KC Neural Racing Speedway

12 distance rays (wall or car, closing speed), the most open direction ahead (the longest clear distance within 60° either side, checked every degree near straight ahead, and its angle), speed, sideways slide, spin, rpm, engine on, gear, pedal and steering positions, wheelspin, contact flags, the direction of the road 20 m and 50 m ahead, and its 4 memory values from the step before. No map coordinates, no track ID.

Clutch pedal, gas pedal, brake pedal, steering wheel and a shift lever (up · hold · down), plus 4 memory values it hands itself for the next step (so it can count, e.g. hold the clutch in for a second). Braking hard uses up the tires' grip, so brake before the corner, not in it.

Rear-wheel drive, 5-speed manual plus reverse. The clutch slips, so pulling away needs revs and a gradual release. Shifting needs the clutch pressed or the gearbox grinds. Below 450 rpm the engine stalls; holding the clutch in for 1 second restarts it.

Hitting a wall or another car faster than about 16 mph wrecks the car, and it stays where it stopped as an obstacle.

Each generation races on 2 of the 9 training races by default: The Bowl (a 1.9 km circle) and the Speedway Oval (2.5 km), each as a 1-lap and a 3-lap race in both directions, and the Half-Mile Drag Strip, which ends at the half-mile line (Settings → Tracks per generation). Every team's drivers race in groups, one driver per team, and each driver's score is its average over the tracks. Then each team learns its own way: the genetic algorithm, NEAT and MAP-Elites breed new brains from the best ones; ES and CMA-ES move one center brain toward the copies that scored better; PPO adjusts its one shared brain by backpropagation. Half the teams combine methods: evolution plus a PPO brain that joins the population, several PPO brains whose learning rates evolve, MAP-Elites driven by a CMA-ES search, novelty search (rewarding drivers that drive differently), and islands of different methods that swap their best drivers. Each team's best driver races in the recorded showcase replay.

The Grand Prix Oval: an oval with a long back straight (800 m) and a much shorter front straight (450 m), joined by turns that run in at an angle. 2.7 km, one lap, raced each way round in turn. Never used for training. Every 10 generations the champions race it to see whether the skill carries over.

Everything runs in the browser, offline: the races in background workers (one per core), the learning on the page, and the results saved in the browser's own storage. Replays are re-simulated from the drivers' saved brains when you watch them, so each takes about 85 kB.