I’ve recently purchased a Thrustmaster 458 Italia (http://tinyurl.com/nzmkc6p) and the DXRacer Racing Simulator (http://tinyurl.com/o7m32x4). This wasn’t a cheap expense by any stretch, and the justification was to have more fun with my go-to game, Forza Horizon 2. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working out wel… bit of background first.
The first piece of equipment I had arrive was the Thrustmaster, updated the firmware, and failing any attempts at playing with it mounted on my coffee table I instead hooked it up to my desktop table and played Live for Speed, BeamNG, Next Car Game, and GRID Autosport. All these games felt fantastic, and Live for Speed I picked back up instantly even though it’s been five years since I last played it on a Logitech G25. Force Feedback was spot-on, smooth, and crisp. I loved it.
Flash forward to the delivery of my DXRacer, past the setup, mounting, working on a clean install. I finally am sitting in that very comfortable bucket seat and leaving the Car Meet spot I’d left off near in Forza Horizon 2. The FFB (Force FeedBack for future reference) was already stiff in the menus, I expected that for navigation. But even ingame, with multitudes of adjustments ingame and on the wheel sensitivity, I can’t help but feel the FFB is just off.
Lowering the FFB strength in Forza seems to do one thing, it does not dampen any feedback, it only reduces the signal. So any sensitivtiy below 40 there’s a major loss of feedback from the wheels for slip, countersteer, or jitter from bumps. It’s just not there. Higher than 67, it’s trying to jerk your arm off. Settings between the two only mix the problems, tuning towards each side exaggerates the given issue.
So I found a balance that worked for me. And racing was awesome! Driving my A-Class 300HP GT86 was a blast, and while I wasn’t putting down my gamepad laptimes as of that time I felt much cleaner in my racing lines- with some thanks to the brutally hard FFB.
Drifting, oversteer… different beast. Once you oversteer, go to countersteer, the FFB falls flat on it’s face. I get no responsiveness, just some resistance to turning. And not even dynamic, it’s just like the wheel got stiff. it doesn’t want to turn, even while the car’s doing 360’s down the airstrip. It just stops giving feedback. And trying to recover from fishtailing is a nightmare. it’s like every car in this game turns into a snappy pendulum and it takes epic amounts of input to straighten it out. There’s no clean, minor adjustments. Once you slide you gotta treat the wheel like a gamepad else you’re facing the opposite of where you were- and you better do it fast.
So, really, what my gripe has boiled down to is that the FFB in Forza Horizon 2 isn’t what I expect. There’s no dampening, no smoothing, no clean transition of forces coming through the wheel. It doesn’t react in any way I understand. The little Nissan Frontier I drive in reality is easier to get sliding and maintain than any vehicle I’ve taken up in this game- and it’s only Forza Horizon 2. All other games feel just as I expect to react.
Is there any recommended tweak, fix, tune, adjustment, anything anyone can recommend to resolve this?
Thank you!
More info after reading other topics: I do use 900DOR, and refuse to do less. Otherwise I’d lose the point of paying for the controller. Works perfectly well in every other game, Forza should not be an exception.