Gran Turismo 7 Spec II Revealed: Upgraded GT Sophy AI, New Snow Track, New Cars, and More

[Scuderia Paul]

While I am not exactly a big fan of the cars, Lexus LF-A and Porsche 911 992 GT3 RS aside, the Spec II update does look pretty good. Hopefully Sophy, Weekly Challenges, and the new Master Licences inject some life into GT7 again.

Roll on getting home from work tomorrow!

 

[sh33p]

There are quite a few new races added actually

View attachment 1299722

7 races isn't quite a few imo.

A proper GT League would have this is just one championship. They could quite easily create a tone of championships and endurance races based on real life events. Much how I remember previous installments of the game working.

 

[x__myst69__x]

It basically is which is why I'm pretty happy to see it, though disappointed its not like.. the default way to navigate events. Looks like a sub-menu. But yea, that's how I liked it in GT2. Here are all the Station Wagon races cough Here are all the FWD/RWD/AWD/Euro/American etc etc races. And so you could sooooort've stretch the thought to say its like a championship for those cars, except its just individual races. So its not lol Almost though.

Of course, I wish it was dressed up/organized a little better if it was the default view. Again.. Like GT2. Because its the best. But have a section for

Spec Series (Spec Miata/FRZGR86/E30/Clio Cup/Carrera Cup/Ferrari 355/360/430/458 cups etc, with Club/Regional/International event tiers. Maybe 200-600pp stuff)
Nationals (i.e. SCCA or NASA.. Whatever organizations are in other parts of the world. Club level racing. General series around production-based cars but limited to tracks in their respective area i.e. America/Euro/Japan. Think NASA's American Iron, SCCA Nationals etc. Like 300-600pp stuff)
FIA Racing (Races built around Group A/Group B/Group C/GT-1/Prototypes etc. on a global scale. 500-900pp?)
Exhibition (The weird or I guess very specific stuff. VW vans, truck races, station wagons, AWD, FWD, convertibles etc for the kinky people)
Classic/Vintage or "Goodwood World Tour" etc (Pre-1970s stuff. Trans Am, Vintage GT, Le Mans etc. 200-800pp?)
Formula (Series using different tiers of open wheeled race cars)
Rally (Because they keep trying to do it for some reason)
Endurance (I didn't want people to think I didn't have them but.. I think they would fit better if the races were actually in with their respective series/class menu. So 24 hours of Le Mans would have separate races because obviously its existed for a long time, thus individual races for 60s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, current)

I love your idea's, why can't Kaz work that out, the simple abundant and widespread joy that would bring

 

[Techlet]

7 races isn't quite a few imo.

A proper GT League would have this is just one championship. They could quite easily create a tone of championships and endurance races based on real life events. Much how I remember previous installments of the game working.

PD chose to word it very strangely. We're getting 7 "new" event types (WTC900, X2019, new chili pepper races, etc.), each with a few individual events totally to about 20 or so new races.

A sizeable amount compared to the usual fare.

 

[x__myst69__x]

This update doesn’t justify the spec II name imo. Obviously it isn’t released yet, so this judgement is based on the announcement only.

Honestly - the ONE thing they needed to add, still isn’t there.
-Where is the GT League?

Instead ‘Three extra cafe menus added’ though! Lol. That’s a litteral nothing for me.

Did anyone really ask for a new dirt / snow track… Pd, your dirt *(edited spelling error) physics are the worst. Work on what you do best and add tarmac tracks, especially tracks from previous GT games that are clearly missing from GT7. Ie: Silverstone, Monoco, midfield and Aprocot Hill. Heck, I’d be happy with Grand Valley (the origional, not the reimagined)

The Sophy AI looks like only a few cars in a full grid - if you have a ps5. Nice but it needs to be a full grid and you need a GT League to make this better. Chase the rabbit races won’t be any better against slow Sophys. Grid starts, full championships with the option to qualify and proper endurance races are a must.

No one wants a new cinematic intro. Hey… maybe one or two of you does but a majority of people won’t watch it once, even if it’s unskippable the first time, I will walk away until it’s done.

The new weekly challenges side of things might actually be good. I’m looking forward to seeing exactly how that works.

The new ‘master’ licence seems odd when there’s no reason to get the existing S licence. They should have worked on a GT League instead.

