We recommend that you always start with default settings in your wheel profiler before you start the game, including overall force feedback gain and rotation angle. On the PC you can run 540 degrees from software, but the steering lock in game remains unchanged, so your ratio would differ from the default. You can adjust this in the game's Steering Sensitivity slider in the Advanced Wheel Settings section below. This is a commonly misunderstood setting, so it’s important to give this a read.
Normal vs Simulation Steering
Having the option to choose between “Normal” or “Simulation” steering is the assists menu is one of the reasons so many players of different skill levels can enjoy Forza games, whether using a gamepad or a wheel. Forza is known for being controllable and natural on a gamepad and these systems are a major component of that feeling. There are multiple systems layered together to create Normal steering. Simulation Steering turns these systems off. The input layers of these systems are turned off any time you use a wheel, regardless of the steering setting.
The Normal steering assist may make FFB feel “sharper” because it influences the yaw inertia of the car to help maintain control during rapid lock-to-lock steering situations. This makes the car somewhat less agile than with Simulation steering, but also more stable.
Advanced Wheel Settings
Below are the tunable settings for wheel users. We strongly recommend starting with default settings to get a feel for how your wheel works with the game, then tune for a specific desired outcome, one setting at a time. If you start moving multiple sliders without understanding the effects of each, or how they interact with each other, you may be creating an undesirable experience.
VIBRATION
This option toggles controller vibration on and off.
MOUSE FREE LOOK
This option toggles the mouse camera control while driving
STEERING AXIS DEADZONE INSIDE
This sets the size of the inner deadzone for steering. The larger this deadzone, the more the steering wheel will need to be moved before the car begins to turn.
STEERING AXIS DEADZONE OUTSIDE
This sets the size of the outer deadzone for steering. The larger this deadzone, the less the steering wheel input will be recognized by the game.
STEERING LINEARITY
This sets the mapping between input and steering. Lower values provide more accuracy near the center but less accuracy near full lock. Higher values provide more accuracy near full lock but less accuracy near the center. 50 is a linear mapping.
ACCELERATION AXIS DEADZONE INSIDE
This sets the size of the inner deadzone for throttle. The larger this deadzone, the more the throttle will need to be pressed before the car begins to accelerate. Turn this up if the throttle input is registered when the controller throttle is neutral.
ACCELERATION AXIS DEADZONE OUTSIDE
This sets the size of the outer deadzone for throttle. The larger this deadzone, the less the throttle will need to be pressed for the car to accelerate as fast as possible.
DECELERATION AXIS DEADZONE INSIDE
This sets the size of the inner deadzone for brakes. The larger this deadzone, the more the brakes will need to be pressed before the car begins to slow. Turn this up if the brake input is registered when the controller brake pedal is in neutral position.
DECELERATION AXIS DEADZONE OUTSIDE
This sets the size of the outer deadzone for brakes. The larger this deadzone, the less the brakes need to be pressed for the car to brake as sharply as possible.
CLUTCH AXIS DEADZONE INSIDE
This sets the size of the inner deadzone for clutch. The larger this deadzone, the more the clutch will need to be pressed before the car’s clutch will begin to disengage. Turn this up if the clutch input is registered when the controller clutch is neutral.
CLUTCH AXIS DEADZONE OUTSIDE
This sets the size of the outer deadzone for clutch. The larger this deadzone, the less the clutch will need to be pressed for the car’s clutch to be fully disengaged.
E-BRAKE AXIS DEADZONE INSIDE
This sets the size of the inner deadzone for e-brake. The larger this deadzone, the more the e-brake input will need to be actuated before the car’s e-brake will begin to apply. Turn this up if the e-brake input is registered when the controller handbrake is neutral.
E-BRAKE AXIS DEADZONE OUTSIDE
This sets the size of the outer deadzone for e-brake. The larger this deadzone, the less e-brake input will be recognized by the game. Turn this down of the game registers full e-brake before the input is fully pressed.
VIBRATION SCALE
This sets the vibration intensity.
FORCE FEEDBACK SCALE
This sets the level of Dynamic Force Feedback strength on your steering wheel. The larger this value, the more of the car’s align torque you will sense through your wheel. This does NOT scale Damper or Spring effects. It controls the scale of combined trail feedback and dynamic forces. This is NOT an overall gain on forces. Center strength of align torque falls into the Force Feedback slider. This is where align torque lives and where the Force Feedback Minimum and Understeer values are intended to help. At default value the ratio between input FFB and output FFB is 1:1 to avoid saturation.
Do NOT turn Force Feedback Scale to zero - this is by far the most common mistake wheel users make. The Force Feedback slider isn’t an overall gain on all torques. It scales the dynamic FFB function only. It is a scale on the combined mechanical and pneumatic trails and high frequency load change inputs. If you want more overall force, leave this at default setting and adjust the gain in your wheel settings outside the game.
