Gran Turismo Sophy - A breakthrough in AI?

GT Sophy.jpg
Gran Turismo Sophy is a new take on AI within a driving game. The project is a collaboration between Sony AI, Polyphony Digital, and Sony Interactive.

According to the development team, GT Sophy is the next level to AI and recent results would suggest they are right. They are claiming GT Sophy is an AI breakthrough, comparing this AI to other breakthrough AI that have mastered arcade games, chess, and multiplayer strategy games.

Does this mean that dive bombing AI into T1 and making up half a dozen places in a thing of the past? Or does this mean bullying AI out of the way is a tactic we’ll no longer be able to do?

The GT Sophy project has been in the works for six years, where GT Sophy was trained using deep reinforcement learning techniques. The development team didn’t build an AI to cheat the game, like many other AI do - they developed an AI that learns by completing human-like tasks. The reinforcement techniques “reward” or “penalize” the AI for specific actions it takes inside an environment.

GT Sophy's learning covered three areas of driving skills:​


Race Car Control - Operating at the edge
GT Sophy acquired a deep understanding of car dynamics, racing lines, and precision manoeuvres to conquer challenging tracks.

Racing tactics - Split-second decision making
GT Sophy showed mastery of tactics including slipstream passing, crossover passes and even some defensive manoeuvres such as blocking.

Racing Etiquette - Essential for fair play
GT Sophy learned to conform to highly refined, yet imprecisely specified, racing etiquette rules including avoiding at-fault collisions and respecting opponent driving lines.

On two occasions last year GT Sophy competed against some of the best Gran Turismo drivers

In July 2021, GT Sophy had the fastest lap in all three races and won two of the three races. Yet the human GT drivers won with the most points.

During October 2021, GT Sophy won all three races and finished second in all races.

GT Sophy has achieved a major milestone however PDI, SIE, and Sony AI will continue to develop and upgrade their AI’s capabilities as well as explore how this AI can be implemented in the Gran Turismo series in the future.

Additionally, Sony AI is also exploring new partnerships to enhance the gaming experience for players through AI.

What are your thoughts about GT Sophy? Is it about time AI in racing games took the next step?
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: Ace King, AccAkut, Goblin616 and 6 others
About author
Damian Reed
Damian Reed
PC geek, gamer, content creator, and passionate sim racer.
I live life a 1/4 mile at a time, it takes me ages to get anywhere!

More in Misc

Comments

Metla
Premium
Indeed. And people believe the marketing, even when the game clearly doesn't align with the fluff.
 
Vols70slpr
MJQT said:
I love that GT is pushing for innovation in AI racing and trying new things. About time someone did this!

I am a bit concerned, though, about how Sophy's abilities will 'scale' to various difficulty levels lower than world-beater. Because I use AI in lieu of racing humans, I need AI that are as slow as I am :laugh: and whose speed can be scaled in a relatively convincing way – something Papyrus and ISImotor AI, in general, does quite well. Not some bonkers neural network that has learned to drive to almost perfection and uses some crazy-ass line through the Ford chicanes at Le Mans cause the devs didn't specify the track boundaries correctly.


While in my experience the GP4 AI doesn't stand up quite as well as nostalgia would tell us, it is very sophisticated in terms of its racecraft and pit strategy. Why? Because Geoff Crammond explicitly hard-coded it the "old-fashioned way" to behave like this, not some statistical learning model working things out for itself. I can see using machine learning models to allow the AI to choose correct inputs to stay on a given path... but that's it; anything more seems to be overcomplicating things unnecessarily and introducing the potential for poor or un-lifelike results. In my view, things like pit strategy, situational awareness while racing door-to-door, different racing grooves need to be manually specified based on heuristics used by humans to be convincing to human players driving against AI.

EDIT: I don't mean to be overly "Bah humbug" about Sophy though... I'd love to be proven wrong!
Click to expand...
I agree that after watching the Sophy video, it was apparent that corners were being taken flat out with no lift, which in reality just cannot be done by we mere humans. It's great to see the potential of this AI but there's some work to be done to make it workable within the framework of GT7. Some of the moves by Sophy made me say how did it do that? There was too much perfection in the driving so the development now has to center on being, "more human." Even in a diluted form, bring Sophy on because GTS AI has been below sub par since its release.
 
Vols70slpr
Iko Rein said:
I have read the research paper out of interest. One thing to note is that Sophy was given cars' coordinates + track boundaries and centerline for the tracks (X,Y,Z). So my understanding is that this means it was constantly aware of the exact track position (X,Y,Z) of itself + positions of other cars on the track. To me this is bit "cheating", as normal human drivers (with cockpit view) have to rely on just the screen visuals (with mirror(s) + possible inaccurate radar) + sounds from the game, so the data available to humans is much more limited, than was give to Sophy.

Also someone asked about the reaction times. I think they tested with different "reaction times" to make it operate at the level of race drivers (200-300ms reaction times) and that did not affect much the laptimes.

