Got a wheel a few days ago and I'm significantly slower. Is that normal? Any tips?

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport FM7 Discussion
21

I just wanted to echo a few things previous posters have stated.

Never have a game pad hooked up before loading the game: Forza seems to default to controller drivers and it seems to confuse the wheel, if I’ve played rocket league or another title I prefer a pad for it seems to mess up steering. I usually play Forza 7 on a fresh boot.

(Also Forza Horizon 3 and Forza 7 drivers don’t seem to want to play nice either another reboot situation if recentering the wheel doesn’t help)

Pump those brakes before the first green light.

I also have better luck with normal steering.

22

I have the same problem, fresh boot and always get past the login screen before turning on the controller.

I also find if you wander out the room with the controller, the xbox sometimes ‘loses’ the controller and when you go back into range it becomes the default controller, you learn of this at the next race start when the pedals are dead.

23

I have owned a Thrustmaster TX and now own a Logitech G920. Tried both with Forza 5 and 6 but quickly gave up. These games are designed for a controller and you will be much faster using one. Haven’t tried FM7 with the G920 and don’t ever intend to as I know I’ll be disapointed.

Do yourself a favour and buy Assetto Corsa and Project Cars 2. Both are great with a wheel and leagues ahead of Forza Motorsport.

1 Like
24

I actually prefer FM7 to PC2, but not AC.

FM7 is a massive improvement over what has come before, but you need to educate yourself in how to get the most out of the FFB settings.

And to the OP who said that the other threads were about getting realistic settings and not “easily accessible” settings:

Your impatience with the other threads, like your impatience with your new wheel, is precisely what has led to your struggles.

Reap what you sow, try to understand what people who have been dealing with this for years are actually saying.

Also if you don’t have real experience driving a real car fast around a track, there is further learning for you there as well.

DgitalHype is absolutely right in his comments as well.

25

Oh, gimme a break. What makes you think I was being impatient? I’m not complaining about being terrible, I’m not blaming the wheel or the game or anything else, like I said I’m actually having a lot of fun. I just wanted to know how much of my terribleness was down to being a noob, how much was down to the learning curve, and what I could do in terms of settings or driving style to be better.

And if not being willing to wade through hundreds upon hundreds of comments to find something that might be relevant to my particular case makes me impatient, well… I guess by that definition I am. But even this thread now has several posts arguing over esoteric elements that are confusing to a noob like me, and it’s clear there are longstanding conflicts on this forum that really make it frustrating for the uninitiated to sift through them for actual practical advice.

In any case, fortunately many people have indeed offered that practical advice in this thread, so to those people, thank you!

I do actually own Assetto Corsa, it’s probably my favourite racing game of recent years in a lot of ways, but it is a bit too hardcore for me. I haven’t tried it out much with the wheel, but I’ll give it a go at some point. I’ve tried out the original Project Cars and it does seem a bit more accessible with the wheel, and I’d like to get PC2, but… I just blew all my money on the wheel itself :stuck_out_tongue:

26

Practice makes you quicker when you move over to a wheel, not slamming brakes, ramming the accelerator to the floor, etc. Technique takes over and you can strive to achieve consistency and being smooth. Heavy braking will lock your wheels in skids over which you don’t have control. A rolling wheel can only do 100% total for acceleration, braking and directional control. Keyword is “rolling” and the proper input.

I don’t remember which Forza Motorsport version it was, but Sunset Peninsula Raceway was the scene and a group of us were helping each other with drafting, passing, etc., when we weren’t playing cat and mouse teams.

I also don’t recall how may laps we had done, but people starting complaining about sore thumbs and fingers from using the controllers, and I was laughing because I was on a wheel, pedal firmly to the metal AND drinking coffee as I drove one-handed.

As I’ve said before, don’t become discouraged by “progress” measured by winning your races. Forget all that until the time a race is suddenly “easy” and smooth. THAT is the point when you can start becoming really competitive by refining your braking points on turns, the “slow in, fast out” of making sure you’re getting the most speed out of the following “straight” course until the next turn. If you’re losing speed with incorrect braking, the wrong cornering line, you’re penalizing yourself by lowering the top speed on the following straight.

After a while, you’re going to learn the proper lines (watch some of the faster replays on the course, especially the corner entrance, braking point, the line taken and where the acceleration begins. You’re find yourself picking up excellent lines through turns, and basically controlling what is happening in the corners with your accelerator - not more breaking. Lap times will drop, and you will feel more and more in control with your wheel.

27

I have the G920 also. I can post my settings later. I’m between jobs right now and will have to leave soon. Also I’m still way slower on wheel but it’s much more fun.

-k

28

When i switched to the wheel years ago, I immediatly was slower on lap times and multiplayer was hopeless. Over the years there were always tunes in the shop specifically tuned for wheel users. Sports tires instead of race tires, stock suspension and differentials or diffs that have lower settings to replicate open diffs all make correcting with the wheel happen in slower motion. I would say. Start with awd, fwd, or low power rwd like a miata and do more than five laps at a time. Just trace the racing line at first. I always keep the force feedback down because quick corrections are realistic and they feel like they will break the wheel with the settings the game comes with.

29

You really are dense blue. You’re malcolm robert’s pleading he is an aussie citizen before the high court.
Twisting words to suit your skew perspective. Go back to school.

30

Damn Blue, I don’t necessarily agree blindly with everything Dust is saying, but the guy has a point and backs it up. What you are doing now is just confusing people and making a mess.

