If you have played F1 25 with bots, you know how unforgiving they are. Compared to the previous entries, the bot’s difficulty in F1 25 has increased significantly. They just don’t make mistakes, and you are punished severely for even the slightest mistakes. Whether it’s getting a bad corner exit or misjudging on defence, a bot car will fly past you sooner or later.
It’s even worse on tracks like China and Canada, where the AI becomes Max Verstappen. Some people enjoy this rise in difficulty, while some criticize it for being unfair. You can tune the difficulty slider to your comfortability but at max difficulty, the AI is tough to beat.
This is still pretty understandable given that AI is coded to be better at “driving” on max difficulty. What’s worrying is this recent post on Reddit that suggests AI’s tires degrade slowly compared to the player, giving it an unfair advantage. The post showcased two images of tires, one of the player and the other of the AI. The player’s tires showed visible blistering and tire degradation, whereas for the AI, the tires were smooth. It quickly turned into a hot debate on whether the AI is fair or not.
Do The AI Have Less Tire Degradation?
The truth is, AI does not have less tire degradation. The thing is, the game shows visual degradation on your tires, but for the AI, it doesn’t render it; instead, it just calculates the tire wear and slows the car down accordingly.
So, when you look at it visually, you’d notice the AI’s tires being smooth, but in reality, they are the same condition as the player’s; the game just doesn’t render them to save resources. A member explained it quite well:
The AI doesn’t actually get tyre wear, they just simulate it by going slightly slower, hence no visual tyre wear, because EA is EA
If you look at it from an optimization point of view, it kinda makes sense. If all 19 cars were to render and simulate tire wear, that would cost a lot of resources, and the game would struggle to run smoothly. So, they just slow down the AI cars according to the tire wear instead of actually simulating tire wear.
Whether you call it smart optimization or lazy development is up to you, but one thing is for sure: AI in F1 25 is very difficult to race against.