I think the killer feature of the AI is the consistency, as the AI can run 1000 laps with the exact same fastest optimal racing line. When the AI has data of the exact car position + distance, it can e.g. brake at the exactly same optimal position over and over again.

But I am sure that as the models and modeling get better, the AI/ML guys can make the AI to rely just on the same data as human (i.e. just the visual + possible sounds). Would really love to see how such system works on e.g. ACC or similar game with more advanced physics and track development during the race with changing conditions.
Click to expand...
Very good points.
 
MJQT
Iko Rein said:
I have read the research paper out of interest. One thing to note is that Sophy was given cars' coordinates + track boundaries and centerline for the tracks (X,Y,Z). So my understanding is that this means it was constantly aware of the exact track position (X,Y,Z) of itself + positions of other cars on the track. To me this is bit "cheating", as normal human drivers (with cockpit view) have to rely on just the screen visuals (with mirror(s) + possible inaccurate radar) + sounds from the game, so the data available to humans is much more limited, than was give to Sophy.

Also someone asked about the reaction times. I think they tested with different "reaction times" to make it operate at the level of race drivers (200-300ms reaction times) and that did not affect much the laptimes.

I think the killer feature of the AI is the consistency, as the AI can run 1000 laps with the exact same fastest optimal racing line. When the AI has data of the exact car position + distance, it can e.g. brake at the exactly same optimal position over and over again.

But I am sure that as the models and modeling get better, the AI/ML guys can make the AI to rely just on the same data as human (i.e. just the visual + possible sounds). Would really love to see how such system works on e.g. ACC or similar game with more advanced physics and track development during the race with changing conditions.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing what you saw in the research paper! :) IMO there's two significant aspects to unpack:

1. Sophy was clearly intended to see if an AI program could drive and race a car as well as or better than human drivers. Which is significant when you think about its potential application to a video game: it's not intended (as it currently stands) to provide a convincing and immersive racing gameplay experience for human players at a variety of skill levels. Reason to not get too excited.

2. For AI to race against in a single-player experience, the discussion of the AI having access to data humans don't have is a moot point... some of the best AI in sim racing in the past (GP4 or NR2003) has had simplified physics, access to data on various cars' position etc., and takes direction from centralized game logic that allows it to behave more predictably and make for a better experience for the player (even if players like me race with it like a wanker :D). AI having sensory inputs like humans is not necessarily at all related to the raceability and immersiveness of AI in a video game... they're two largely distinct issues. In fact, AI with lots of information access and hard-coded behaviour means less uncertainty about how it'll behave and less parameters for devs to get wrong... whereas AI figuring everything out autonomously through statistical learning or something just means more and more complexity that isn't needed (and even is probably detrimental) for achieving the desired behaviour.
 
Last edited:
J
I don't have a Playstation, so I most likely wont play the next GT. That said though, even after you cut thru some of the marketing jargon. its pretty rare for any sim dev to put effort into the AI at this point outside of iRacing. I understand the shift of focus to online racing, but I hate that its gotten to the point of devs just completely abandoning AI support like rfactor2 has no matter how rough of shape its in.
 
R
Damage Inc said:
I think you'll find even though most of us may not understand the specifics we do understand that it's a major step. The issue I and many have is there's too much talk of "perfect lines" and 0.00000001 reaction times and that's not going to simulate reality at all. Robots don't race cars. Now I know it means no more laborious waypoint setting for an AIW file, as the Ai will learn the racing line on it's own (and probably more importantly the Ai will finally use different lines for different classes), but how do you factor in the human element? No human is perfect. But ultimately it's a very exciting time for Ai development even for the unwashed unlearned ;) .
Click to expand...
We may get a human factor by implementing, for gaming purpose, hard coded random mistakes, taking in account various ai drivers profiles (profiles as in isi engine games at the end).

What Ive been wonderkng for some time is why racing sims do not work with real AI race cars teams? Roborace... I don't see the point, in games, of having a ever learning machine, but by stopping the learning process and implementing random mistakes and stress crises (being followed closely by a driver for more than 5 minutes...), it would be interesting for racing sims.

In the end, I don't see how a learning AI would fit a game, it will need some human input to make it... more human.

Edit : quiet interesting at the end when.8t is explained why the human beats the robot in wet conditions, the ai still needs to learn...
 
Last edited:
BrunoBæ
MJQT said:
some of the best AI in sim racing in the past (GP4 or NR2003) has had simplified physics, access to data on various cars' position etc
Click to expand...
Just a slight correction to this - and not to your reasonable other points.
The AI bots in NR2003 used the same physics and TM as the player(s).
That was also the reason you could create and tune the car setups for the bots in the same way as you could with your own setup.
Hehe and it was funny to see how the bots reacted if you forced them to use a "weird" setup.;)
 
MJQT
BrunoBæ said:
Just a slight correction to this - and not to your reasonable other points.
The AI bots in NR2003 used the same physics and TM as the player(s).
That was also the reason you could create and tune the car setups for the bots in the same way as you could with your own setup.
Hehe and it was funny to see how the bots reacted if you forced them to use a "weird" setup.;)
Click to expand...
Shoot, that's right! Thanks for the correction. :) Man... NR2003, what a game, especially when you consider that was nearly 20 (!) years ago.
 
