fun.

However, my opinion changed during the combat scene at 1:21:34. Watching the 1v1 battle between the Sabre and the MiG-15, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the lack of any noticeable improvement in the AI's capabilities. The MiG-15 simply repeats left turns and shows absolutely no signs of action to survive. A human pilot would alternate between left and right turns, perform dives or vertical climbs, or execute frantic roll maneuvers, but in the video, it merely repeats loose left turns, just like the AI in the GB series. It feels as if it is saying, "I have no intention of fighting you." I suspect the AI pilot's skill level was set to Veteran (Sergeant) before the game started, but I expect the Ace pilot's skill level wouldn't be much different.

A similar pattern was observed in another video where the MiG-15 intercepts B-29 bombers. The player engaged an F-80, and the F-80 also only repeated loose turning maneuvers, exhibiting AI skills no different from those in the GB series. Even the way the wings shake while turning remains exactly the same.

Even considering this is an early access stage, the AI pilot's skills look terrible. It is very worrying to see that the issue of AI pilot performance persists in this title, despite many users consistently pointing it out from the Rise of Flight series through the GB series.

In particular, this title is being promoted as having enhanced single-player elements; if the AI level remains the same in the official release in August, the future of this game looks very bleak.

Please tell me that the AI pilot's skills will be much improved in the official release version... please...

Edited June 19 by kodamcity

June 19

The dogfight vs AI looks exactly as boring as it does in IL2 GB. Anyone who thought that AI would reach a higher level will be dissapointet. Those high speed dogfights anyway are boring since you are blacking out every time or stalling when you get to slow. I think it was very optimistic going to Korea and i dont know how those high speed dogfights are going to be fun for those WW2 simmer like me.

June 19

Yeah I've watched a few of them...the AI looks pretty similar to BoX from what I'm seeing, unless others are seeing different?

June 19

1 hour ago, tattywelshie said:

Yeah I've watched a few of them...the AI looks pretty similar to BoX from what I'm seeing, unless others are seeing different?

AI is looking pretty much identical to GB, which is a shame because everything else in Korea is looking markedly better and a huge improvement.

June 19

It's not really surprising given what they've shared about the difficulties with finding someone to work on this. It may also simply be very hard to do. A certain competitor product also has a bad AI.

Ultimately, I think that this is the period where all the Utopian dreams clash with reality, and some of us need to go through the 5 stages of grief to reconcile ourselves with the reality that the new sim is not going to be perfect.

Edited June 19 by Aapje

June 19

1 hour ago, tattywelshie said:

Yeah I've watched a few of them...the AI looks pretty similar to BoX from what I'm seeing, unless others are seeing different?

I wrote about this issue today, but people's reactions don't seem to be a big deal.

In my opinion, we must now take the AI issue very seriously. We know that AI development is difficult, but now, along with intense criticism, we must demand that it be improved as a top priority above all other tasks.

People might think I am reacting too sensitively.

But think about it. The AI level hasn't improved at all, from Rise of Flight and the GB series to Flying Circus. We understood the developers' response that AI work is difficult and We hoped for improvements in the new game. And the result is a new release featuring the same AI problems as before! It's 17 years. 17 years!

I purchased almost all aircraft for Rise of Flight, all DLC for the GB series, and all Flying Circus volumes, and Korea purchased the Founder Edition. Therefore, I believe I have the right to strongly criticize this AI issue!

Dear developers, I understand that you have worked hard to create this new game. However, right now you must solve AI problems more than any other tasks!

June 19

My thoughts exactly after watching the video. I'd made a couple of post over the last couple of years asking for more information on the AI for Korea, to pretty much total silence on that front. :( I play both multiplayer and SP so I'll still end up getting it, but it doesn't surprise me with how quiet any mention of specifics on AI improvement in the development process. Always been GB biggest weakness. Hopefully they have something for AI cooking for release. Like someone mentioned above, it would go such a long way if we could just get some kinda of basic survival instinct out of the AI.

June 19

There are two parts to this. AI stick and rudder skills, and AI aeronautical decision making. How well he flies vs what situations does he choose to put himself into.

From the videos, it looks like AI stick and rudder skills are about the same, which is disappointing. I don't know if we can tell about the decision making from what I have seen. I still have hope for this. I also regard it as the more important part to address based on the current state of things, especially for campaign mode. If the AI knows enough to disengage before the situation becomes untenable, you might not lose your whole squadron in the first three missions.

But honestly, the guys who built WOFF with a development team of two managed to produce an AI that does both of these things miles better than its more modern competitors. Why it continues to evade the grasp of relatively large, well funded development teams does not make sense.

June 19

Regarding AI, I'm under the impression that they have not addressed most comments in the past for a reason. When they do, it's typically a tangential response such as "they can now follow commands better" or "Taxiing has improved", when we all know the focus of the questions is on the combat behavior.

Im waiting to get my hands on it before I form a full opinion since watching a couple of videos does not do it justice. But I'm keeping expectations low, that the combat AI will be similar or marginally improved over GB.

