The TRB Championships saw another interesting race this weekend.
The track is known for its tricky, off-camber turns and short straights. I've decided to split the team and used a high-downforce setup for car #1 and a high-speed one for car #2. Looking back at results, the first choice proved to be more effective.
The qualification yielded "nothing new" - my cars were in the middle, USR/wdbee/Simplix teams at top. USR showed off a lightning-fast 1:07.02, so a quick maths gave me a race result of finishing 5 laps behind...
Green lights! And they're off for 128 laps... Kilo 1 drives nice at position 10 while Kilo 2 was blocked at the start by a JDI Porsche parking across the start lane... It took about half a lap time to get clear of that :( Anyway for the first 30-40 laps the Kilos were in the middle of the field, driving quite smooth and nice. I noticed however my robots were more elegant than others when letting one overlap them, and it caused quite some time loss. Then something went simply wrong - every overlapping put my robots back a long way, they even lost positions that way. Overlapping cars (especially the USR team) caused damage, opponents smashed into them, then they drove a bit glued together in 4th gear not overlapping/waiting to be overlapped (something wrong with team tactics decision code). Then around lap 90 Kilo 1 drove straight into the pit wall and spent 3 minutes there recovering :( That pretty much ruined all the race for him, until then it would have been capable of finishing #10, afterwards I was happy to see them finish 13th-14th.
Well as it is a fun game, I don't want to use words like 'catastrophe' but - it was one :( Nevertheless if I look at the race from an outside view, it was a nice, crowded race with a lot happening all around.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
TORCS Championships 2008 - Adelaide
It was the second race on this year's schedule of the TORCS Championships, held on a track very very similar to the late Adelaide street circuit.
There were 18 robots starting, installation went without any trouble. The qualifiers went OK again, my robots came mid-field, at position 9 and 12, separated only by some 6 hundreths. Then the race...
As it could be expected, the first corners were frantic and there was a huge crash involving 6-7 cars, only the first half of the cars survived it. So that and the following pit visits mixed up the order quite a bit, causing early overlappings and big fun to watch. My robots were set up using a low-downforce, highspeed setup, which made them suffer very much in the 90-degree corners, but they gained back quite a bit of time each lap on the straigth sections. In fact, they were quite hard to overtake, being speedy (3rd-4th in top speed competition). If one missed his chance in the corners, my robots were out of reach for him on the other parts of the track.
"As usual", the USR, wdbee and Simplix robots were fighting for top positions, closely followed by the Dummy team. Team Kiwi was fast again, but one of its robots did not stop to pit with no fuel left, so that meant the end for him, while his own teammate smashed into the small queue that formed behind his mate just slowing down.
My robots had a nice clash with the Inferno team and gained a shared 11th and a 13th position in the end. It could have been better even, if my better robot, Kilo 2 hadn't spin about 10 laps to go, as it was closing in on Inferno-C quite fast and could have overtaken him - but well, this is racing :)
Team JDI had improved quite a bit, better watch out for those blue-green Porsches next time. Too bad Berniw didn't have time to imrpove the robot code obviously, so his robots weren't competetive this time.
So it was an eventful race, and clearly showed the areas where I should improve the robot behaviour: smarter overtaking, faster recovery, working together as a team.
There were 18 robots starting, installation went without any trouble. The qualifiers went OK again, my robots came mid-field, at position 9 and 12, separated only by some 6 hundreths. Then the race...
As it could be expected, the first corners were frantic and there was a huge crash involving 6-7 cars, only the first half of the cars survived it. So that and the following pit visits mixed up the order quite a bit, causing early overlappings and big fun to watch. My robots were set up using a low-downforce, highspeed setup, which made them suffer very much in the 90-degree corners, but they gained back quite a bit of time each lap on the straigth sections. In fact, they were quite hard to overtake, being speedy (3rd-4th in top speed competition). If one missed his chance in the corners, my robots were out of reach for him on the other parts of the track."As usual", the USR, wdbee and Simplix robots were fighting for top positions, closely followed by the Dummy team. Team Kiwi was fast again, but one of its robots did not stop to pit with no fuel left, so that meant the end for him, while his own teammate smashed into the small queue that formed behind his mate just slowing down.
My robots had a nice clash with the Inferno team and gained a shared 11th and a 13th position in the end. It could have been better even, if my better robot, Kilo 2 hadn't spin about 10 laps to go, as it was closing in on Inferno-C quite fast and could have overtaken him - but well, this is racing :)
Team JDI had improved quite a bit, better watch out for those blue-green Porsches next time. Too bad Berniw didn't have time to imrpove the robot code obviously, so his robots weren't competetive this time.So it was an eventful race, and clearly showed the areas where I should improve the robot behaviour: smarter overtaking, faster recovery, working together as a team.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
TORCS Championships 2008 - Monza
The first round of the TORCS Championships was held on a furiously fast track resembling the old Monza circuit, without that awful first chicane.
All in all 16 robot cars showed up, it was quite easy to set the race up and compile the robots. As it turned out later, I should have double checked if they copied all their setup files to the appropriate places, but as I did not see any error messages during the 'make && make install' phase I thought everything went OK.
I've started the race truely enthusiatic, Péter was in control of the views despite I've warned him several times it can last for 2+ hours, he was eager to see it happen. Qualification went quite nice, my robots finished 7th & 8th, few hundreths apart only. I was quite happy to see them positioned in the middle of the pack.
