New Sim in Development: PISTA Motorsport Celebrates Argentine Racing

PISTA Motorsport Formula 3 Metropolitana.jpg
Image credit: REG Simulations

South American motorsport tends to be somewhat overlooked in sim racing: Automobilista 2 shines some light on the mostly Brazilian Stock Car Pro series and its circuits, and the cars are also available in iRacing as official content. REG Simulations wants to change this: The Argentine developer announced that they are working on a standalone sim called PISTA Motorsport, which is going to focus on Argentina's racing scene.

The studio has created several cars and tracks for Assetto Corsa, but it wants to capture the domestic racing scene of its native country in its very own sim: Claimed to be "the first simulator made from scratch in the history of Latin America", PISTA Motorsport aims to bring the Latin American motorsports world closer to sim racers around the world.

Laser-Scanned Circuits​

Supposedly the result of learnings of the last five years, the project is in a relatively advanced state, according to REG's first Dev Log. Currently, work is ongoing on a Fiat Uno del Turismo Pista Clase 1, the Autódromo Municipal Juan Manuel Fangio in Rosario and a scratch-built version of the Autódromo Roberto Mouras in La Plata. For the track creation, the team relies on LIDAR data to achieve the desired accuracy. In other words: laser-scanned circuits - quite in-depth for a relatively small project.

PISTA Motorsport Fiat Uno.jpg

The Fiat Uno del Turismo Pista Clase 1 in PISTA Motorsport has already progressed quite a bit in development. Image credit: REG Simulations

While REG has confirmed that FMOD Studio would be used to handle the sim's sounds, the game engine itself has not been mentioned yet. The available screenshots look promising, however, even including puddles - the Dev Log promises "advanced technology" that allows for dynamic animation of the tracks and their surroundings like crowds, pit crews and more.

PISTA Motorsport Autodromo Rosario 1.jpg

PISTA Motorsport promises dynamic environments, including puddles that affect the handling in a realistic way. Image credit: REG Simulations

From Karting to the National Stage​

Gameplay-wise, PISTA Motorsport is going to focus on an in-depth career mode, taking sim racers from karting to the spotlight of Argentina's national championships. AI supported by machine learning is supposed to provide authentic behavior of opponents on track. The sim racing community is also supposed to become involved in development eventually, providing feedback and suggestions.

Popular Racing Series in Argentina​

  • Turismo de Carretera: Top-level stock car series in Argentina, dating back to 1937, making it the oldest racing series in the world that is still operational. Ex-F1 drivers Gastón Mazzacane (Minardi in 2000, Prost in 2001) and Norberto Fontana (Sauber in 1997) are on the grid for 2023.
  • TC2000: Touring car series featuring works entries of Chevrolet (Cruze), Honda (Civic) and Toyota (Corolla). Other cars include the Fiat Cronos, Renault Fluence and Citroen C4 X.
  • Top Race V6: Silhouette-style touring cars featuring approximately 390 HP and strict aero regulations to ensure parity among competitors.
  • Turismo Nacional: Touring car championship featuring two classes (1.6 and 2.0 liters of displacement), with vehicles only being allowed minor modifications from their road-going counterparts, resulting in highly-competitive races.
  • Turismo Pista: Similar to Turismo Nacional but cheaper to run. Features three classes, namely one for the Fiat Uno and one each for 1.4 and turbocharged 1.6 liters of displacement.
  • Fórmula Nacional Argentina: Small single seaters with a 2-liter engine. The series has been known as Formula Renault 2.0 Argentina in the past.
  • Formula 3 Metropolitana: Argentina's national F3 series, though cars (see header image) differ in specification compared to the FIA Formula 3 single seaters.

PISTA Motorsport sounds highly ambitious for a newcomer studio - which is something REG Simulations is quite aware of: "It is not an easy path givent hat everything we do is 100% from scratch, and we face large companies with years of experience and much more investment capital, but we believe that we are on the right path to put Argentina on the map" in sim racing. The sim's page in the Steam Store is already up, featuring the option to wishlist the title.

PISTA Motorsport Autodromo Rosario 3.jpg

The dawn before a bright future? PISTA Motorsport seems ambitious, but has an interesting concept. Image credit: REG Simulations

Your Thoughts​

What do you think of the concept of PISTA Motorsport? Could the ambitious project bring some interesting variety to the sim racing table in the future? Let us know in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

Staff
No GT3 @ Nordschleife
Yes buy. ;)

Sounds amazing to have a small indie company (if that's wht this is?) entering the simrace developement scene.
I so hope this comes to fruition. Bless these people - more power to their elbow.