Having said that, one of the live streams showed the commands menu and how you can give very specific instructions for maneuvers etc., so that brings me hope that there is more granularity and potential for better AI to use those tactics.

June 19

Folk will defend the AI in GB by saying that it has virtue of being a full mirror of the FM that the player has access to. On principle I agree that this is a good thing, and I would obviously prefer the enemy to fly within identical parameters to what the player is able to achieve. It clearly isn't particularly fit for purpose though since the better part of the AI shares the same observational reactions as they did in Rise of Flight.

I'm of the opinion now where I would prefer to see a return to the AI aircraft having a simplified FM, and from there the developers can build a more robust and believable combat scenario - provide the illusion, our brains will do the rest. I am interested to see where the B29 goes with its own simplified FM and what the developers will learn from having that in Korea.

June 19

8 minutes ago, Leifr said:

Folk will defend the AI in GB by saying that it has virtue of being a full mirror of the FM that the player has access to. On principle I agree that this is a good thing, and I would obviously prefer the enemy to fly within identical parameters to what the player is able to achieve. It clearly isn't particularly fit for purpose though since the better part of the AI shares the same observational reactions as they did in Rise of Flight.

I'm of the opinion now where I would prefer to see a return to the AI aircraft having a simplified FM, and from there the developers can build a more robust and believable combat scenario - provide the illusion, our brains will do the rest. I am interested to see where the B29 goes with its own simplified FM and what the developers will learn from having that in Korea.

As long as it's not the absolute trainwreck of cheating UFO AI that "other competitors" have, I'm not opposed to it.

However, at this point it might just be easier to keep the user constraints and train the AI it to fly better. I'm no expert, so I'm sure there are a lot of factors we are not aware of that go into this decision.

From what I've seen over the last decade, the devs have always made pretty sensible decisions based on the tradeoffs and have gained my trust on that regard.

June 19

25 minutes ago, Jade_Monkey said:

Regarding AI, I'm under the impression that they have not addressed most comments in the past for a reason. When they do, it's typically a tangential response such as "they can now follow commands better" or "Taxiing has improved", when we all know the focus of the questions is on the combat behavior.

In my opinion, it isn't the combat behaviour but the situational awareness which is the most serious issue. Until they implement a system where the AI scans different parts of the sky (as opposed to looking in all directions) and has some randomness to its detection range, historical behaviours won't be present. I'm not sure what the state is in Korea - but this was the biggest weakness in Great Battles.

That said, a few observations AI:

- AI is arguably the single hardest engineering challenge for any flight simulator.

- A lot of work needs to be done to get aircraft (particularly early jets), reliably flying and conducting ground attack in complex mountainous terrain (which Korea has a lot of), as well as landing on relatively small runways in mountainous areas (and possibly at sea). This will have taken resources. Hopefully work will continue on AI.

- One of the videos show the ability to command your wingman to do one of nine different evasive manoeuvres. You can also command a generic evasion, or the wingman to break away in a climb or dive or level flight in one of four directions. That said, I'm not sure how well they work - just that the communications menu shows that they are implementing a bunch of jet era evasive manoeuvres.

June 19

I am withholding any judgement on the state of the AI until I actually get my hands on the sim. We don't have any idea what the AI in the one bit of the stream that some of you are so concerned about were actually set at.

If we are historically portraying North Korean and most Chinese pilots, then they should be meat on the table for the UN pilots. The VVS "volunteers" are another thing though.

We need to wait and see what the final release version brings before making judgements based on one video clip of the early access release.

June 19

57 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

I am withholding any judgement on the state of the AI until I actually get my hands on the sim. We don't have any idea what the AI in the one bit of the stream that some of you are so concerned about were actually set at.

If we are historically portraying North Korean and most Chinese pilots, then they should be meat on the table for the UN pilots. The VVS "volunteers" are another thing though.

We need to wait and see what the final release version brings before making judgements based on one video clip of the early access release.

The worry is, seeing these shot clips, together with a compile lack of any sort of development videos on any sort of updates regarding AI doesn’t fill me with any confidence. I really hope to be proven wrong obviously, and maybe there’s a big AI update that will be released during early access, but yeah, disappointing so far.

Do love the fact though that the sky is full of aircraft, looks like total chaos, which is great!!!

Edited June 19 by tattywelshie

June 19

Yeah, I'm with the people worried about the AI. There's clearly a ton of great improvements to the engine, but why was something this important not given priority?

Also, I notice that in pretty much every clip that a dead 6 shot on a B-29 immediately stops both inboard engines. It shouldn't be that easy, right?

June 19

For the B29, depended on the variant and production date, anywhere between 10 and 20 .50cals with computer aiming assist and a 20mm canon stinger should be dropping some of those MiGs, but I didn’t “see” a single one firing. These guns should be brisling with fire; in formation with other B29s, should be a wall of fire; more so than the B17. The MiG tactic was to blow through the formation vertically, not come horizontal with it and take all that opposing fire. And yes, explosions look very much 2-dimensional.

