The racing AI "Gran Turismo Sophy", developed by Sony AI and Polyphony Digital, the developer of the GT Racing series, will be implemented in a future update to GT Racing 7, and in the previous demonstration, "Sophy" showed great strength in the battle against professional esports drivers.
But it has also caused many players to wonder what such a powerful AI can be used for in real games? On this point, KAZONORI Yamauchi, producer of the GT Racing series, gave an answer in a recent interview.
In a recent interview with GT Planet, Kazunori Yamauchi said that the racing AI "Sophy" has multiple uses in GT Racing 7:
"Sophy" may appear in front of the player in three forms: as the player's driving teacher, a student who learns sportsmanship from the player, and a friend who can play together.
In addition, Kazunori Yamauchi said that the possibility of applying "Sophy" to B-Spec mode, which is actually a game monitoring mode that allows players to experience managing the team, players can choose AI as their own driver like a team supervisor, equip them with racing cars, and arrange tactics and strategies for them during the race.
In order to keep the performance gap between different models too large in the same race and affect the fairness of the race, GT Racing uses the "Performance Balance" (BoP) mechanism in real cars, that is, adjusting the power and weight ratio of each car in each class, trying to maintain a balanced racing environment. Kazunori Yamauchi said that "Sophy" will also help develop the game's BoP rules to some extent:
In principle, you can use "Sophy" to set BoP rules. If it's just to keep different vehicles with similar lap times, the current technology can do it. But since the BoP setting can't just think about lap time, we won't give it entirely to "Sophy", but she will definitely help.
GT Racing 7 will be released on March 4, 2022 on the PS5/PS4 platform, with pre-sales now open.