TL;DR: can’t figure out a way to use secondary controller for bumpers when in the menus when using wireless speed wheel. Any help appreciated.
I totally forgot about this accessory. A little while ago because of my disappointment in the new Forza Motorsport 2023, I picked up a used Xbox 360 and a copy of Forza Motorsport 4. Pretty much everything everyone is saying is accurate about the design of the game: Forza 4 is the apex of their efforts comparing all the versions (not counting the very limited track choices). Surprisingly it holds up graphically as well. Sure it’s not amazing and the anti-aliasing is mostly not present, but it still looks decent.
I happen to be looking around and saw the wireless speed wheel on eBay for around $20 shipped and thought, hey let’s check this thing out. I’m surprised how accurate and well it works compared to using the tiny little joystick on the controller. But I immediately realized when I went in the menu to tune my car that I had no bumpers and could not move through the categories. The lack of bumpers makes the device basically unusable except for racing.
I know people have said you can turn off that speed wheel and turn on a regular controller when you need to use the bumpers. However that just doesn’t work for me. When I turn off the speed wheel and turn on a plugged in USB controller it is 100% not responsive in the game. I’m pretty sure the game attaches your profile (as logged in) to the game to that specific controller. In fact there’s a message on screen that says please reattach controller. And without turning the speed wheel back on I can’t do anything in game.
I’ve tried also booting up the game with both the wired controller plugged in and the speed wheel. Then start the game with the wired controller. But at that point the game does not respond to the wireless speed wheel at all. So it looks like whatever you start the game with from the Xbox menu is the only controller that it will allow you to use. If other people have figured out a way to get this “swapping trick” to work that would be great. I would love to use the wireless speed wheel but I will have to set up and tune all my cars then log completely out of the game and then restart the game with the speed wheel. If there are any changes I need or anything that requires bumpers, I’m stuck.
Thanks for your input!