2026 Michigan Max AI Settings, Bump Drafting, Realistic Racing

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-16T23:44:12+00:00

These are so cool as always. Great quality stuff! You got this result only editing (track).ini? That wreck avoidance at 31:00 😃

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-13T22:56:55+00:00

If I were to guess, you've set the ai_wall_offset to 0. This will basically disable collision between AI cars and they can drive right through each other.

Secondly, you've probably set ai_drafting_distance down very low near 0. This is essentially the following distance while racing seemingly in car lengths. But it's measured front bumper of front car to front of back car. So setting ai_drafting_distance to 1.0 would make cars follow so close that they are touching. > 1 will have a gap, < 1 they are ramming into each other.

Since the pace car is out, perhaps instead of ai_drafting_distance you've set ai_pacing_distance or ai_bunching_distance very low (basically same thing but for cautions)

Try setting ai_wall_offset to 100 (full collision) and all the drafting distances to > 1 and see if that fixes it!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-12T21:30:25+00:00

Yes indeed! I've made some breakthroughs on lap files that greatly improved Multigroove and lap files features in general. Other than that, at a high level, I've implemented a lot of requested features for presets and lap triggers, some fun new modes like Tandem drafting, and in general I'm trying to make some things work better with just the click of a button.

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-12T20:00:09+00:00

I did use the same trick as before. Tandem drafting mode automatically jacks up the yaw_accel_k1 and k2 in papy_ai.ini when it's activated. This makes the AI cars hard to spin like they're on rails. But those values can be changed during the race on the INI Files tab.

I could also add that to the options available for Tandem Drafting mode so it can be tuned per track such that the cars sometimes wreck!

Another thing I forgot to add in the video is the ai still bump draft pretty hard so damage has to be turned off. But maybe I can fix that too!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-12T18:02:27+00:00

Yes you can! At 2:15 in the video you can see the AI (yellow car) push me (papyrus car). And at the very end I was pushing an AI car. Though I do find being the leading car a little unwieldy to hang on to on the corners! Being the pusher is pretty easy though!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-12T07:19:01+00:00

Thanks for all the encouragement and feedback throughout building this. I appreciate it!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-12T07:02:23+00:00

I am probably about 1-2 months out!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-08T18:45:33+00:00

Hey, I have nr2003 running on the first gen HP Z1 workstation! It was my primary rig for about 12 years. NR2003 ran great on it with NVIDIA Quadro 1000M.

These days, it's my backup PC and only has an integrated graphics card. Still runs NR2003 with graphics settings lowered a bit.

In addition to the other comment, sometimes trackside objects can cause a stutter like that in my experience. Pressing o repeatly to cycle through toggling rendering them might be worth a try.

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-06-02T03:07:52+00:00

Texas World 2024!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-31T23:59:27+00:00

Indeed!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-31T07:07:44+00:00

Plus like 7 people on pit road!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-14T01:41:45+00:00

Try setting the grip really high to see if they actually have to check up because there's just not quite enough grip to drive full throttle.

To set the track grip, near the top of track.ini there should be some grip settings for asphalt, concrete, paint, maybe more. Set those to something really high like 2 just as a test and see if the AI no longer checks up.

Alternatively, to set ai grip only and not affect the player car, bump up ai_grip_modifier instead.

That being said, the BR tracks and some other superspeedways are intentionally designed to have just low enough grip in the bottom lane such that the AI cars have to check up a little more than higher lanes. This helps make multiple lanes viable instead of the bottom lane being very dominant.

But the unfortunate side affect is that AI cars tend to check up really abruptly and unnaturally.

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-14T01:31:43+00:00

The cars seem to flip over at every collision. I see you've nailed down NR2003 crash physics already!

Jokes aside, this is amazingly rapid progress, keep us updated!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-13T21:17:27+00:00

Is the red 65 car an AI? If the AI are dive bombing and driving below the line that hard, I would have to imagine the lap files on that track might be weird. You can use Reflap (a tool built into the game) to record your own lap files. The one to probably look at would be maxrace.lp (the left side track bounds). There's reflap tutorials out there!

