So yesterday I got my Thrustmaster TX, connected it to my PC and updated firmware, tried a few games (R3E, Project C.A.R.S, Dirt Rally) and then connected it to xbox one to try Forza 6. Unfortunately it was as bad as I feared it to be: there is something off with the ffb in this game which makes it borderline unplayable. The feeling is that there is a point where FFB becomes stronger, supposedly to indicate that you’re close to losing grip and immediately after that it feels completely dead in regards to ffb. This sudden change - from resistance to no resistance at all makes controlling car almost impossible…
Disappointed with Forza 6 I later connected my wheel to PC again to play some R3E. It felt ok but I wasn’t impressed, so I looked up a youtube video with settings for R3E and changed them accordingly. The guide mentioned that there are some settings which needs to be adjusted outside of R3E namely in Thrustmaster Control Panel. Following the guide, I set Spring, Damper and Auto-Center to 0%. Then changed settings in-game and tried how it feels. It felt much better.
Then I decided it that I want to give Forza another try and connected the wheel to my xbox. I checked in-game settings and they were the same as I set them last time:
Rotation Angle: 900
All Deadzones; 0/100
Force Feedback: 65
Vibration: 60.
Wheel Sensitivity:1
So I load the track and start to drive, to my surprise the FFB is fixed. No more dead FFB after resistance right before losing grip. Instead if I steer past the point of initial resistance, the wheel still is somewhat resistant in addition to vibration which is similar to effect in forza 6 when you brake too hard (with ABS off).
I know that it has been said that changing settings on PC does not affect wheel behaviour on xbox, but there is nothing else I changed. So either these settings DO matter or Forza 6 FFB is inconsistent / broken - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
TL;DR: After changing Thrustmaster TX settings on PC I experienced different (much improved) wheel behaviour in Forza 6. It is safe to say that when Forza 6 works, it works great (FFB is different from R3E or Project C.A.R.S, but I wouldn’t call it worse or lacking), but for some reason it sometimes doesn’t work as intended.
Interesting.
Could we get a video link?
Here is the link to the video i mentioned in my previous post: RaceRoom RE | Wheel and Force Feedback Settings for Thrustmaster TX One | New Update | - YouTube
Some obversions. Having driven Forza 6, Raceroom Racing Experience and Projects Cars for the past few days I can understand why people are frustrated with Forza 6 FFB effects. But the more I play it, the more it seems that this is how Turn 10 intended them to work. In Project Cars and Raceroom Racing Experience there is no deadzone for FFB in center - wheel always has a noticable resistance. In Forza 6 (as people complain) you can turn the wheel quite a bit until you experience noticeable resistance. People are not happy about this and say that FFB is broken. I don’t think it is the case. First of all, there is no RIGHT or WRONG way to do FFB, it can be argued though that some implementations are more informative than others. Secondly, Forza 6 does a decent job of communicating the behavior of your car, although it does it differently than most driving games. I believe this so called center deadzone is a feature not a bug. Set your wheel DOR to 900 and start a race, if you’re standing still you can rotate the wheel without noticeable resistance. Then start driving slowly and keep rotating the wheel, soon you will reach a point where resistance kicks in. If you drive faster, you will feel the resistance sooner as you turn the wheel. The faster you go, the less you can turn your wheel without experiencing resistance. This means that this so called FFB deadzone is not a deadzone, since it changes dynamically based on the speed of your car and the angle your wheel is turned. In my experience this creates a very informative FFB (less so if you reduce DOR). You can turn the wheel safely and as long as there is no resistance you won’t spin out. Resistance signals that you’re are about to lose control if you keep turning the wheel. IF you do so, at first you will experience vibration, if you keep turning further, the wheel will suddenly become lighter but it will still vibrate. Now it might seem that it oversimplifies the driving experience and you just have to turn your wheel till it starts to resist and you will drive like a pro. This is actually not the case. The resistance in fact is not the limit but only a warning of how far you can turn your wheel. If you want to be fast you have to turn a little bit past initial resistance till the rumble/vibration is introduced. This is harder than it sounds and requires practice. As for me, the more I drive, the more I like the FFB in Forza 6. I realize that it is not what most people expect and are accustomed to, but I don’t think it will get fixed, because from the perspective of Turn 10 there is probably nothing to fix - it works as intended.