Enlarge / A human player races against several instances of GT Sophy, a highly capable racing AI developed by Sony. (credit: Sony)

Last year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital, the developers of Gran Turismo , developed a new AI agent that is able to race at a world-class level. At the time, the experiment was described in a paper in Nature , where the researchers showed that this AI was not only capable of driving very fast—something other AI have done in the past—but also learned tactics, strategy, and even racing etiquette.

At the time, GT Sophy—the name of the AI—wasn't quite ready for prime time. For example, it often passed opponents at the earliest opportunity on a straight, allowing itself to be overtaken in the next braking zone. And unlike human players, GT Sophy would try to overtake players with impending time penalties—humans would just wait for that penalized car to slow to gain the place.

But in the intervening year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital have been working on GT Sophy, and tomorrow (February 21), GT Sophy rolls out to Gran Turismo 7 as part of update 1.29, at least for a limited time. Until the end of March, players can try their skills against Sophy in the GT Sophy Race Together mode in a series of races with increasing difficulty levels. There's also a one-versus-one match where you race Sophy in identical cars, so you can see how much slower you are than the AI.

Enlarge / F1's young guns stare out from the cover of F1 22 (credit: EA Sports)

Earlier in July saw the release of F1 22 , the latest installment of the official Formula 1 racing game franchise. Unlike in years past, a lot has changed in the year since F1 2021 : radical new technical rules mean the cars are very different from the ones we've seen for several decades, several tracks have been revised, new tracks have been added, and the race format now includes the occasional shorter sprint race alongside the main feature race. All of this is faithfully reflected in F1 22 , and for some die-hard F1 fans, that will be sufficient to pick up a copy.

For everyone else, I'm not so sure. Some of that is down to the game itself. For the first time since EA Sports bought the Codemasters studio at the end of 2020 , we can see the influence of the behemoth games publisher at work, and it's not particularly positive. For example, the sheer frequency of exhortations to spend XP or purchase microtransactions will probably be enough for most Ars readers to dislike F1 22 .

But my frustration is not just with the game itself—at its core are still wonderful physics that translate to engaging handling, whether that's with a steering wheel or a controller. No, it's F1's new cars, which are larger and heavier than they've ever been , and, frankly, somewhat of a pig to drive.