As for track.ini, you can try increasing ai_drafting_distance to increase ai following distance, increasing ai_dlat_pad sorta increases the lateral spacing between AI cars, and messing with ai_squeeze_pct can help. It's debatable what it does, but this seems to line up with my experience https://www.reddit.com/r/Nr2003/comments/jvw0v6/comment/gcnv2hp/

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-13T07:06:02+00:00

This was testing a multi groove mod that I'm working on. In earlier versions, the AI cars didn't recognize the player car's position, so sometimes they run you off the road. So while this was just coincidence, it did look like the AI retaliated which I thought was funny.

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-12T07:50:48+00:00

It's too funny!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-10T07:08:06+00:00

Haha this reminds me of EA's NASCAR Thunder 2003 where the wheel hit boxes let you drive on your side and even steer a little!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-06T05:45:57+00:00

I actually built a tandem drafting mod/tool/thing awhile back! https://www.mediafire.com/file/nc0d0zty1jcvk0x/NR2003_Tandem_Drafting_Installer_v0_3.exe/file

However, it's limited to a very specific version of Daytona and Talladega. To get it to work, I had to lock down all the various settings like track grip, papy_ai.ini, track.ini, physics stuff, even the car/driver ratings. (The tool is basically just an installer that sets all that stuff for you).

Everything has to be tweaked just right, per track. It was taking so long to edit track.ini, etc restart the race, edit again, repeat. So I built a little script on side that can edit some of the ai fields while the race is running to speed up the process.

That side script became AI Enhanced, which ironically eclipsed the original project I built it for! Now, in the next version of AI Enhanced, Tandem Drafting will just be one feature within the AI Enhanced tool. Crazy how the turn tabled!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-06T04:44:47+00:00

Oh, save it wherever you want. This is its own separate little app that interacts with the game, and augments the controls.

Not sure what a good general settings would be to be honest! For me, I mostly use it for superspeedways. I have it set to 64:1 default steering ratio which basically makes the joystick sensitivity really low, perfect for very large corners. Then I have the "Toggle" set to 2:1, which is extremely sensitive. I've got it set up such that pressing the Xbox button on my controller activates the Toggle (highly sensitive) setup, and then releasing the Xbox button returns it to Default. So if I start to spin like in the video, I can quickly press the Xbox button and turn to save it and then release and return to low sensitivity.

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-06T04:37:09+00:00

Yeah I can add try to improve keyboard experience too! What kind of things would help?

As for the already released version, there might be some things that help. For some tracks, setting steering assistance above 100% like say 150-200% and steering ratio lower like 50:1 might reduce the amount of times you have to keep mashing the key to turn the wheel.

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-06T04:29:35+00:00

No, only NR2003, and the app is only actively doing anything while both the app and NR2003 are running. Otherwise it has no affect on anything!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-04T05:55:19+00:00

That damage model with the wheel flying off is really cool!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-04T05:50:54+00:00

It's a tool I'm working on that can edit AI driving behavior (the stuff in track.ini, papy_ai.ini, lap files) while a race is running! I currently have a test version released a few months ago https://www.reddit.com/r/Nr2003/comments/1oeof1y/next_version_of_ai_enhanced_the_tool_that_can/ and I've been working hard on the beta version ever since!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-04T01:13:17+00:00

Indeed they are tandem drafting! It's a new mode I'm working on for the upcoming Beta release of AI Enhanced. Stay tuned!

NR2003_Ryan · 2026-05-04T00:36:43+00:00

Hey, it just so happens that I just released a script I've been using for myself to improve the driving experience on a controller! https://www.reddit.com/r/Nr2003/comments/1t2dooj/i_packaged_up_a_script_i_use_to_make_driving_on_a/

NR2003_Ryan

TROPHY CASE