Maybe they can even snap at the heels of the big corperate companies and do something to shake the current crop of developers into providing some more diverse genres of racing. Probably not. AMS2 has made inroads, yes. But more is.... well, more. :)
 
ohhh finally something exciting to look forward to,
otherwise we only Bells empty promises to not deliver more smegma like PC3, or the never ending saga of the apparently un-launchable Rennsport.
 
This looks like being headed Bundle Games; aka the biggest a-holes in the history of Argentine simracing.

As an Argentine, I think nothing good will come out of it; I would not have this title on my library even if it was gifted to me, and I won't be sad one bit if it turns out to be a flop or never comes out. Because, together with more reasons and stories than what I could write here, it's for this very group of people that Reiza could not have more Argentine content in AMS2. They can Foxtrot Oscar for all that I care.

Do tell more; I know Bundle Games took over the Turismo Carretera and TC2000 Argentinian rFactor based games a while ago - the former appears to be on itch.io with content up to 2022 https://bundlegames.itch.io/simulador-turismo-carretera

What's the deal with them then?

PISTA (Track in Spanish?) seems to have REG Simulations involved: https://regsimulations.com/ there's a devlog https://regsimulations.com/pista-motorsport
 
Awesome. I enjoyed Game Stock Car back in the day and didn't know anything about Brazillian Racing. I'll do the same with this one I'm sure.
 
Luck to them indeed.

As to representation of South American motorsports - compared to say Japan and the GT300/500 or the various Australian series, I'd say that with AMS2 they're well covered.

And what a year to be announcing a new sim - we have so much on the way, or at least apparently so, with the Le Mans game, content for AMS2 announced, RennSport, rev to vertex, forza, and heaps more...

A tough time to differentiate in racing games I think - which hopefully will lead to some interesting concepts.
 
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This looks like being headed Bundle Games; aka the biggest a-holes in the history of Argentine simracing.

As an Argentine, I think nothing good will come out of it; I would not have this title on my library even if it was gifted to me, and I won't be sad one bit if it turns out to be a flop or never comes out. Because, together with more reasons and stories than what I could write here, it's for this very group of people that Reiza could not have more Argentine content in AMS2. They can Foxtrot Oscar for all that I care.
Well, if these developpers are as evil as you state, I assume the community should know why.

I would find more relevant that this team would make a DLC for AMS2 instead of trying to recreate the wheel (and so contributing to create a global South American racing game, maybe it would motivate developpers from other countries from the continent to recreate their local series in AMS2), but if they want to create their own, why not. It is still an interesting project with unique content, a fresh air in simracing.

The fact that the developpers, if it is true, managed to stop Reiza from getting content from Argentina may looks bad but that's just a regular business move to keep the licenses for themselves and be able to bring this new game. Nothing evil there.

So if you have any interesting piece of information backing your point of.view, I am heavily interested, and I assume I am not the only one.
 
Curious fact about "Turismo Carretera" .....until 1998 it was "real road"...(before they were ONLY races on real roads, routes, country roads...no circuits, circuits were added over time , and in the end "the road" was abandoned) a section of a remote town was closed... and the cars ran there, with potholes, ditches on the sides of the road, residents of the town who were approaching... and a helicopter that transmitted to the tv channel.
dangerous and deadly...yes, but very close to the people (the cars were common on the street...and the drivers formed "peñas" (village clubs) to be able to pay for the car, and thus the people were represented by one driver at least.

Little by little, all of that was lost, today the TC is a "mini NASCAR", the cars are (just like NASCAR) "shells" of old cars, inside they are prototypes. today the TN (TN..not TC) is the closest thing to the old tc (only in the fact that they use modified touring street cars)


Anecdote of Juan Maria Traverso (old tc champion, well known in ARG)

-What was the most dangerous maneuver you did?
-"....in one stage of the Mesopotamian Grand Prix, the race started one by one (as in current rallies), we were going on red soil (on jungle roads), Marincovich was in front of me, (...) there was a place where there was a well (hole, descent, valley) very deep and very narrow... for me, it had to be gone full throttle (at full speed, "flatout"). My co-driver warned me "no!, no!, this is done in first gear, very slowly" (apparently it was a descent from a river)... but since Marincovich was beating me, when I got to the place I said "it's full speed "................and it wasn't (to go at) top speed.....

.... I bounced off the roof of Marincovich's car -which is below- (his car got stuck in the well)... I bounced, and went ahead.... and won the stage..... I tell it and they don't believe me....
...in fact, marincovich arrived at parc fermé (at the end of the stage) the journalists said "Marincovich overturned the car" (on seeing the roof of the car) and Marincovich said:
"... no, this animal ran over my roof" (while he pointed at me) ... "
and they thought what he said was a joke...":roflmao:
JMT in an interview for a sports channel.
Absolutely interesting info, thanks.
We need historical content to recreate this racing event. I want to scratch a roof to win the race in a racing sim !!!
 
