Q: Why do the driver’s hands in cockpit view only turn the steering wheel 90 degrees to the left or right, instead of matching my own steering wheel?

A: 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.

Q: Why do the car’s front wheels turning angle not exactly match my steering wheel angle?

A: Your steering wheel rotation is matched in physics, but not always directly matching the visual angle of your car’s front wheels, depending on the car and speed it is moving. This is only a visual animation of wheel turning and does not map 1:1 with your input or the actual physics controlling the wheels.

Q: Does the wheel control how much FFB the game puts out or does the game control how much FFB the wheel puts out?

A: The game sends the wheel a normalized torque value. In general, the wheel processes that value as a scale of its total available torque. In a pure linear wheel with no tricks this torque is what you get. Some wheels and drivers may scale that value (FF) or add to it (dampers and springs) depending on your settings. This is what happens with Fanatecs FF setting.

The FFB setting in game isn’t an overall gain setting. It’s specific to the align torque function and strongly related to both the understeer dropoff and oversteer feel/follow through. It also scales rumble outputs. You can set your wheel wherever best suits you. We generally suggest setting the game FFB high and use the wheel outside the game for gain. This retains as much align torque as possible. This may be why some people prefer such small spring and damper values, as moving all three values is analogous to reducing gain.

Specific to Fanatec on Xbox or PC in Xbox mode (green ring), high FF values scale torques up substantially and will cause clipping. Clipping is when the output force is higher than the hardware max force. Example, when from physics we send to the wheel a force value higher than 1, this is won’t be felt since is higher than the wheel force capability.

The best way to understand that the wheel is clipping, is by driving at high speed with high downforce cars. If you start feeling that there aren’t FFB details and you are pushing against a rubber band when trying to steer the car, you are clipping the FFB.

If you run a Fanatec in Xbox mode, we recommend setting the wheel FF around 35 as a starting point.

Q: Why are so many gamepad players faster than wheel players?

A: Gamepads add additional physics layers which account for some of the missing feel of not actually being in the car. Wheels, comparatively, are raw. The more fidelity and feedback we add to wheels, the faster wheel drivers will be. Our goal is to bridge the gap as much as possible.

Q: Why does FFB in Forza Horizon 4 feel different between Forza Motorsport 7 and Forza Horizon 3?

A: Every Forza game evolves Force Feedback. Forza Motorsport 7 uses a system which has evolved since FM4, each iteration improving on the last. Forza Horizon 4 uses a different system than FM7, and future iterations of Forza games will evolve it further. The reason we have separate systems is because both teams at Turn 10 and Playground are advancing FFB with each title. Every iteration has been better than the last. We are always striving to improve the system as well as the options available for players to fine tune settings to their preferred play style.

Even if the two games shared the same FFB system, they would feel different. While FM and FH games share the same physics engine and car physics data, Horizon uses a different handling model and tire compounds to suit its open world gameplay (slow-moving and oncoming traffic, off-roading, faster roads and turns in general than race tracks, etc.). Motorsport and Horizon handling feels familiar, yet different, to those who play both using a controller or a wheel.

Q: Why is my car too understeery, or too oversteery with my wheel? Is this an FFB problem?

A: Many players incorrectly assume that FFB settings make the car understeer or oversteer more. This is not possible. Oversteer and understeer happen to the car at physics level and can be tuned by the player through the car’s tuning setup, not through the FFB. FFB is what you feel through your steering wheel from those physics effects. FFB helps you feel what is going on, it does not affect the car’s behavior. In short, is your car too oversteery when you lift the throttle? Raise the differential deceleration; is your car too oversteery at apex and exit of corner? Stiffen your front spring or antiroll bar or both. And so on…

If you have too much oversteer or understeer, change the setup of your car (spring, anti-roll bars, differential accel/decel, camber front/rear, toe, front/rear damper) to fix the issue and make the car drive as you like. You cannot tune a car by tuning FFB. FFB only helps you to feel understeer, oversteer and in general what is going on with the car, but it does not change the way the car drives from a physics point of view. You will find the car easier to drive with FFB tuning that suits your driving style best, but the car effectively is the same.

Q: What if I don’t want any FFB tricks like dampers and springs, just raw physics?

A: If your goal is as close to raw physics force as possible, try this:

Setting the damper and spring to 0 removes most of the tricks. Reduce rumble until you can barely just feel it. Reducing Force Feedback Understeer will effectively make you feel the understeer more, because it removes the mechanical trail effect, so you solely feel the pneumatic trail. If you run understeer to max you will feel less understeer (FFB drops when exceeds the peak), effectively it increases the mechanical trail effect, so post peak the force remains higher. Try leaving FFB minimum at the default setting. This will, roughly, give you pneumatic in raw. FFB Minimum alters the ramp-up of pneumatic trail (somewhat counterintuitively). Turning it down all the way is almost like having a flat tire; high forces at low lateral loads.

Q: How do I know if I have the right software, drivers, and firmware for my wheel.

A: Please update both your firmware and drivers to the latest versions approved by your wheel manufacturer. We work closely with wheel manufacturers to ensure our game worked with their wheels correctly. In some cases, this required driver and/or firmware updates. Visit your wheel manufacturer’s website to find the latest drivers and firmware for your device, whether you are playing on PC or Xbox.

Q: I play on PC and my wheel has both PC and Xbox modes. What is better?

A: In the case where your wheel has an Xbox mode it's best to install the driver and run it in PC mode. While it will work in Xbox mode, the experience will be better in PC mode as you can tune the driver settings to your liking.

Q: Why doesn’t the wheel profile I have from another game work the same in FH4?

A: The tuning in Forza Horizon 4 was done using the out-of-box settings for all wheels. If you have driver or wheel settings from another title, even a Forza title, it's suggested that you start with the defaults and tune to your liking in FH4. If it works great in one game, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work great in another, even other Forza games as our FFB systems are always evolving.

Q: My drivers and firmware are up to date, but the game won’t recognize my wheel. What can I do?

A: There is a known issue where controller profile save information can be corrupted, resulting in the game not able to recognize your wheel. Before this issue is fixed, a workaround would be to delete the last saved controller profile on your PC.

Navigate to (where USERNAME is written, enter your username):

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SunriseBaseGame_8wekyb3d8bbwe\TempSta te\scratch\User_PCLocalStorageDirectory\ConnectedStorage\InputTranslationManager

Delete this file: LastUsedProfile

Launch the game and see if your wheel is detected. If this doesn’t solve the issue, you can try installing the Forza Horizon 4 Demo to see if your wheel works there, and copy the profile saved there over the file above. If your wheel works in the demo, locate the demo profile and copy it to the game profile folder. Navigate to the demo’s saved profile here (where USERNAME is written, enter your username):

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.ForzaHorizon4Demo_8wekyb3d8bbwe\Temp State\scratch\User_PCLocalStorageDirectory\ConnectedStorage\InputTranslationManager

Copy this file LastUsedProfile and Paste it here:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SunriseBaseGame_8wekyb3d8bbwe\TempSta te\scratch\User_PCLocalStorageDirectory\ConnectedStorage\InputTranslationManager

Q: My wheel is pulling to the left. What’s going on?

A: Don’t leave a wheel idling for long periods of time. This tends to result in wheels pulling to the left, for example. This gets worse over time. Power down your wheel when not in use.

Q: What FFB improvements are you working on?

A: Playground is working on adding more range for tuning, together with better FFB pre-sets on Logitech G920 and G29 (reducing damper for these wheels specifically), in addition to addressing known wheel issues as listed on the support site, and responding to valuable feedback from the community.