No mention of rebalancing their economy.

No mention of the 50+ little QOL inprovements that need to be added to the game.


Overall: yay, feee new update, but… PD just does not get it. I cannot understand why they want to die on the cafe menu hill

agree with every single word you say here, no in game GT League, no mention of rebalancing economy... the ONLY 2 things the game needed, instead all that other meaningless filler.... sad, everyone who has personally attacked the pessimists on these forums who were expecting just such a FAIL from PD/Kaz should now be quite shamed at how they personally attacked and insulted people for having an opinion which has proven to be right!

 

[Islaygaz]

I hope the 400R has base colours of white and silver too! The yellow isn't my cup'o'tea.

From memory the 400R comes in Yellow, Silver, Black and Red

 

[Techlet]

I wonder how ridiculous PD will make the Master S licenses. Full Nurburgring in the pitch black and rain?

 

[JoelS]

From memory the 400R comes in Yellow, Silver, Black and Red

And Midnight Purple

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

There's one part of the article confusing me that I hope to get some clarity on.

Where is this listed in the news section for the official Gran Turismo website? I was looking at the whole article for Spec 2.0 and found nothing about now being able to get higher credit payouts based on collector level and circuit experience progress.

The Gran Turismo 7 Spec II Update: Seven New Cars, a New Track, and a Large Assortment of New Features! - Update - Gran Turismo 7 - gran-turismo.com

Ever since its debut on March 4, 2022, Gran Turismo 7 has been on an unstoppable journey of evolution, consistently pushing the envelope when it comes to provid...

www.gran-turismo.com

The other thing I'm confused on is about the credit payouts, are the increased payouts just for sophy races only? or quick race in general? Also, does that include custom races?

 

[sh33p]

PD chose to word it very strangely. We're getting 7 "new" event types (WTC900, X2019, new chili pepper races, etc.), each with a few individual events totally to about 20 or so new races.

A sizeable amount compared to the usual fare.

Thanks for clarifying this, I obviously missed that.

That definitly sounds considerably more substantial compared to the norm.

That should breath a little bit of life into the single player experience, hopefully with decent payouts too.

I’m still of the opinion that they need a GT League though

 

[FPV MIC]

Snip... for having an opinion which has proven to be right!

Opinions are not right or wrong, they are just opinions.

It's my opinion that this is a pretty good update with quite a bit of useful content to me.

See? Not right or wrong, just my opinion. Yours may be different but that doesn't make it more right than mine.

 

[Nathaniel_Wu]

There's one part of the article confusing me that I hope to get some clarity on.

View attachment 1299772

Where is this listed in the news section for the official Gran Turismo website? I was looking at the whole article for Spec 2.0 and found nothing about now being able to get higher credit payouts based on collector level and circuit experience progress.

The Gran Turismo 7 Spec II Update: Seven New Cars, a New Track, and a Large Assortment of New Features! - Update - Gran Turismo 7 - gran-turismo.com

Ever since its debut on March 4, 2022, Gran Turismo 7 has been on an unstoppable journey of evolution, consistently pushing the envelope when it comes to provid...

www.gran-turismo.com

The other thing I'm confused on is about the credit payouts, are the increased payouts just for sophy races only? or quick race in general? Also, does that include custom races?

Maybe they interviewed someone from PD?

 

[Islaygaz]

And Midnight Purple

Found this (https://gtr-registry.com/400r.php) and there were white as well as blue!

 

[Seikenfreak]

@05XR8 I know you're usually on top of the custom-grid game: Are there any particular classic Group A cars we are still missing? They've touched on all the major ones I'm aware of but I'm sure there are more parts of the grid that were less popular/successful. More variety the better IMO.

 

[Techlet]

I hope the quick races will have options for longer races and aren't just 2-3 lap runs. I'm barely warmed up after 3 laps.

 

[morfei1]

Finally Sophy is here👏

 

[05XR8]

@05XR8 I know you're usually on top of the custom-grid game: Are there any particular classic Group A cars we are still missing? They've touched on all the major ones I'm aware of but I'm sure there are more parts of the grid that were less popular/successful. More variety the better IMO.

The Starion that was reported on some time ago, had an entry in Australian Group A touring cars.
Other than that, GT2-GT6 have the Opel Hatch and Lotus Carlton road cars, that fit into DTM.