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LIDAR doesn't necessarily mean they actually go there with measuring devices to my knowledge. The aerial surveys that have up to 0.5m height accuracy also uses LIDAR technology afaik. Since I cannot read Spanish, can anyone confirm if they specified which LIDAR data they are using?
They just state they used LIDAR for the Fiat Uno. No statement about the tracks creation.

To create the Fiat Punto they use real data and w9rk with real pilots to get the more accurate behaviour than possible.

What is more interesting is, although their tendency to bring their Argentinian proudness (which seriously sounds ridiculous and won't give them any service worldwide), that the sims.primarly focuses on Argentinian racing sports, but aims to be a South America racing game. How the developpers aim to achieve that goal is not clear : by mods? By selling other countries series DLCs?

How will the team be able to partner other countries teams if it keeps communicating about how Argentina is going to be the best simracing country in the world? I understand the point, it's cultural, but it doesn't make sense in other regions of the world. Have we ever read from Codemasters or SMS that they were proud of UK being the best at simracing ? That just doesn't work at all.

My piece of advice to these developpers is that If you want to become a major player in an international business, just adapt your behaviour, do not stay on your cultural biased view. You can make the best game.in the world, but if you get isolated because of misplaced proudness, it will just stay a local project and fail as a whole. And in that context, counting on other South American partnerships while Argentina is considered the less Latino country brings many doubts. And so, why excluding from the beginning Central and North Amercian countries? Why not going to the full Latino game? Including portuguese speaking countries ? Or is there some wish of (stupid) rivalry between Spanish speaking South America and Reiza?

These are just assumptions and questions after reading a few lines in a first devlog, I hope I'm wrong. But the fact the project is not really well presented and that it may raise some doubts, not on its content and features, which are ambitious and interesting, but on it's definition as a whole, is imo a concern.

EDIT : I may sound harsh but I'm quiet hyped by the game. Just absolutely not hyped by its too vague presentation and the lack of view which makes an ambitious game look like an unambitious project. On the international thing, let's not.forget most of development teams are international and multicultural, that's why it is better not to fall into cultural biased considerations.
 
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If they're showcasing a Fiat Uno right off the bat, thats all I need to know, and it goes straight to the top of the newly announced sims for me.

Its just a clear-cut example of where their priorities lie.
 
(Pre-edit: Sorry if my tone is cynical and aggresive. It's going to be a long rant.)

I will support this sim (if it's legit), but maybe you won't, because:

1- Sim racers whine a lot. They say they want an FIA truck racing sim, a Drifting 21 sim, a touge hill climb sim, a moto bike ride racing sim, a rock crawling sim, a snow/ mud/ off-road runner/ a folk racing wreckfest sim, a Kart Kraft sim pro, a city-cruising sim/ a rally Dakar sim but NO ONE buys them, neither for 200$ nor for 2$. Surprisingly they pay $$$$ only for one sim only because they're used to it or because they bought exploit fast boys setups. They only cry "rip." after LFS or pC2 or...etc go out of business.
They say they need a budget g-force motion rig, a wind sim, a 3D virtual reality display, a tactile feedback seat pad, but NO ONE buys them. Surprisingly the same (considerable) number who won't spend small $$ for a bass shaker spend $$$$ on fancy-badge wheel rims, only because of a "horn button" or a "dash screen" that duplicates what they already see in game.

2- Sim racers, unfortunately, do not appreciate a million aspects of a sim and most importantly physics. Physics-guys, although few in the world, are still un-appreciated. Check Aris drives or Niels Heusenkveld videos and you won't find views or likes.
Sim racers only care about internet servers. And while I strongly agree that it's frustrating when you get disconnected during competitive gaming, and I agree that it's silly to trouble-shoot bugs in your limited free time dedicated to have fun, I still say why not try sims and enjoy what's working well in them and just skip what's not good.

3- Many usual comments you find in every new sim thread usually are: "it's a scam", or "there is no need for improvements because the sims of the 2000's era figured everything out", or "a sim like this will prevent me from having my rally sim", or "they will force me to purchase this sim". One reply: BS!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Now.. I will support this sim (if it's real), it's because:
Reality is not easy to understand and simulate. It's not only about one factor as the childish current thinking currently is. It's millions of variables interacting and producing trillions of possibilities. Every sim is an attempt by one person to recreate reality (especially physics). A sim might be closer to reality in one aspect and worse in others. In the 90's I thought Driver 1 was the most realistic ultimate sim of all times.
Life is too short to not try as much as we can of what we have today, and too short to spend it writing a very long rant like mine lol.
 
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