To get started with the wheel, use normal steering, follow the basic settings from the big thread for the wheel.
Pick a relatively slow car, C or B class, find a decent wheel build and tune. Controller tunes can be utterly undrivable. Standard homologation will not help either.
Turn ABS, STM and TSC off. If will not help you to get a feel for the car. Turn these back on for higher class races if needed.
Turn the raceline on, pick a familiar track, start doing laps.
Keep the line, smooth on the brake, smooth turn in to load up the car and gradually steer it through, smooth on the gas.

Will you be slower to start with, for sure.
But the key is to set the wheel up so you work around the known and documented issues.
Get a tune that wont bite your head off.
With that, you can start driving without the need for any rewind. Gradually build confidence and speed.

It can and will be very fun and rewarding.

1 Like
31

Posts reguarding G29 bwing unusable for forza/rwd cars etc.
I use the g920, xbox version of the same wheel and have no troubles what so ever… yeah it felt like learning how to race again when I first got it… average difficulty and all assists… the works… but with time, practise and setting tweaking I’ve become sufficient enough the put down top 1% times and beat unbeatable difficulty. Yes some of the gremlins are your settings and dead zones, but also remember that using a wheel is a whole new experience, and don’t think rl driving will help you out because a racing wheel doesn’t have real world physics and cars don’t operate on digital switches. Take time and practise, youll improve

32

-Use smooth inputs to the wheel and pedals.
-Treat the car gently and use finesse. Not upsetting the balance goes a long towards making you faster.

33

My honest opinion?

I bought an expensive well reviewed wheel 2 years ago. Returned it as garbage in a few days.

I have a real-life sports car. I drive it hard in all kinds of conditions. I never have the kind of trouble controlling a real-life car that people have using a game wheel. Game wheels are an illusion of realism, not realism itself. They are, like gamepads, overly sensitive and apply herky-jerky movements that do not work with game physics that even come close to mimicking real physics. Thus all the snap oversteer, overcorrections, undercorrections, careening off into the grass when not intended, etc.

So many people say you just have a “learning curve”. Really? When I bought my current car, I didn’t have a learning curve during which I ended up in a ditch on every corner for the first week.

Many of us play these games for fun, and maybe even for a little more experience of what we actually love - performance driving. I haven’t met a racing game or sim yet that even comes CLOSE to the real thing. I suspect that to do so you would have to have a many thousand dollar setup.

Since it’s not close, and there’s a “learning curve” I just didn’t see the point to learn how to use a wheel just for the sake of saying I have a wheel, when it’s not anything like driving an actual car. So I returned the wheel, went back to my gamepad, and never looked back.

34

Comparing a racing wheel for a virtual environment to a real car, is like comparing a cricket ball to a baseball. Sure they are both round, but they both have an entirely different feel to one another. People always fail to take into account the sheer amount of information that is lost when using a racing wheel for a video game, the lack of G-forces on the body, feeling the car through your seat, the sense of danger when you go fast. All those things are lost in a game, and they effect our judgement as we try to drive our virtual 3d boxes around a virtual 3d plane of existence. This results in misjudgement of breaking zones (mainly breaking too hard and far too late, resulting in understeer and/or oversteer), over acceleration (as you do not feel that struggling for grip like in a real car, so you think you are safe to just floor it), turning too late and/or too aggressively (the majority of racing wheels have far smaller wheel circumferences when compared to a real car, so overturning in a virtual environment is a real possibility); as well as just jumping straight into cars that are just stupidly fast without first building up the appropriate skill set to sensibly and effectively use a racing wheel.

Snowowl posted the most relevant advice to the op, start slow and move onto faster and faster cars as they grow accustomed to using the racing wheel. It is all about learning to be smooth with your inputs, and learning to understand the information that any particular racing game is sending to your wheel; and combining that with what you see on the screen and hear from the speakers.

1 Like
35
36

You’re right in the sense that it’s a game or “Sim” that is trying to create the illusion of real life.

The gap between real life and the game IS the learning curve.

Getting your settings right for your wheel is a huge part of that curve and it is quite subjective hence the massive difference in opinions evident here and elsewhere.

This is why knowledge of the settings and how steering is simulated in a game and a FFB wheel is the only way, you can’t shortcut it.

If you do push through this and get something that feels right for you, then you pretty much have something that replicates the real thing well enough that you have no problem jumping between it and real life.

I even learnt left foot braking on a sim rig before bringing it to the real world.

So it’s wrong to say it’s garbage and not anything like driving a real car
There is a gap, but once you adjust to that gap, you can learn a lot about the real thing.

My history saw me getting Gran Turismo (the first one) on recommendation of my track day instructor in 1999 so I could get a better handle on my R33 Skyline GTS25t.

I played through Gran Turismos and Forzas on controller until I got a wheel for Forza 6. And they was awful with a wheel.

I pushed through that, got PC, AC, Dirt Rally, Horizon 3, spending month after month learning.

Now I am very happy with what I experienced with a wheel.

I understand the limitations of my wheel (G920), it doesn’t have a huge amount of torque so it cannot replicate real world forces. But man I tell you in the right game with right settings it takes me right back to drifting my R33 all those years ago.

There are wheels out there that are much closer to the real thing though.

Most consumer grade wheels cannot come close. Low torque, belt driven wheels with spring loaded potentiometer brakes. It’s going to feel off compared to a hydraulically assisted brake or steering wheel rack right?

But you can get something that is more immersive and more natural than a controller.