Forza Horizon 5 Wheel Users Guide

Publish date: 2024-08-05

Contents

Ultimate Wheels Guide

Wheel Introduction

The team has made significant investments in physics to deliver a fun, authentic experience that makes you feel connected with the road. Not only have devs improved the overall handling and force-feedback, but new options have also been added:

Wheel Setup and Tuning

Developers 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 “Standard” 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 “Standard” steering assist may make FFB feel less sharp and reactive 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. Devs 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: Devs 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. Developers 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 MECHANICAL TRAIL SCALE

This sets the mechanical trail align torque, which balances the suspension 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 and less overall alignment torque.

In FH5 this feedback parameter 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.

This FFB functionality is intended to allow you to find a balance between pneumatic trail and mechanical trail. Lowering the FFB Mechanical Trail 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 Mechanical Trail 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.

Tip: Devs strongly recommend that you leave FFB Mechanical Trail 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 this value 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 weaker 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.

FORCE FEEDBACK LOAD SENSITIVITY

This sets the maximum contribution that the tire lateral force and vertical load can apply to the FFB alignment torque.

Increasing this value will let the FFB to reach its peak at higher amount of vertical and lateral force acting on the tire, this is suggested if you come across cars that are extremely grippy and you feel the FFB gets too strong sooner that you would expect.

Similarly, if a car has very low amount of grip, tuning this to a lower value will allow to increase the FFB torque at lower amount of lateral and vertical force.

ROAD FEEL and OFFROAD feel

These two settings allow to tune the micro-vibrations that happen at tire contact patch level that get transmitted to the steering column and reproduced on top of the FFB alignment torque.

Because of this, they have no impact on the alignment torque FFB strenght, but they add an extra layer of details that represent how well the tyre/suspension system manages to smooth out these vibrations before they are sent to the wheel.

These vibrations are torque based and shouldn’t be confused with the vibration that are instead coming from the rumble motors (see vibration scale section).

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: Devs suggest you adjust wheel rotation in software OR Steering Sensitivity in game, not both.

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.

Supported Wheels and Devices

This Is Critical: Before you play Forza Horizon 5, make sure you have the latest drivers and firmware for your wheel. Your wheel may work great with games that came out 1 or 2 years ago, even Forza games – that doesn’t mean it’ll work with a new game. This is not limited to PC users: If you are playing on Xbox, you should also make sure your drivers and firmware are up to date by connecting your wheel to a PC or laptop and downloading the latest drivers and firmware for your wheel from the manufacturer’s website.

Please note that most wheels are supported exclusively for either PC or Xbox.

Forza Horizon 5 on PC supports wheels from Logitech, Thrustmaster and Fanatec, as well as the same robust controller support as seen in Forza Horizon 4.

Logitech

For Logitech users, especially G920 and G29, you have to install the Logitech Software from the website; this is quite important, if you don’t install it, the G920 is picked up as a different vendor product identifier (VIDPID) and its functionality in the game is compromised, both for FFB and for buttons/switches.

Thrustmaster

Thrustmaster requires users install its latest drivers and firmware.

Note: If you have a Thrustmaster TX wheel, it will default to the 458 Edition, the first in the list, because all Thrustmaster TX wheels use the same vendor product identifier (VIDPID). Make sure you select the model that you have to ensure the button mappings are correct.

Fanatec

Fanatec requires to install the Fanatec driver for the relative products from their website and you need to update the firmware manually following their instructions.

Hori

Multi-USB

Multi-USB is supported in FH5. If you are using multiple devices with separate USB ports, the game may not automatically recognize them, or may only recognize one. For example, you wheel may work, but your pedals may not. You will need to create a custom wheel profile within the game if you are using multiple devices, or if you have their devices plugged into separate USB ports. The game won’t automatically map them unless they are directly connected.

Devs recommend that you don’t use USB switches. Rather, use dedicated USB 3.0 ports on your PC. Avoid unplugging and plugging back in your wheel to USB 3.0 ports. Some wheels have been known to generate an erroneous VIDPID (Vendor ID, Product ID for USB devices) when this happens. In order for your wheel to work properly with the game, it must have the correct VIDPID associated with it.

Running in GIP Mode

If you plug in a GIP device to a PC without a driver it should function just like an Xbox Wheel. You will not get access to the advanced wheel tuning panel. When the wheel is in GIP mode, devs can’t guarantee that it will always match the Xbox One. The D-pad or switches in general won’t work on some wheels unless this is properly mapped as a button (G920, for example) or when the wheel is an Xbox wheel that can be used on PC as well.

Wheel Input on Steam

What to do if your wheel has an input axis mapped incorrectly or flipped/inverted?

  • In your Steam Library, right click Forza Horizon 5 and select Properties…
  • Select Local Files then Browse…
  • Open the media folder
  • Copy inputmappingprofiles.zip somewhere safe as a backup.
  • Unzip inputmappingprofiles.zip
  • In the inputmappingprofiles folder find the DefaultRawGameControllerMapping* file that matches your wheel. (e.x. DefaultRawGameControllerMappingProfileThrustmasterTX458.xml)
  • Add a DInput* attribute to modify the behavior you are seeing. (See below for examples on how to use the attributes)
  • Rezip inputmappingprofiles.zip
  • Launch Forza Horizon 5.

    • The DInput attribute keys are:

    Example of how the DInputIndex and DInputInvertAxis keys should be used.

    Example of how the DInputFFBInvertAxis key should be used.

    More Guides:

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