Hey Sim Racers, I will be doing Valor for free! I want to let you guys know how Valor works. This isn’t a free tiered option where you get a gutted engineer. You get the full race weekend engineer. This isnt an ai app either. Everything you get for free is deterministic not ai.
In Practice, we have a root cause engine & a target turn model. Every lap valor determines one target turn that is the best loss / most gainable turn and will coach that target turn. Valor monitors all turns so through ptt you can ask about any turn and hear what your root cause problem is. Root cause is important because we don’t just want to tell you where the turn was slow but where the turn was actually damaged first. If the exit is slow because of the braking zone valor knows and coaches that. Early Entry, late entry, apex, early exit, and late exit are all zoned areas we have for every turn. This is done by having track geometry & what we call a blueprint. Every track gets scanned through Valor so we have the complete track geometry.
In qualifying, Valor is precise. Valor drops the coaching unless asked and focuses on your lap timing. Keeping you updated at the right times. I’ve tried to make sure like an engineer you hear what’s needed not just a bunch of speech.
In the race, Valor is a complete strategist & spotter. Handling spotting and on the fly calls fast. We use a local voice generation so spotting and calls are super fast. You also get race craft & strategy. Race craft is designed to let you know what’s important right now and what to do about it. We designed triggers so valor knows whether the car in front or behind is the problem and how to handle it. Strategy focuses on the long game. There are settings to control how often this runs but this is designed to let you know whether you should be attacking, defending, or holding positions. Again this is deterministic. Pit strategy is really cool and the model we are making for it is growing. Ofcourse there is the simple fuel strategy but pit strategy actually calculates tire performance loss. Over a long stint we filter out traffic, fuel, and inconsistent laps then we look at your inputs and see if the same inputs are happening within a range and if we are seeing a performance loss & scrub we can build a confidence on tire performance degrading. I’m still fully developing the pit stop model so we can accurately determine when an undercut is possible. Right now it’s a confidence level. We have had tests ran in Fuji 24 hour race and some 10 hour races that have helped form this model. As we grow our model grows. I’d love community input on this specifically.
Valor pays attention to the race and builds a full memory and story of it by journaling every moment. This allows ptt to work really well.
Valor builds an opponent model as well. Valor keeps track of every car on track. We don’t get all of their inputs but we do get steering and position so we know exactly how fast every car is through every turn because of our scanned track geometry. This allows you to ask how fast you are compared to other drivers on the field and possible meet ups. We achieve normal language ptt by giving Valor a big library of understanding. At times you may have to say things more accurately but all commands are in the settings so you can learn them. As of right now ptt is in English. The opponent model is used for better race craft advice.
This brings me to the film room. When you are done with a session and are sitting in the iRacing replay valor knows. We have a film room screen that knows exactly what second you are on. Say “Jump to lap 4” and the iRacing replay goes to lap 4. Say “show me turn 3” it jumps to that turn because of our scanned track geometry. Show me my worst turn is an option too. Many more. Ask about any moment. “What did I do wrong here?” It freezes the moment and does a comparison of that moment to tell you where you differed from your blueprint. Coaching eyes will watch along with you. By using all of the journaled moments valor will beep when the replay is on a moment that matters. Click dive deeper and hear why that moment mattered. Again not ai eyes this is a deterministic data driven eyeball lol.
Combine all of this and you have a full weekend race engineer. For free!
A Blueprint is more than just a reference. Valor monitors every input you make and records your trace and creates a blueprint that can be plugged back into valor. This will be what is used as the coaching reference. This is how valor knows if you were slow or not. Every Track / Car combo will come with one good blueprint that will have a top split worthy lap time. Every blueprint is a real lap run by a real person. Eventually we will build up our community blueprints and have more to chose from on the website. You may export and share your blueprint so teams and friends can use your blueprint! All overlays will run against your blueprint so it’s nice to see exactly where your teammate is braking and how they trail through the overlay and try to match it. This is great for teams and coaches.
We are in beta because of this mainly. I have to scan every track manually to ensure accuracy so valors library is growing fast but we do not have blueprints for every track yet. On the website you can request a track & car combo and I will scan that one next. Every car gets its own scan. We do not want you using references for formula when you’re driving gt!
