News game Gran Turismo: Sony unveils GT Sophy, a “revolutionary” AI exclusive to PlayStation
Despite undeniable qualities, the Gran Turismo have often been criticized for the artificial intelligence of the proposed opponents, not always relevant. After years of work, Sony announces GT Sophy, an AI that should change everything.
Get out of my way
Sony had teased the thing a few days ago, here it is now formalized : the manufacturer has just lifted the veil on GT Sophy, a “revolutionary” artificial intelligence, designed entirely for racing video games. His own video games besides, since this very particular technology is designed for the Gran Turismo saga and, a priori, no one else. It is the result of several years of work, carried out by Sony AI (a department of the firm dedicated to the field), Sony Interactive Entertainment and Polyphony Digital, the Gran Turismo development studio.
Before explaining how Sophy AI has many chances to innovate, the Japanese company allowed itself to detail, at length, all the complexity inherent in car games. Why is it so difficult to build realistic and relevant NPC behaviors in the video game racing environment? In fact, for many reasons. Let’s get comfortable and let’s try to understand the why and how.
AI in racing games: a real fishtail for developers
In a racing game, a lot of factors come into focus and these depend on a plethora of parameters. In fact, far beyond the established rules of the game – such as the prohibition of making a false start or cutting a turn – the whole challenge comes from the physical control of the car, its behavior in a hardware environment and the player’s interaction with opponents. Driving results from a complex human intelligence to simulate.
“Estimating braking points, finding the best trajectory, looking for grip on the track to maximize speed and control are in themselves very interesting machine Learning problems to study, but racing means that you are not alone on the track”, details Sony in its official article. “Other drivers have an impact on the dynamics of the car through effects that can help to achieve speeds higher than the actual maximum speed”. Similarly, these same other drivers “significantly increase the braking distance due to the reduced downforce”.
But these worries are really only of a purely physical nature ; as for the psychological aspect, it is another dimension that must be understood and interpreted.
Then there are all the tactical aspects. Drivers must find trajectories to overtake their opponents taking into account their reaction to overtaking attempts. This turns the race into a complex back-and-forth between competitors, which includes defense behaviors, simulation as well as exceeding one’s own limits on the circuit.
It actually seems very complicated to reproduce with artificial intelligence. The challenges do not end there, because other aspects are to be taken into account such as, for example, the theme of tolerance for a driver who does not follow certain rules… sometimes independently of his will.
The stewards examine urgent race situations and determine potential time penalties for drivers. The rules are specified inaccurately and subject to interpretation. This makes them difficult to encode and difficult to optimize directly and there is also a concept of fair play.
But how will GT Sophy, Sony’s famous AI, manage to simulate this joyful mess credibly?
GT Sophy, an I.A. already in pole position?
Where GT Sophy should make the difference is precisely in the very pronounced consideration of all these factors that served as the pillars for the Sony researchers. Well aware of the problem, the developers have set themselves the challenge of imitating, after years of study and in particular on Gran Turismo Sport working with amateur drivers and professional gamers, human behavior.
A demanding algorithm, supported by Machine Learning, i.e. machine learning in real conditions : Sony has thus, thanks to a thousand PS4, collected and analyzed millions of data via GT Sport players and races for years.
Especially, Sony then emphasizes the right balance that GT Sophy is supposed to find : “the race has to be engaging and fun. From the very beginning, our goal has been to partner with the creators, and in this case the creators of Gran Turismo, to develop an AI that could not only race competitively against the best Gran Turismo drivers, but that would also be fun to challenge.”
By the way, Sony does not hide that it has collaborated with some figures in the industry such as Emily Jones, world finalist of the FIA Gran Turismo Championships 2020, that “was inspired by GT Sophy to try out new racing lines that she had never seen before.”
Very nice words, yes, but a seductive speech that we will not be able to verify anytime soon : at the moment, Sony has communicated a brief passage from Kenichiro Yoshida (the President and CEO Sony Group Corporation) to confirm the news, shared a dedicated website and even got a cover for Life Magazine… but no more (and some will say that this is already quite generous). In fact, there is no release date yet.
Because GT Sophy will obviously not be integrated into Gran Turismo 7, the next highly anticipated hit set to arrive on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on March 4. Or at least, not right away. To tell the truth, the integration of AI is still fuzzy and we have to be content with very nebulous precision : “Sony AI and Polyphony will see how to bring GT Sophy in future productions of the Gran Turismo series”, can be read at the very end of the article. Hence to think that at best the technology will be brought late through an update in GT7 or, at worst, in Gran Turismo 8… there’s only one tire.
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By Max_Cagnard, Journalist jeuxvideo.com
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