Then the race started and my robots quickly moved lower on the list, driving around places 12-15 or so after the first few laps. I saw one of JDI's Porsches fall out quickly, not finishing the first lap even. Then real disaster followed, when my robot 'Kilo 2' smashed into the wall right after Variante della Roggia, in lap 4. I did not see exactly what happened as we were looking at some other cars at that moment. But obviously while it only damaged itself to about 50% it just couldn;t evade the wall and spent the next 10 minutes reversing only 1 meter and then hitting the wall again. So it was stuck there until pulled from the race :( Damn...
The race went on, the USR robots of Andrew vrooming around and some nice movements in the pack behind, and then... in lap 15 my other robot, 'Kilo 1' joined his teammate at the wall and shared its fate, too. So it was a double out :(((
From then on, we had a nice race to watch like on TV, no robots to worry about :) We've seen some duels and USR's R.Giskard run out of fuel.
All in all, it was quite some fun, too bad my robots missed most of the action :) Bummer... I've got to work on the recovery code, and also try and make them a little bit faster - their lap time was around 1:22 and there were 4 robots slower than them, however they did finish the race :)
All in all 16 robot cars showed up, it was quite easy to set the race up and compile the robots. As it turned out later, I should have double checked if they copied all their setup files to the appropriate places, but as I did not see any error messages during the 'make && make install' phase I thought everything went OK.
I've started the race truely enthusiatic, Péter was in control of the views despite I've warned him several times it can last for 2+ hours, he was eager to see it happen. Qualification went quite nice, my robots finished 7th & 8th, few hundreths apart only. I was quite happy to see them positioned in the middle of the pack.
Then the race started and my robots quickly moved lower on the list, driving around places 12-15 or so after the first few laps. I saw one of JDI's Porsches fall out quickly, not finishing the first lap even. Then real disaster followed, when my robot 'Kilo 2' smashed into the wall right after Variante della Roggia, in lap 4. I did not see exactly what happened as we were looking at some other cars at that moment. But obviously while it only damaged itself to about 50% it just couldn;t evade the wall and spent the next 10 minutes reversing only 1 meter and then hitting the wall again. So it was stuck there until pulled from the race :( Damn...
The race went on, the USR robots of Andrew vrooming around and some nice movements in the pack behind, and then... in lap 15 my other robot, 'Kilo 1' joined his teammate at the wall and shared its fate, too. So it was a double out :(((
From then on, we had a nice race to watch like on TV, no robots to worry about :) We've seen some duels and USR's R.Giskard run out of fuel.
All in all, it was quite some fun, too bad my robots missed most of the action :) Bummer... I've got to work on the recovery code, and also try and make them a little bit faster - their lap time was around 1:22 and there were 4 robots slower than them, however they did finish the race :)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
TORCS Championship 2008 - Rehearsals
This year I've decided to take part in the TORCS robot endurance championships. I like driving in TORCS and - being a software developer - programming a robot shouldn't be that difficult.
At least that's what I've thought first. I've been looking at / modifying the tutorial robot for quite a while but some months ago Andrew released his 'locus' robot code. Trying it I saw immediately that it was so much superior than the tutorial one I really should spend my time with that code instead. So I finally entered a team (called Alba) based on his code and I'll try my best - to finish the races and collect some race experiment.
The guys involved voted to have some preliminary racing before starting the real championship events, just for testing the racing environments and setups, etc. I was late to enter the first 2 test races but managed to race the third (last) one. And it was sheer fun :)
The race itself was run on the CG-1 track, a short (2km) and not too difficult track - being an endurance race, a ~2km track yielded 244 rounds, which provided many possibilities for overtaking, overlapping, pits and such. My robots qualified #9-10 (out of 12) and kept that position until the finish line - luckily Miguel's robots (the Kiwi team) had some setup issue and they continuosly understeered in the double lefthander turn. Otherwise my robots could have been the filler-ups only :)
Péter was watching the race (about 2 1/2 hours) and enjoyed it too - but was urging me to make my robots quicker. Like if I didn't also want to do exactly that... :)
First real race will be early June - a lot to improve until then.
At least that's what I've thought first. I've been looking at / modifying the tutorial robot for quite a while but some months ago Andrew released his 'locus' robot code. Trying it I saw immediately that it was so much superior than the tutorial one I really should spend my time with that code instead. So I finally entered a team (called Alba) based on his code and I'll try my best - to finish the races and collect some race experiment.
The guys involved voted to have some preliminary racing before starting the real championship events, just for testing the racing environments and setups, etc. I was late to enter the first 2 test races but managed to race the third (last) one. And it was sheer fun :)
The race itself was run on the CG-1 track, a short (2km) and not too difficult track - being an endurance race, a ~2km track yielded 244 rounds, which provided many possibilities for overtaking, overlapping, pits and such. My robots qualified #9-10 (out of 12) and kept that position until the finish line - luckily Miguel's robots (the Kiwi team) had some setup issue and they continuosly understeered in the double lefthander turn. Otherwise my robots could have been the filler-ups only :)
Péter was watching the race (about 2 1/2 hours) and enjoyed it too - but was urging me to make my robots quicker. Like if I didn't also want to do exactly that... :)
First real race will be early June - a lot to improve until then.
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