June 19

10 minutes ago, KillerBee said:

For the B29, depended on the variant and production date, anywhere between 10 and 20 .50cals with computer aiming assist and a 20mm canon stinger should be dropping some of those MiGs, but I didn’t “see” a single one firing. These guns should be brisling with fire; in formation with other B29s, should be a wall of fire; more so than the B17. The MiG tactic was to blow through the formation vertically, not come horizontal with it and take all that opposing fire. And yes, explosions look very much 2-dimensional.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s early access and these things should be hopefully all be sorted out before full release. I was surprised myself to not see more defensive fire. I’ve had another look at the fire effects, another video they look slightly better, so holding off judgement on that front!

June 19

50 minutes ago, KillerBee said:

For the B29, depended on the variant and production date, anywhere between 10 and 20 .50cals with computer aiming assist and a 20mm canon stinger should be dropping some of those MiGs, but I didn’t “see” a single one firing. These guns should be brisling with fire; in formation with other B29s, should be a wall of fire; more so than the B17. The MiG tactic was to blow through the formation vertically, not come horizontal with it and take all that opposing fire. And yes, explosions look very much 2-dimensional.

Yes, I was also concerned about the lack of return fire from the B29s - they were either inactive, or as effective as return fire is in GB (zilch). Every EA video I've seen today running that scenario had very little trouble, if any real concern, flying in and around the B29 formation.

June 19

29 minutes ago, Leifr said:

Yes, I was also concerned about the lack of return fire from the B29s - they were either inactive, or as effective as return fire is in GB (zilch). Every EA video I've seen today running that scenario had very little trouble, if any real concern, flying in and around the B29 formation.

Yeah, hopefully it's something that is addressed during early access?

June 19

6 hours ago, gecko said:

From the videos, it looks like AI stick and rudder skills are about the same, which is disappointing.

I don't think there's an issue with the current "stick and rudder" skills at all. The AI behaves pretty believable there, IMO. If anything, it probably doesn't stall often enough. The issues are in the tactics and situational awareness areas.

Maybe the AI's stick and rudder skills can't compete against the best online players, but I don't think that's a fair comparison at all since those are way better than something like 99.9% of all real-life WW2 pilots.

June 19

Every day I get a call from an AI bot who wants to discuss my healthcare options. The first time it happened I could tell that it was AI before it completed its first sentence. The healthcare insurance industry has the ability to spend big money on human sounding AI bots, but they still sound like bots (even though they try to mimic human speech patterns). I will be surprised if it becomes even slightly more human sounding over the next 20 years.

But, sure, we’re going to get good AI in air combat sims (a significantly more difficult task than a healthcare insurance sales bot) any day now.

June 19

26 minutes ago, BraveSirRobin said:

Every day I get a call from an AI bot who wants to discuss my healthcare options. The first time it happened I could tell that it was AI before it completed its first sentence. The healthcare insurance industry has the ability to spend big money on human sounding AI bots, but they still sound like bots (even though they try to mimic human speech patterns). I will be surprised if it becomes even slightly more human sounding over the next 20 years.

But, sure, we’re going to get good AI in air combat sims (a significantly more difficult task than a healthcare insurance sales bot) any day now.

The thing that I find frustrating with the whole AI thing, is that it literally doesn’t seemed to have advanced at all since the 90s or early 00s in terms of flight sims. Maybe the advent of multiplayer has meant that development has stalled and that expertise in this field is now in short supply?

June 19

5 minutes ago, tattywelshie said:

The thing that I find frustrating with the whole AI thing, is that it literally doesn’t seemed to have advanced at all since the 90s or early 00s in terms of flight sims. Maybe the advent of multiplayer has meant that development has stalled and that expertise in this field is now in short supply?

It takes years to train a fighter pilot. Then it takes years of experience before that pilot is actually really good. We’re playing the game on a desktop computer. The reason the AI isn’t very good is pretty obvious.

June 19

Some of the videos they made a point of putting the AI on Ace level. AI didn't look all that easy and tore him up pretty good when his focus got locked on something else.

June 19

3 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I don't think there's an issue with the current "stick and rudder" skills at all. The AI behaves pretty believable there, IMO. If anything, it probably doesn't stall often enough. The issues are in the tactics and situational awareness areas.

Maybe the AI's stick and rudder skills can't compete against the best online players, but I don't think that's a fair comparison at all since those are way better than something like 99.9% of all real-life WW2 pilots.

Yes, think this was actually observable in the streams, Tricker blasted three of the B-29's out of the hand full of them he hit and immediately took out engines 2 & 3, the props on both engines on all three aircraft he fired on seizing up simultaneous and instant with the hits he delivered. Where as Wolfpack345 knocked three B-29 tail fins completely off almost in a row in his own series of attacks. That is pretty much proof in the pudding of the impact a players own inputs can have dramatically different repeatable effects on what is going to happen.

I don't think it can be discounted, someone will always play an angle AI can't account for and no one ever dreamed would actually occur, the higher the resolution of the world and physics the bigger the potential to find a tactical weakness to exploit.

I'll be happy if the AI can finally handle low level flight, that was sadly a no go in Great Battles, all one had to do was fly low level to escape the AI completely, I didn't even bother to watch for them at low level.

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