Best Dakar Desert Rally Settings for Thrustmaster TX / T300

Dakar Desert Rally, the sequel to Dakar 18, is a big improvement in many ways. The Dakar rally comes with a steep learning curve, but Dakar Desert Rally makes it possible to ease yourself into the full experience. It has modes that play like a traditional rally game, letting you get used to the unique terminology and navigation methods necessary in the Dakar rally.

The Thrustmaster TX and T300 work great with it, but the default settings make the wheel shake way too much. There are a lot of jumps and rough terrain in this game, so the force feedback is always going to be jumpy, but it feels much better when it is at a reasonable level.

In this guide, I will show you what you need to set in the Thrustmaster Control Panel, if playing on PC, and what to set in-game to improve the force feedback.

Thrustmaster Control Panel Settings

Dakar Desert Rally has a Soft Lock feature, so it is best to leave the rotation set to the maximum in the Thrustmaster Control Panel and calibrate the wheel in-game. Admittedly, the Soft Lock isn't the greatest, making it too easy to turn past the max steering angle. If you like, you can set the rotation to 540° here to get a much better Soft Lock. In practice, I rarely found this to be an issue.

Spring and Damper are not used by Dakar Desert Rally, so can be set to any value without issue. As a general rule, I leave them at 100% since there are some games that require them.

BOOST should always be turned off. For an in-depth look as to why, see my BOOST Force Feedback Analysis.

Dakar Desert Rally Settings

In Options > Controls > Device Configuration > Device Calibration:

Make sure to Calibrate the wheel in the game. This will correctly set the steering angle, bind the pedals and set the buttons properly on the wheel.

In Options > Controls > Device Configuration > Input Settings:

Maximum Wheel Rotation works best at about 540°, which is the standard rally car steering angle.

Steering Sensitivity, Linearity, Deadzone and Saturation are left at their defaults, which makes the steering perfectly linear.

In Options > Controls > Device Configuration > Feedback Options:

FFB Strength controls the overall strength of all the forces.

Collision is the vibration when you hit something.

Counter Steering is the main force that you feel. This is very strong and will shake the wheel a lot, so you don't want to set this too high.

Surface vibrates the wheel based on the type of surface the car is on. Grassy areas will feel different than the smooth sand. This needs to be quite low as it is a strong force.

Surface Damping is a simple damping force that is based on the softness of the surface the tires are on. For instance, the wheel will be harder to turn on sand than on pavement.

Suspension is the vibration from the suspension of the car. Mostly felt in the large bumps of the terrain.

Wheel Centering Force pulls the wheel to the center when the car is in motion.

Tire Slip vibrates the wheel when the car is sliding. This is an artificial effect, so you may want to turn this off completely based on your personal preference. Setting it too high gets annoying since you feel it every time the car slides.

Conclusion

I think Dakar Desert Rally is a big improvement over Dakar 18. The learning curve is much more manageable now, with so many more ways to play the game. You are free to play it more like a traditional racing game and ease yourself into the full Dakar experience over time.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions.