Every good racing series (Gran Turismo, Project Gotham, RalliSport, Dirt, Forza, Grid, F1, etc.) ever has allowed full customization of every button, trigger, stick, bumper, paddle and pedal on your controller/ wheel, or at least had every conceivable combo available in configuration settings.
Forza Horizon did not, and it kept it from being the epic game I had hoped for.
At the end of the day, I want to configure my throttle like this:
It doesn’t have custom mapping, but it does have 13 layouts, as well as d-pad steering, “switch gear up/down,” “switch handbrake/clutch,” “switch look/back camera,” and “rewind on view.”
Playground (to my knowledge, at least) hasn’t said whether or not Horizon 2 will have these options, but not having them in Horizon 1 made a lot of people upset, so I’m guessing that it will.
What they said is that they are using the Forza 5 development environment, Car Modeling and Mapping tools. If you read about how Microsoft released to developers, not too long ago, a library that allowed Forza 5 to run on a PC[Directx 12 - http://gamecrastinate.com/editorials/microsoft-shows-off-forza-5-on-pc-youll-never-get-to-play-it/], it talked about the multithreading and software layers that make up the basic architecture of the game. The user interface, hand held or wheel, runs on one thread and communicates through a layer. As such, H2 will have a selection of how the controls are configured. I use the left mushroom for steering and the right for throttle and break, as I have been doing since GT1 and 2.
You can’t completely map your control layout, but there’s plenty of options available, including one with using the right thumbstick for throttle control.