Gran Turismo Sophy: Sony AI x Polyphony Digital

[tonidavid5]

Great article and some very insightful perspective for where things came from and where things are heading to. Thanks!

I just wish they could keep expanding Sophy to the newer cars and more circuits, even at their current 2.1 version. It's been a while since we saw Sophy-related updates to the base game.

 

[danimac]

Really wish GT Ai had a slider adjustment for races. And we got more than 5 little clicks in cockpit adjustments.

 

[Johnny Caisse]

I hope they have the "Unconfident and slow player who hesitates in traffic" difficulty for people like me.

 

[StarRacer]

Great. When's the next update?

 

[Monkey Man]

Great. When's the next update?

Good question.

I guessed way earlier in the year that PD would wait a while before implementing v3 in order to retain some sort of exclusivity for those who plunked down their hard-earned for the Power Pack.

I still reckon this could well be the case. How long "a while" might be is anybody's guess.

 

[Nakano219]

I don't mean to be negative about Sophy, but it think it has to be said - five years is a lot of video game development time, even still these days. If your feature takes five years to make, it really needs to be mind-blowing, and while Sophy is definitely good, I'm not sure it's as much better than other racing game opponents as that development time would indicate.

Had they spent that same amount of time engineering the standard AI, I feel like we'd be in roughly the same place, just with less fanfare.

 

[05XR8]

Maybe true, but after 25 years(Yes, I understand many feel GT3 has the better/the best AI) PD still didn’t and then, even when they got help with “real” AI, PD went and nerfed it.

 

[Bornhall]

You also need to keep in mind that this is not PD by themselves doing this, so all blame can’t go their way.

 

[regnar]

Championships in the career mode has never been updated since launch, with all the new cars and tracks added over time it's time to add something like a season 2, like they did with a second set of new license tests, this time with Sophie 3.0 plus the option to practice and qualify.

 

[05XR8]

Sweet write up @Jordan.

GT SOPHY went from never gonna happen in GT7 to “reality” virtually. Just amazing.

I like this: A 2025 research project tested whether that advantage could be removed entirely, training an agent that races using only an in-car camera view and virtual onboard IMU data. Not only did it reach champion level, it actually beat the original Sophy on the Tokyo Expressway, because seeing opponents (rather than tracking them as points in space) let it perceive which way their cars were oriented.


I always felt, SOPHY had the advantage of tracking the User trajectory. Now, this is more realistic in how SOPHY is in the driver’s seat, in how to place the car it is driving. Good stuff!

Hopefully, this is that next evolution of SOPHY.