In FH4, this setting affects the global FFB output, not just the dynamic alignment force that comes from physics. If the physics input torque is 1 and you are running 100% of FFB scale, the result is 1. In FH4 the FFB output is set to be in line with the physics input by default (50), so while it may feel weak, it doesn’t saturate your wheel’s FFB motor when you are driving. If you want more overall force, leave this at default setting and adjust the gain in your wheel settings outside the game.
CENTER SPRING SCALE
This sets the Dynamic Centering Force of your steering wheel. Larger values provide a stronger centering force while lower values provide a lighter centering force. Lowering this value too much may cause steering oscillation. Too high a value reduces the dynamic align torque you feel from the car’s tires.
Essentially, the spring is the force pulling the steering wheel toward center; that is to say gravity through caster, KPI and scrub radius (the distance in front view between a car’s king pin axis and the center of the contact patch of the wheel, where both would theoretically touch the road). This force is overcome at speed through pneumatic and mechanical trail, the causes of align torque (the torque that a tire creates as it rolls along, which tends to steer it). The faster you go, the less center spring force you should feel, and the more you feel from the tires steering themselves.
TIP: We recommend that you NOT turn Center Spring Scale up significantly - too high and this effectively cancels dynamic FFB - the only force you feel is your wheel trying to center itself, rather than the dynamic align torque at from the car’s wheels. We recommend you leave it alone or turn it down.
WHEEL DAMPER SCALE
This sets the resistance to the movement of your steering wheel. Larger values provide a heavy feeling while lower values give a light feeling with little to no resistance. Lowering this value too much may cause steering oscillation.
Damper is very specific to the wheel the user owns and is very subjective. Effectively it adds a constant resistance force to the steering that may prevent oscillation but at the same time it slows down the steering wheel velocity, making drifting, where you need quick reaction from the steering wheel, harder. Many wheel users think that the damper is wrong no matter what it is set to, because is not coming from the alignment physics; in reality every car’s steering has a mechanical friction component and when a car is powered steered and it is damped as well.
TIP: Wheels with more built-in torque, like Thrustmaster and Fanatec wheels, actually benefit from some damper scale; wheels with less built-in torque like Logitech G920 and G29 actually require little to no damper scale. If you have a Logitech G920 or G29 steering wheel, you may want to turn both the Wheel Damper and Center Spring down to get more feel from the tire.
FORCE FEEDBACK UNDERSTEER
This sets the mechanical trail align torque, which balances the mechanical contribution to the Force Feedback on your steering wheel. The larger this value, the less prominent the loss of traction will be in understeer. Lower values provide more prominent understeer feeling.
In FH4 this feedback understeer acts as a multiplier of the mechanical trail; the higher the value the more consistent the FFB will feel across the slip range and will remain higher when the peak of alignment is exceeded.
Force Feedback Understeer is intended to allow you to find a balance between pneumatic trail and mechanical trail. Lowering the FFB Understeer will expose the pneumatic trail effect coming from the tire at the cost of having a peakier feeling, especially when the peak is exceeded, which is why you feel more understeer when FFB Understeer tuning is low. It alters the shape of the total alignment force that drives the FFB when the limit of grip is exceeded. At default setting, this shape is not altered from what happens in physics and is the recommended setting. At maxiumum the understeer feeling effect is 50% less; once the limit of grip is exceeded the FFB still produce a considerable amount of force. At 0 setting, the FFB understeer effect exaggerates the FFB drop once the grip limit is exceeded.
FFB Understeer increases or decreases the mechanical trail of the FFB. Effectively, unless you saturate the FFB, you will feel higher FFB force when running FFB understeer to max since the alignment force is generated as follows: Pneumatic trail + Mechanical trail = total alignment
TIP: We strongly recommend that you leave FFB Understeer at its default setting, and that you don’t change it randomly if you are struggling with understeer or oversteer on the car you are currently driving. Again, if you have too much understeer/oversteer in your car, it is not the FFB that is doing it, it is the car setup. If you have far too much oversteer, change the setup of your car (spring, anti-roll bar, differential accel/decel, camber front/rear, toe, front/rear damper) to fix the issue and make the car drive as you like, same as when you want to fix understeer. Drifters may prefer to run understeer higher than default to have more alignment force (basically feels the same as having more caster).
FORCE FEEDBACK MINIMUM FORCE
This sets the pneumatic trail align torque, which scales the build-up of Force Feedback with lateral load. Larger values provide an aggressive tire response with lateral input and a heavier feeling. Lower values provide a more linear response curve and a lighter feeling.
At default setting, no changes are applied to the FFB from physics. At minimum setting, the force produced at very small amount of slip angle is reduced; while this helps to reduce oscillation, it makes the feeling near the center point of the steering wheel vaguer. At max setting the force produced at very small amount of slip angle is boosted, increasing the feeling near the center point of the steering wheel but this may trigger oscillation issues.