We have a team hub packages at $1 a seat to cover cloud costs. This gives teams a workspace that allows you to easily share blueprints and report comparisons. The whole workspace is built for teams. Gamified things like turn war to see which teammate is faster on each turn. Easily use eachothers recent laps. Every Track & Car combo gets its own saved dashboard so when a track comes back around you can pick up where your team last left off. Plug in eachother blueprints so you can find the perfect lap based on your race conditions.
We have overlays! 11 different ones. The normal ones and some new ones. Brake coach is designed to show you brake markers and brake trailing references. Aura gives you radar & traces including a steering trace that’s compass style so you can turn off the line if placed correctly. Aura is designed to be an all in one overlay to hopefully clear the screen. You can place and resize them how you like. Just drag and drop. You do have to be windowed.
All of this in one command center ui that can live off the screen.
Now let’s talk about ai! I know we are torn on this because i am. We offer an ai layer for valor. It can be turned off or on & isn’t needed. It costs me so I unfortunately have to share that cost with you guys. I built valor so we don’t need the heaviest ai model and so we don’t mindlessly spend on ai. If you are using ai I can ensure you I I am doing everything i can to keep that cost cheap while keeping it a premium layer and not hurting the reasoning. I believe I hit a cost that will beat out even letting you guys sign into your personal accounts through o auth. I did an ai “bake off” where I plugged in every model even astra and saw how it performed inside valors environment. With the right architecture and doctrine the cheapest model won. It had the best price and actually gave better responses than astra. Since valor handles the heavy lifting Ai doesn’t need a strong model. This will be interesting to see where this ends up as Ai develops. We do not let ai run the ship. We feed all the information valor already determines and let ai reason over it. After using it I personally like the boost in race craft and strategy. You get a deeper level. Valor already has memory because of the journaling but the ai uses it better. It understands your growth. It grows with you and feels like a true partner. We don’t let it hallucinate. Valor provides the fact and ai gets to reason. Pit strategy seems to work well with ai. It’s able to reason over undercuts and overtcuts better. AI ptt is amazing. Ask it anything and compound questions. Ask ai to watch an opponent and let you know when they are close. ai ptt is very powerful. Now as for security we take ai very seriously. We of course have gaurd rails to ensure valor stays your engineer and directs conversation to racing. But we don’t stop there. We don’t give ai power in valor. Ai in Valor is allowed to reason. We don’t give it a coding sandbox. We don’t give it the sandboxes needed to be powerful. Valor gets the response and ensure it’s accurate and then runs it through our local voice system. That way ai doesn’t reason over an opponent that doesn’t matter. If the bad reasoning happens valor sees it and kills it. We log every time ai is called to ensure it’s behaving.
You can purchase prepaid tokens and see your usage if you want to use ai. Not having ai does not hurt Valors main engineer.
We have ai settings so you can control exactly what lanes Ai stays in. You can make him talk a lot or make him talk very little about strategy.
All in all, Valor is a tool all sim racers deserve at the true cost it should be. Give Valor a try and let me know how we can grow together. I will attach a video that shows valor in use. I’m not strong in content and don’t have a content team so give me some slack on those! Lol. You can see on the YouTube some more videos and some old live streams that show some older versions of valor. If interested I can stream some live demos and answer questions. We are a very small passionate team. I sim race everyday and Valor is being built by the Sim Racer and for the sim racer. You can find full research and our studies in articles on the website. From the research what we are seeing is Valor has the correct philosophy. Check out our article on a driver who ran valor through the Fuji 24 hour race where he ended up being one of the most consistent drivers of the race. After taking a look at the root cause problems valor found and identified when the telemetry changed in the direction of the advice given the lap time got better. So whether it was because the driver listened or just naturally changed his driving behavior valor knew what input changes would lead to faster times. It’s shown well through many studies now. By focusing on root cause coaching Valor actually tells you where you can fix turns accurately. And our math is accurate in determining what is truly the root cause.
Oval drivers valor works for oval too! He changes his focus from turn coaching to more of a consistency battle. This model I would like some more conversations with passionate oval drivers to ensure Valor is a strong oval engineer as well.
Thank you guys for reading! I felt this would convey Valor better than making another ai image or showing another radio call where you get no context! Have a great day & go win a race!
Get Valor / Learn More:
www.valorsimracing.com
YouTube:
https://youtu.be/Tkbgkygb4dM?si=8TQ3TiFFjSBC55D0
