Gran Turismo 7 Could Get Wickedly Smart If Sony AI Has Anything To Do With It

Polyphony Digital and Sony AI studied how AI can learn how to drive fast in Gran Turismo.

You Are Reading :Gran Turismo 7 Could Get Wickedly Smart If Sony AI Has Anything To Do With It

The AI in video games can be a bit hit and miss, especially back in the day. Every gamer can remember when an NPC has walked into a wall or made things hellish by not doing something they were supposed to – like actually helping the player out. Enemy AI has been steadily improving, especially in shooters, as NPC enemies will now swarm and target the player with greater intelligence, and actively avoid being shot, rather than standing in front of gunfire like idiots in days of yore.

Driving game AI tends to be a little simpler, not least because competitor cars are bound to a race track, and don’t have to do more complicated things like show you around an open world, for example. In past years, cars would just stubbornly follow a line around a race course, and ignore whatever the player was doing. In the latest racing games, however, such as Forza Horizon 5, AI is more lifelike. Depending on the difficulty, rival cars might seek to close off your racing lines, and even nudge and bump you, like a human player would, with more aggressive tactics.

Gran Turismo, however, has not ever really been known for its spectacular AI. In older entries of the venerable series, competitors often seemed like they were following a line around a race track. Polyphony Digital are known for many things – incredibly detailed car models, a good amount of real car manufacturers, decent graphics – but they’re hardly the most renowned when it comes to AI.

But things might be changing. Polyphony Digital collaborated with a division of Sony called Sony AI for a research paper exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence in driving the cars in Gran Turismo. What was unique about this AI attempt was that the artificial intelligence in question was using visual cues to learn how to drive.

Human players, of course, use many such cues, things such as the turns of a race track, the UI dashboard which shows speed and braking, and force feedback. The paper’s lead author Ryuji Imamura set out conditions that the AI would use the same cues a human driver might use to learn how to drive fast.

The AI eventually learned how to achieve lap times that were within the top 10 percent of human players. It took several hundred laps, however, for the AI to reach this level. But when it did, it drove 4.5s faster than the median human, and 3.3s slower than the fastest human.

Sony AI explores different uses of AI, and is a fairly new subdivision of Sony. A previous study involving Gran Turismo, from August 2020, saw its AI using a method known as reinforcement learning to learn how to race around a track. That study involved only physical interactions, such as when driving paths involved collisions and slower lap times. It did eventually however achieve “super-human” performance, outpacing even the best Gran Turismo Sport drivers over a lap.

The new AI is much better than the actual AI deployed in the Gran Turismo game which PlayStation players are used to. GT Sport’s own AI is a massive 9.5s slower than the visually cued-up AI from the latest study. If Polyphony Digital decides to use any of this AI in its latest title, the forthcoming Gran Turismo 7, then human players might need to start honing their racing skills. The full paper for the AI study can be found here.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/gran-turismo-7-could-get-wickedly-smart-ai-sony-ai/