Is Sophy 2.0 no longer competitive?

[rlx]

My first race against Sophy 2.0 was at Spa, in a maxed-out 911 (992), at highest difficulty. I was expecting a challenge -- being a very average, C-rated driver -- but in fact finished 20 seconds ahead after 3 laps. I couldn't even say how Sophy is driving because I only saw the other cars for the first half of the first lap.

This can't be the intended behaviour of the AI, right? In the February Sophy 1.0 demo, the highest-difficulty Sophy was very hard to beat (and fun to race against).

 

[Meythia]

My first race against Sophy 2.0 was at Spa, in a maxed-out 911 (992), at highest difficulty. I was expecting a challenge -- being a very average, C-rated driver -- but in fact finished 20 seconds ahead after 3 laps. I couldn't even say how Sophy is driving because I only saw the other cars for the first half of the first lap.

This can't be the intended behaviour of the AI, right? In the February Sophy 1.0 demo, the highest-difficulty Sophy was very hard to beat (and fun to race against).

One very likely problem is that PP is useless to tell how capable a car is on any given track.
The other thing I have seen is, that almost all Sophy cars were running on comfort tyres (1 single run done yet), only a few were on sports tyres but still lacked any meaningful speed.
Balance is not given with the current options, not like "Sophy can drive 95% of the cars", more like "players may only use 5% of the cars to fit Sophy balance"?

 

[MroczMR]

Maybe try some Group 1,2,3,4 races? I think those are more balanced car classes?

 

[watto79]

I had a quick look and the game doesn't do a good job (or any job at all) at telling us what cars/tyres the Sophy AI will be using. At the Spa race everyone in front of you is on Sports Mediums or Hards, so if you're on a better tyre you have a big advantage.

Seems like the community will have to work out what the appropriate car / tyre combo is to use for each Sophy race.

A maxed out 911 (992) is going to blitz the field easily.

 

[poumpoum]

Perhaps Sophy only use the default tyres that comes with the car ?

 

[Roggers]

So didn’t PD say that Sophy is a dynamic AI that is always learning? If that the case I would have thought the AI would be weak at the minute until it starts to learn your driving techniques?

 

[specops]

First thought: does it take tuning your car into account at all? As in, only somewhat balanced by using stock cars.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

So didn’t PD say that Sophy is a dynamic AI that is always learning? If that the case I would have thought the AI would be weak at the minute until it starts to learn your driving techniques?

According to this thread it's static and not learning nor adapting to the player:

How the GT Sophy AI actually works

Now that a first iteration of the GT Sophy AI has been released to the public, it may be interesting to know how it actually works. I've seen quite a few misconceptions, so I've read the paper (1), and the following is a short summary that I hope is easy to understand for anyone, with or without...

www.gtplanet.net

 

[MroczMR]

I think you should try stock cars with sophy.

 

[poumpoum]

So didn’t PD say that Sophy is a dynamic AI that is always learning? If that the case I would have thought the AI would be weak at the minute until it starts to learn your driving techniques?

It only learns on the Sony servers (the learning process costs a lot). On our PS5 Sophy just apply the learning.

 

[i386]

until it starts to learn your driving techniques?

For machine learning you would need to repeat the same race with the same conditions ten thousands if not >hundred thousand times...
(That's why machine learning happens on "GPU"s which have over thousand cores and do it in parallel)

 

[Meythia]

Maybe try some Group 1,2,3,4 races? I think those are more balanced car classes?

This really makes it much more competitive, though it still remains open to know which setup the cars use (besides running on racing hard).

Me in the BMW, Sophy has learned it is a single entitiy and wins when the player doesnt? 🤣

 

[Ryan Dungey]

Maxed tuned 911 is the reason why against all stock cars 😂

 

[Roggers]

According to this thread it's static and not learning nor adapting to the player:

How the GT Sophy AI actually works

Now that a first iteration of the GT Sophy AI has been released to the public, it may be interesting to know how it actually works. I've seen quite a few misconceptions, so I've read the paper (1), and the following is a short summary that I hope is easy to understand for anyone, with or without...

www.gtplanet.net

It only learns on the Sony servers (the learning process costs a lot). On our PS5 Sophy just apply the learning.

Oh that’s a shame! I remember them making a big think about how it’s always learning etc… So all they done then is just program a new AI. Hopefully Sophy then gets upgrades in the updates.

 

[rlx]

I think you should try stock cars with sophy.

Tried again in another 911 (992) at PP700 on RHs, against a similar set of high-end road cars, and while I still won by 5 seconds on hardest difficulty, the race was more competitive.

In fact, the AI cars were all on SH or SM, so it seems like keeping your own car close to stock is the way to go.

 

[Dave A]

Oh that’s a shame! I remember them making a big think about how it’s always learning etc… So all they done then is just program a new AI. Hopefully Sophy then gets upgrades in the updates.

No, it's far more complex than that. Each instance of Sophy in a race is it's own AI, to have several learning AI's like Sophy, you need a hell of a lot more processing power and data than the PS5 has. So all the learning is done by Sony/PD and on their servers, we then get a frozen state of Sophy at whatever stage of learning it is at, as at the point it is implemented into the game.