STEERING SENSITIVITY
This adjusts the ratio of your steering wheel’s degree of rotation (DOR) to the car’s front wheels actual degree of steering rotation. Steering ratio defines the ratio between the steering wheel rotation and the turn of the wheels. In other words, how many degrees of steering wheel turn are required to turn the car’s wheels by 1 degree. A steering ratio for a normal passenger car could for example 13:1, which means that 13 degrees of steering rotation are required to turn the wheels by 1 degree.
Along with Force Feedback Scale, this is one of the most commonly misunderstood advanced settings. A point of confusion among wheel users is the fact that the driver’s hand animations in cockpit view don’t turn the steering wheel more than 90 degrees in either direction. This does not represent the actual in game steering wheel rotation, just as the graphical tire steering lock angle is not a 100% representation of the actual physics steering lock. This is one of the reasons a dashboard camera view has been added to game camera views.
Altering the sensitivity completely alters the input/output map of the steering, effectively changing the steering ratio of the car. The most common issue is when a user changes the steering wheel rotation degree from the software in combination with the sensitivity, which can result in erratic car steering behavior, or in general not getting to the desired result.
Steering Sensitivity only works above 30 mph. At default (50) the steering is linear, so the ratio is not altered from the intended steering setting.
If your wheel is set to 900 degrees and the car has 42 degrees of lock and you set Steering Sensitivity to 50, you get the following: The car’s intended steering ratio is 10.7 (900 /2 /42 = 10.7) or in other words, 10.7 degrees of rotation are required to steer the wheels by 1 degree.
At 540 degrees and 50 Steering Sensitivity, the car still has 42 degrees but now your ratio altered in the following way, 540/2/42= 6.4, so 6.4 degrees of rotation are required to steer the wheels by 1 degree.
If you set your wheel’s degrees to 900 and the game Steering Sensitivity to max (100), your output is double the amount of your input, so if you turn your wheel by 180 degrees, this turn the wheels twice the amount they would turn with sensitivity setting at 50.
Steering Sensitivity cannot increase the car’s steering lock above its maximum limit, so if a car has 42 degrees of lock, this will remain the maximum degree at which the wheels can be turned. At 100 sensitivity setting, your input is double your output, and steering lock can’t exceed 42 degrees, therefore you will hit 42 degrees of lock at 450 degrees of rotation. Any extra steering wheel rotation beyond this angle will not turn the wheels any further.
ON PC: Your wheel’s software controls the steering wheel rotation (180 up to 1080 depends on wheel’s hardware), but in game the steering lock is fixed on every car (only drift suspension upgrade can increase the steering lock of your car) and is different on every car. The Steering Sensitivity slider alters how much the wheels are turned for a certain steering wheel rotation. You make the sensitivity higher, you make the steering more responsive because the steering ratio is smaller, if you instead set the sensitivity lower the steering ratio increases therefore the steering is less responsive.
For, PC the steering sensitivity modifies the input/output map as shown in this graph down below.
X represents steering lock, Y represents steering wheel degrees
TIP - we suggest you adjust wheel rotation in software OR Steering Sensitivity in game, not both.
- Unless your hardware is limited in terms of wheel rotation, set your device to 900 degrees and then play with the in-game Steering Sensitivity to adjust the steering ratio to what you like or need based on the car you’re currently driving.
- Keep the Steering Sensitivity setting unchanged (50) and play with your wheel software to set the steering wheel degrees of rotation until your happy with the controls based on the car you’re currently driving.
This is where some of experience actually helps, and because of that is not uncommon to run very quick ratio on sports car which they normally have less amount of steering wheel lock.
Example: Car X modern supercar has 36 degrees of lock but in real life it’s max wheel rotation is 750 degrees. In this case you want to either set your wheel rotation to 750 degree and keep sensitivity to 50, or you increase the sensitivity up to 70 and you keep the wheel rotation set at 900 degrees. Either way you are going to drive with the same steering ratio, and the car will feel identical.
Note that while setting your device to a lower degree of rotation will force your hardware to stop rotating at that angle, steering sensitivity will not; because of that while the two things will effectively give you the same result, running max sensitivity may feel counterintuitive, especially when you use the wheel to it’s full rotation.
On Xbox: Changing the steering wheel degrees effectively change how much the wheels turn. At 900 degrees of rotation the ratio between input/output is 1, so the car runs with the intended steering ratio. At 270 degree of rotation the input/output is still 1 so the steering ratio is effectively 3.33 times quicker than at 900 degrees when car is standing still. At 30 mph the input/output is reduced by half, so while the steering ratio remain still 1.66 quicker than at 900 degrees, the maximum steering lock is reduced by half. Here down below a table example with a 42 steering lock car at 900 and 270 degrees, tested at 0 and 30 mph.