Taking the PISTA: Early Access Argentinian motorsport sim shows promise

REG Simulations’ PISTA Motorsport recently entered Early Access, promising a realistic take on Argentina’s burgeoning domestic racing scene.

Developed using Unity Technologies’ proprietary game engine, PISTA’s early build includes eight cars (split across four car classes) and four tracks, with more content set to arrive in future via free updates.

Don’t Cry for Me Argentina

At the moment, only Test Day and online leaderboard-based Time Attack modes are available, with REG promising further Quick Race, Championship and Online race modes shortly, again for free.

From the main menu, I assigned my controls (my Fanatec CSL DD and Heusinkveld Sprint pedals were recognised right away), and headed out on track with the Uno Turismo Pista C1 for my first taste of PISTA…

Driving a Fiat Uno turned out to be more exciting than it should be, with the little front-wheel-drive car attempting to swap ends at every opportunity thanks to lift-off oversteer. So far so good, but only after I’d properly calibrated my wheel to eliminate the huge default deadzone.

The deadzones extend to all three pedals too, with a hefty dose of left leg required to bring the car to a halt. The game resets there for every session too, which is irritating.

There are currently no in-car tyre or kerb sounds, with exhaust notes a little unrefined at this stage. In terms of visuals, PISTA looks more like Live For Speed than Assetto Corsa, with no depth of field or motion blur effects – it’s not a looker. There are very few graphics options to tweak too.

Plain backgrounds make the ocular experience disappointingly bland, with foliage textures distractedly popping-in while driving. I much prefer good physics over good graphics, so can easily overlook this.

Hand of tod

Tracks have been recreated well, but are mostly featureless and lack detail. Bumps, although few and far between, offer a proper kick to your FFB, but often lead to over-the-top wobbliness.

For example, while lapping the short version of La Plata and straight-lining over the longer section of the track, I experienced a huge jolt from the FFB. This caused the car I was driving to launch into a full-on tank slapper and a spin.

This was symptomatic of the overall feel I experienced in PISTA: my wheel had a strange, near-constant oscillation through it, much like the feeling I’ve previously experienced while driving certain vehicles in AC.

Turning down the FFB helped a little, but adjusting my wheelbase settings didn’t improve matters unfortunately. This is a shame, as the feedback from cornering is strong and direct for the most part, which is at least an encouraging sign for the future.

One of PISTA’s most impressive features is its wet weather system, and for an Early Access game from an indie developer, it’s quite a coup. Puddles look convincing and cause aquaplaning, but the rather numb handling model made it tricky to gauge exactly how much grip was available.

VR

PISTA is VR-compatible from the outset and booted up easily with my Pimax Crystal Light. However, it lacks a crucial re-centering function in-game, so I couldn’t test it properly. 

However, from my brief running in the wet (while sitting off-centre on the roof of the car!) I could tell PISTA’s VR requires some optimisation before it can deliver a smooth experience (I have a GTX 4070 GPU, 16GB RAM and a Ryzen 7 CPU, so this should be more than capable of handling PISTA’s modest requirements).

PISTA Motorsport: a work-in-progress

PISTA Motorsport misses the mark in a few respects, unfortunately, with drab visuals, jarring sounds and odd-feeling force feedback. I believe there’s a decent handling model hidden underneath its hood, however, and after a little bit of polish, I hope REG find it.

For a budget indie game, PISTA looks like it will be packed with a lot of content, and the team’s approach to producing a region-specific motorsport sim is commendable. At the moment, however, it needs a little more development time.

PISTA Motorsport’s Early Access build is available on Steam now for £12.79.

Have you tried PISTA Motorsport yet? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.

PISTA Motorsport system requirements

MINIMUM:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: FX 8350
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: RX 570
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 10000 MB available space
• VR Support: OpenXR

RECOMMENDED:

• VR Support: OpenXR
• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Ryzen 5 3600X
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: RX 580
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 10000 MB available space