The '88 Supra is in the UCD for those that haven't bought it. Plus, both R32s. The Sprinter Trueno is available as well.

We're just missing the Audi V8 and a proper Holden GrA special. I'll add the R31 Skyline GTS-R, in the datamine.

 

[Strittan]

@05XR8 I know you're usually on top of the custom-grid game: Are there any particular classic Group A cars we are still missing? They've touched on all the major ones I'm aware of but I'm sure there are more parts of the grid that were less popular/successful. More variety the better IMO.

What grid? People seem to confuse early 90’s DTM with the Group A racing of the mid to late 80’s. To my knowledge, the 190E 2.5-16 Evo II never raced outside DTM.

And yes, when it comes to Group A, we’re missing a few cars. For example, the Volvo 242 Turbo, BMW 635 CSi, Rover SD1 Vitesse, Ford Mustang 5.0 GT and Holden Commodore SS.

 

[LeGeNd-1]

My thoughts...

Sophy - I refuse to believe they cannot run Sophy on PS4. Even as a 1v1 event. Reduce the graphics if you need to (e.g. removing trackside objects, reduced car detail). Training Sophy is computationally expensive but once the training is done the AI code itself shouldn't be that much more demanding than the usual AI. It's still reacting to the same stimuli as the usual AI (track position, other cars' position) and outputting the same 4 things (gas, brake, steering, gears).

I'm really glad for the PS5 players though. I really didn't expect them to implement it in so many cars and tracks this quickly. Gives me hope that in GT8 we will truly see it implemented game wide and it's basically blended in as "normal" AI.

Cars - no complaints here. But I would've liked to see the old Charger with flat taillights instead of round (because you know, family).

Tracks - sigh. No one asked for snow, and it's going to be forgotten after one week. They could've brought back so many original tracks or new tracks. It would've been perfect to bring back Autumn Ring to match the season in Japan but nope. I also noticed all the new tracks they added since release have all been American (Watkins, RA, GVH). Possibly because there is no space on the Europe map for new tracks. Japan has plenty of space still and it would've been easy for them to scan tracks in their own country (Sugo, Motegi, Okayama), but for some reason they won't do that either.

New races - it appears as lots stuff to do but with the old AI it's basically just filler. Ditto with the seasonal events (renamed as Weekly Challenges). Too little too late. Instead of more chase the rabbit offline events they could've expanded the daily race to 5 races per week (and more variety in combos).

Menu books - standard. Next.

Paddock - never used meeting place, and not gonna start using it now. Next.

Master license - oddly I'm most excited about this. Always fun trying to one up my friends on the leaderboards. But the fun will wear off after one week max. We also need more missions and circuit experience for every layouts.

4P split screen - fun if you have that many friend coming over. But I'm guessing most players will never use this.

Slower shutter speeds/new scapes - photo fans will be happy, otherwise standard stuff. Next.

New progression screen - it's fine I guess. Not that there's anything wrong with the old screen. Would've preferred them to re-organise GT League to resemble older games (which they tried to do with the new Event Directory menu, but still not the same).

New intro - the only thing that PD never fails at is making great intros and trailers. So looking forward to this.

I mean overall it's a "big" update, but that's only because the bar has been set so low with the usual monthly 3 cars. If you're not on PS5 or doesn't care about Sophy it's actually a pretty lukewarm update. The seasonal events will keep people playing but if they keep recycling races then it will get boring quick (and depending on the payout it might not even be a good alternative to the usual grinding races).

Looking into the future I wonder for how long PD will keep giving updates to GT7. GT Sport had regular monthly updates for around 2 years, with tracks coming every 2 months or so. We have a few months of skipped updates and much fewer track updates for GT7, and it's not even at the 2 year mark. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last track update, and we will just be getting the usual 3 cars until March next year and then they shift focus to GT8. That's around 12 new cars to look forward to and not a whole lot more.

Still missing night & rain for a lot of tracks.
Still no major feature like course maker or in-game telemetry.
Still no news of long awaited tracks like Pikes Peak.
Still lacking lots of real world tracks and original fictional tracks.
Still missing lots of car brands and new race cars (GT3, WEC).

