By iRacing Studios’ NASCAR 26 is now available on Steam, and thanks to Sandbox Strategies for providing an early key, I was able to test it on both the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine. The two devices couldn’t be further apart here. It runs fantastically on the Steam Machine, but the Steam Deck struggles, even on the low preset.
Image quality on Steam Deck
No matter which settings I tweaked, the anti-aliasing and upscaling made for a very bizarre experience. The fence beside the track looks absolutely horrible, and there’s a strange flicker across the detail on the car itself. I fiddled with a lot of the options and never found a combination that fully cleaned this up.
Frame rate in qualifying and races
Qualifying looks okay and the frame rate is all right, sitting up in the 40s, but that’s with no other cars on the track. Cutscenes are a different story: they drop into the 20s and the jerkiness is really noticeable.
The main races are where it really shows. In an 80-car race, starting around 10th on the grid, the frame rate plummets into the 20s before eventually stabilising at around 30. It’s playable, but it’s not the most enjoyable way to experience the game.
Frame generation and handling
Using something like Mako frame generation adds input latency, which makes things even trickier. NASCAR needs very small, well-timed inputs to keep the pace, especially when you’re working the slipstream and balancing the car through the banked turns, and I haven’t managed to master it. The handling is very twitchy, and playing without a wheel, even with a controller, is quite difficult.
Should you play it on Steam Deck?
If you do decide to play NASCAR 26 on the Steam Deck, you’ll want to plug in a racing wheel of some kind. I’d also suggest playing it on the Steam Machine instead, or waiting for some more patches, because the game definitely needs some optimisation.