 

[Strittan]

One very likely problem is that PP is useless to tell how capable a car is on any given track.
The other thing I have seen is, that almost all Sophy cars were running on comfort tyres (1 single run done yet), only a few were on sports tyres but still lacked any meaningful speed.
Balance is not given with the current options, not like "Sophy can drive 95% of the cars", more like "players may only use 5% of the cars to fit Sophy balance"?

I’ve been thinking about how to slow the Sophy cars down, and I think the comfort tyre thing is weird. I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be better to add weight to the cars? Give them all like 100 kg ballast or something.

 

[another_jakhole]

Tried again in another 911 (992) at PP700 on RHs, against a similar set of high-end road cars, and while I still won by 5 seconds on hardest difficulty, the race was more competitive.

In fact, the AI cars were all on SH or SM, so it seems like keeping your own car close to stock is the way to go.

Maybe dropping the PP down a touch would even it out? A little trial and error to find how much power sophy has on the straights. I hope that's the case.

 

[NJ72]

Tried again in another 911 (992) at PP700 on RHs, against a similar set of high-end road cars, and while I still won by 5 seconds on hardest difficulty, the race was more competitive.

In fact, the AI cars were all on SH or SM, so it seems like keeping your own car close to stock is the way to go.

TBF, I suspect it is somewhat based on your PP rating. But given that Polyphony changed the PP calcs to remove suspension settings I imagine that tuning the suspension significantly would severely sway the advantage in your favour. A test of this would be to simply put more power in to the car and try again, but not change anything that doesn't affect your PP rating.

 

[Meythia]

I’ve been thinking about how to slow the Sophy cars down, and I think the comfort tyre thing is weird. I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be better to add weight to the cars? Give them all like 100 kg ballast or something.

As someone else already mentioned, it is likely the stock setup of the cars that Sophy is using.
Still it would be strange to have cars with different levels of tyres (comfy/sporty/racy) in the same range of performance

 

[ShiftingGears]

Yeah it's nothing special, for group 3 I finished 2nd first go on controller on RH tyres (same as opponents).

Sophy is a gimmick and PD was almost always going to fail the implementation of it because they are also responsible for the chase the rabbit format that they're happy with dishing out for the rest of the game.

that's why they've implemented it as a series of 4 minute races to make up 10 places off a rolling start. Better than normal AI but it's still more of the same tired format.

Though I do like how the cars are not the immovable rolling blocks like the normal AI, makes it a lot less lifeless.

 

[Famine]

So didn’t PD say that Sophy is a dynamic AI that is always learning? If that the case I would have thought the AI would be weak at the minute until it starts to learn your driving techniques?

No, and no that's not how it works.

The Sophy AI is trained on literally thousands of PS5s. We then get the "finished" versions of it (selected by Sony AI/PD for speed and racecraft) for the game.

I remember them making a big think about how it’s always learning etc…

Where? I've been covering it from the beginning and have no recollection of this claim being made.

It's always learning while it's being trained. The ones in the game are stable.

 

[rlx]

One other thing that I've been observing at Spa is that Sophy 2.0 has an odd way of approaching Eau Rouge, letting off the throttle or even getting on the brakes, even if not under pressure. I would have expected it to have learned the proper H.J. Stuck flat-out racing line, but instead it appears pretty timid. Is anyone else seeing that behaviour?

 

[TumeK5]

Like others said, use bone stock cars. Even a change for a step softer tire will result in a noticeable advantage.

I like how well optimized Sophy is though, so regardless of the car you choose, you can expect a very similar level of challenge.

 

[Dess8]

I won Sopjy on road car, but when I chose GT2 Sopjy was so fast and I hadn't any chance to win. It seems like that balance is not good for road cars.

 

[TumeK5]

I won Sopjy on road car, but when I chose GT2 Sopjy was so fast and I hadn't any chance to win. It seems like that balance is not good for road cars.

Is it called Sopjy in Russian?

 

[Dena RACING]

My first race against Sophy 2.0 was at Spa, in a maxed-out 911 (992), at highest difficulty. I was expecting a challenge -- being a very average, C-rated driver -- but in fact finished 20 seconds ahead after 3 laps. I couldn't even say how Sophy is driving because I only saw the other cars for the first half of the first lap.

This can't be the intended behaviour of the AI, right? In the February Sophy 1.0 demo, the highest-difficulty Sophy was very hard to beat (and fun to race against).

Sophy is learning from yourself. You should keep challenging Sophy for a week and let's talk next week and see if it's still that easy...

 

[TumeK5]

Sophy is learning from yourself. You should keep challenging Sophy for a week and let's talk next week and see if it's still that easy...

Sophy is not learning. It will remain the same difficulty.

 

[Dena RACING]

 

[Famine]

Sophy is learning from yourself. You should keep challenging Sophy for a week and let's talk next week and see if it's still that easy...

GT Sophy in the game is in a stable configuration. It does no further learning.

I've literally just stated that in this thread, five posts before your own.