Meanwhile lots of new racing games have come out recently and vying for attention (Crew Motorfest, Forza, HW Unleashed 2, EA WRC and soon TDU SC). I still love the game and log in everyday but even I'm starting to get a bit bored.

 

[wagnerFAM98]

SNOW...... SNOW.....

NOBODY, CARES, ABOUT GROUP.B EVENTS KAZ

AT LEAST ADD A ASPHALT VERSION, uuuuuuhhg

i mean, YEAH, we finally get Sophy AI, and 7 Cars, and More events

THERE ARE 2 DAMN CIRCUITS ON THE GAME FILES, KAZ, WE KNOW MONTREAL ITS THERE
I LOVE YOU, BUT I HATE YOU

IM SO CONFUSED RIGHT NOW

View attachment 1299719

 

[Dave A]

I was hoping for this update to introduce a massively revamped career mode. I say hoping, but my expectations for that were realistically low. We are getting a fair few extra races and the new chilli races are a nice addition. They're the best single player races in the game IMO.

The new track looks fine, it'll be interesting to have a snow circuit as we've not had one since GT6.

I'll miss out on the Sophy 2.0 unfortunately, but I won't be buying a PS5 just for that.

The new cars are nice.

Overall, this update will tempt me to turn GT7 back on. But I'll have to install the last update as well.

The weekly event challenges might be something that can make keeping playing a bit more interesting. Especially if it winds up having new events added to it.

If not, then I'm sure i can get a few hours of fun from this update anyway. I just needed something to come along to tempt me to switch the game on again and this looks like it is enough.

 

[Eggstor]

There's one part of the article confusing me that I hope to get some clarity on.

View attachment 1299772

Where is this listed in the news section for the official Gran Turismo website? I was looking at the whole article for Spec 2.0 and found nothing about now being able to get higher credit payouts based on collector level and circuit experience progress.

The Gran Turismo 7 Spec II Update: Seven New Cars, a New Track, and a Large Assortment of New Features! - Update - Gran Turismo 7 - gran-turismo.com

Ever since its debut on March 4, 2022, Gran Turismo 7 has been on an unstoppable journey of evolution, consistently pushing the envelope when it comes to provid...

www.gran-turismo.com

The other thing I'm confused on is about the credit payouts, are the increased payouts just for sophy races only? or quick race in general? Also, does that include custom races?

That info is off the PlayStation Blog post about the update.

As for the last set of questions, the multiplier (which we don't have full details on, though it will be somewhere over 220% for those with maxed-out Collector Levels and Circuit Experience progress) appear to apply to the renamed Quick Races only, no matter the AI or difficulty.

 

[BornToRace]

Glad we finally got snow back. I was missing it in GTSport and wanted it since then to return. At night the track looks amazing.
I wish they include more championchips though. But for now I'm satisfied with 50 license test and weekly challanges for the next months.
Hope theres more singleplayer content to come since we have sophy now...

 

[Yard_Sale]

So these new weekly challenges…

Are they going to consist of events that are already currently in the game? Or are they going to be seperate, newly curated events…or a combination of both.


And even though it’s a footnote tgat will unfortunately get overlooked. I LOVE what Polyphony Digital has done in regards to changing the “meetup” lobbies into a virtual car meet. I’ll be curious to see if they enable the player to walk around like you can in photo mode, or in the garage in VR. Personally I think this is huge towards spreading and preserving car culture to the younger generations.

Player with no previous automotive culture interaction goes to a virtual car meet and interacts —-> same player starts looking online for real car shows and car meets to attend in person.

Brilliant.

 

[Techlet]

Are they going to consist of events that are already currently in the game? Or are they going to be seperate, newly curated events…or a combination of both.

Looks to be a combination of both.

 

[Magog]

I wonder how ridiculous PD will make the Master S licenses. Full Nurburgring in the pitch black and rain?

Driving an F1 car with no headlights

 

[Yard_Sale]

Looks to be a combination of both.

I really hope PD somehow implements previous GTWS races into SP. the coding is already done, especially with the weather. Should be a no-brainer

 

[GleepGlop]

huffs hopium

Hey, now that they've got a snow track maybe they have the assets sorted to do Pikes Peak? I still think the elevation doesn't work in their game engine though...

 

[Artremis]

My thoughts...

