Gran Turismo 7 Is the Playstation driving game you have been waiting for?
Forget Forza Motorsports, Assetto Corsa, rFactor, which is the most anticipated motor racing video game in YEARS and it arrives today on PSN (March 4th) for RM300.00.
Gran Turismo 7!
Most anticipated because it’s built up as GT’s return to making a video game for people who like cars and racing, but aren’t too bothered about racing online with other people.
Online racing is still a major part of Gran Turismo, but it’s more or less the same as the previous game (which is still good enough for a few more years).
What’s changed in GT7. Return to arcade-focused gaming. Remember spending hours trying to pass all them license tests & overtaking challenges? Grinding for virtual money so you can afford your dream car in the game? Collecting cars? It’s all back in the game!
The game mechanics have changed too and now we have dynamic weather and environment in the video game.
The developers studied the weather patterns of each circuit and replicated them virtually, so racing at Willow Springs in California will be hot and dry, whilst the weather at Brands Hatch will be temperamental, grey, and full of puddles (which is also simulated).
There’s more aspects to the game that will change how the game feels & you can dive into detail by looking it up on YouTube.
But by far, the biggest thing that interests me is something called ‘Sophy’. Now, Sophy is an AI developed with Sony, and it’s said to be a real breakthrough in research into AI and AI in video games. It’ll be introduced as a future update to the game because it’s ‘still learning’.
Typically, in racing games, the cars are telegraphed around a track where they follow certain routes and it’s pretty easy to get past them.
With Sophy, however, it learns the tracks and the situations around it. Meaning it can avoid that puddle, manage its tire wear, and act like Max Verstappen if it feels it has to. Plus, it is proven to be faster than the fastest Gran Turismo players
GT set up a test last year, inviting their top drivers to race against the AI, and around 4 tracks, the human team had half the points the AI had and was around a second slower than the AI.
But the point isn’t to be faster than humans, where it is designed to simulate a human racing opponent, and will react to you and your driving style, which not only makes racing games far more interesting to play, but also provides invaluable research into the development of AI in self-driving cars which can respond to real-life situations.
Which brings us to Sony. Remember we spoke about the Sony cars before in our news and how they say it is built “to realize a world where everyone can live in harmony with robots”?
We are a skeptic about self-driving cars, but Sophy gives Sony direct access and data to ‘the unpredictability of human behaviour, in real (virtual) driving situations’, and its learnings in Gran Turismo 7 might give Sony the edge in getting to the next-levels of self-driving technology.