BrunoBæ
Hehe you are right about how amazing this 20 years old game was.
Actually I only installed it because I wanted its famous GTP mod.
And it is actually still on my HD :p
But without taking anything away from yours and mine glorious memories about this legend then the AI bots does react rather harsh if you dont get to the side when they are comming.
Just try to get trough the 1st Mulsanne chicane when you have an AI bot just behind you.
If you doesnt behave veeery politely and let it overtake then ... game over :roflmao:
 
BrunoBæ
CatsAreTheWorstDogs: Without playing too much smart ass in this Sophy and ANNA discussion then my guess is that there is not much chance that such kind of neural network based AI bots suddenly after their learning will ever(!) be able to run lap after lap completely perfect.:roflmao:

Because:
1. If the bots driving in any way is influenced by at least one human driver then this will give so many dynamic variables to the bots reactions that there will be no reason to add further errors into the bots behaviour to get it to make small or large errors.:roflmao:

2. And the same can probably be said even if there is only 2 AI bots competing against each other on a track.
Because that will also create so many dynamic variables for each bot that it will be impossible for any of them to create the perfect driving a lot of you guys supposedly does fear.

3. Chess bots is quite another ballgame because in chess there is only a certain numbers of legal rules to calculate the outcome of - and absolutely none of the dynamic variabled which is created every second on a racing track.
Both in RL and virtual.:cool:
 
Last edited:
Mr Deap
Console today aren't the same a previous console. CPU power is now a thing. Also, GPU is actually the weakest spot. But coin miner ruined the GFX affordability, making console look more than decent for gaming.

High End CPU aren't use for games anymore. I'm talking about AMD Thread Ripper & intel i9 16 cores X series. Enthusiast PC gamer CPU of choice have about the same performance as the Sony PS5 & MS XBOX Series X.

PC peasants need to realize that hardware power crippled Polyphony Digital in the past.
 
Damage Inc
Mr Deap said:
Console today aren't the same a previous console. CPU power is now a thing. Also, GPU is actually the weakest spot. But coin miner ruined the GFX affordability, making console look more than decent for gaming.

High End CPU aren't use for games anymore. I'm talking about AMD Thread Ripper & intel i9 16 cores X series. Enthusiast PC gamer CPU of choice have about the same performance as the Sony PS5 & MS XBOX Series X.

PC peasants need to realize that hardware power crippled Polyphony Digital in the past.
Click to expand...
That's the way it's always been, new console comes out as good as very high end PC hardware, PC hardware evolves and within a couple of years surpasses console tech, mid range PCs as good as current consoles, then within another couple of years higher end PC hardware stomps console hardware. I'll keep my "peasant" PC status thank you and have a device that can play Xbox games, Playstation games and PC exclusives, plus the myriad of other functions I can do on PC.
 
P
Mr Deap said:
Console today aren't the same a previous console. CPU power is now a thing. Also, GPU is actually the weakest spot. But coin miner ruined the GFX affordability, making console look more than decent for gaming.

High End CPU aren't use for games anymore. I'm talking about AMD Thread Ripper & intel i9 16 cores X series. Enthusiast PC gamer CPU of choice have about the same performance as the Sony PS5 & MS XBOX Series X.

PC peasants need to realize that hardware power crippled Polyphony Digital in the past.
Click to expand...
Here we are on a site for car simulation lovers.
Most people who have this passion ride on PC since there is no car simulation on console, just arcade sim which can be great, I do not disagree.
I have nothing against the peasants thanks to whom we can not die of hunger and who are very courageous people who deserve respect.
In your remarks, on the other hand, I don't feel much respect when you call us "peasants", but rather arrogance and rudeness (humor? it's easy after the fact).
Considering the price of your consoles which gave us beautiful colorful arcade games, could we call you the "console miserable"?
I don't know if that would make you happy and you would be right.
If you think the PS5 is more powerful than a PC gamer equipped with a 3070 (they have become easy to find again, expensive, yes, but so powerful if you have enough to buy) or more, 3080, 3080Ti, 3090, is that you believe that the earth is flat and tell yourself that in a few months the 4000 series will arrive, the consoles will not evolve for another 6 or 7 years, we will be at the 7 series or more.
I'm also going to buy myself one, Ps5 or Xbox give me your specialist opinion, to have a good time with families, in addition to Nintendo and Mario Kart, very funny too.
Good day and good fun.
 

Latest News

Article information

Author
Damian Reed
Article read time
2 min read
Views
9,355
Comments
54
Last update

Share this article

What's needed for simracing in 2024?

  • More games, period

  • Better graphics/visuals

  • Advanced physics and handling

  • More cars and tracks

  • AI improvements

  • AI engineering

  • Cross-platform play

  • New game Modes

  • Other, post your idea

Results are only viewable after voting.
See comments…
Back
Top