Sophy - I refuse to believe they cannot run Sophy on PS4. Even as a 1v1 event. Reduce the graphics if you need to (e.g. removing trackside objects, reduced car detail). Training Sophy is computationally expensive but once the training is done the AI code itself shouldn't be that much more demanding than the usual AI. It's still reacting to the same stimuli as the usual AI (track position, other cars' position) and outputting the same 4 things (gas, brake, steering, gears).

I'm really glad for the PS5 players though. I really didn't expect them to implement it in so many cars and tracks this quickly. Gives me hope that in GT8 we will truly see it implemented game wide and it's basically blended in as "normal" AI.

Cars - no complaints here. But I would've liked to see the old Charger with flat taillights instead of round (because you know, family).

Tracks - sigh. No one asked for snow, and it's going to be forgotten after one week. They could've brought back so many original tracks or new tracks. It would've been perfect to bring back Autumn Ring to match the season in Japan but nope. I also noticed all the new tracks they added since release have all been American (Watkins, RA, GVH). Possibly because there is no space on the Europe map for new tracks. Japan has plenty of space still and it would've been easy for them to scan tracks in their own country (Sugo, Motegi, Okayama), but for some reason they won't do that either.

New races - it appears as lots stuff to do but with the old AI it's basically just filler. Ditto with the seasonal events (renamed as Weekly Challenges). Too little too late. Instead of more chase the rabbit offline events they could've expanded the daily race to 5 races per week (and more variety in combos).

Menu books - standard. Next.

Paddock - never used meeting place, and not gonna start using it now. Next.

Master license - oddly I'm most excited about this. Always fun trying to one up my friends on the leaderboards. But the fun will wear off after one week max. We also need more missions and circuit experience for every layouts.

4P split screen - fun if you have that many friend coming over. But I'm guessing most players will never use this.

Slower shutter speeds/new scapes - photo fans will be happy, otherwise standard stuff. Next.

New progression screen - it's fine I guess. Not that there's anything wrong with the old screen. Would've preferred them to re-organise GT League to resemble older games (which they tried to do with the new Event Directory menu, but still not the same).

New intro - the only thing that PD never fails at is making great intros and trailers. So looking forward to this.

I mean overall it's a "big" update, but that's only because the bar has been set so low with the usual monthly 3 cars. If you're not on PS5 or doesn't care about Sophy it's actually a pretty lukewarm update. The seasonal events will keep people playing but if they keep recycling races then it will get boring quick (and depending on the payout it might not even be a good alternative to the usual grinding races).

Looking into the future I wonder for how long PD will keep giving updates to GT7. GT Sport had regular monthly updates for around 2 years, with tracks coming every 2 months or so. We have a few months of skipped updates and much fewer track updates for GT7, and it's not even at the 2 year mark. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last track update, and we will just be getting the usual 3 cars until March next year and then they shift focus to GT8. That's around 12 new cars to look forward to and not a whole lot more.

Still missing night & rain for a lot of tracks.
Still no major feature like course maker or in-game telemetry.
Still no news of long awaited tracks like Pikes Peak.
Still lacking lots of real world tracks and original fictional tracks.
Still missing lots of car brands and new race cars (GT3, WEC).

Meanwhile lots of new racing games have come out recently and vying for attention (Crew Motorfest, Forza, HW Unleashed 2, EA WRC and soon TDU SC). I still love the game and log in everyday but even I'm starting to get a bit bored.

The AI isn't about graphics - it's pretty much all about CPU performance. If the CPU is the bottleneck then you could run the game at 480p and it would still not achieve playable performance (don't forget that the PS4 has a 10 year old CPU that was already considered terrible the day it released). It will be interesting to see how performance on PS5 fares, particularly on its 120FPS mode where a CPU limitation would be more evident.

I think it's possible a more limited implementation could work, something like a 1v1 as you say or maybe a 1v3 like the first Sophy test, but I think for now it would make sense to prioritize the PS5 version as that's where most players will be by now. Don't think they're gonna bother later on either but hopefully it happens if technically feasible.

 

[MonoTonouS]

7 races isn't quite a few imo.

A proper GT League would have this is just one championship. They could quite easily create a tone of championships and endurance races based on real life events. Much how I remember previous installments of the game working.

Imagine not knowing how to count to 25.