Best DIRT 5 Settings for Thrustmaster TMX / T150

DIRT 5 is an arcade racer first and foremost. It didn't even have wheel support at release. Support did come in a later update and now it does actually work really well with a wheel.

For the Thrustmaster TMX and T150, the force feedback certainly isn't the best. It's much less about giving you important car control information and more just there to heighten the immersion. That's just the kind of game this is. Take it for what it is, an actual arcade racing game, and you will have a lot of fun.

The default force feedback settings aren't terrible, as most of the forces are fairly weak. Overall it makes the wheel too stiff, which we can easily fix by lowering some settings. In a game like this, you need the wheel to be easy to turn quickly and I think I found a good balance of it being easy to turn without feeling too light.

It's important to get the steering angle set correctly. DIRT 5 doesn't have a good way to do this in-game, so we have to change this in the Thrustmaster Control Panel. I hope they fix this in an update, because I always forget to reset that when I go to play another game.

In this guide, we will first look at the settings you need to set in the Thrustmaster Control Panel, if playing on a PC. Then we will look at the in-game settings to improve the force feedback.

Thrustmaster Control Panel Settings

Unfortunately, DIRT 5 doesn't have a good way to set the steering angle in-game. (Technically it's possible, but it is imprecise and there is no Soft Lock to stop your wheel rotating past the maximum angle.) The best option is to change the value in the Thrustmaster Control Panel.

On console, you can change the steering angle on the wheel by holding the Mode button and pressing left or right on the d-pad. When you release the Mode button, the light will flash 1-5 times, indicating 270°, 360°, 540°, 900° or 1080° was set.

Spring is used in DIRT 5 as the primary force feedback, so it is very important to have it turned on. Since it is commonly recommended to set Spring and Damper to 0, make sure that you have it turned on.

Damper, on the other hand, is not used in DIRT 5, so can be set to any value without issue.

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

DIRT 5 Settings

Annoyingly, the user interface in DIRT 5 doesn't provide numerical values, just a visual bar. The bars are broken into 20 segments, so each step is 5%.

In Settings > Input Settings > Thrustmaster TMX / T150 > Advanced Settings:

You can change the steering angle in-game by lowering the Steering Saturation. Unfortunately, it is imprecise, since there is no numerical display and there is no Soft Lock, so the wheel will keep turning past the maximum angle.

In Settings > Input Settings > Thrustmaster TMX / T150 > Vibration & Feedback:

Force Feedback simply controls the overall strength of all the other forces.

ABS Feedback shakes the wheel when the ABS assist kicks in. I can only feel it when the ABS assist is set to High. It's actually quite a strong effect, so I would turn this down quite far if you are using ABS.

Self Aligned Torque is the main force feedback you feel. Setting this too low takes all the resistance out of the wheel, but setting it too high just makes the wheel annoying to turn quickly.

Collision shakes the wheel when you hit other cars or something on the side of the track. It seems to be mostly limited to head-on collisions, so many times you will hit something and not feel a thing. I turn this down because the wheel can shake like crazy when you get stuck in a pack of cars from all the collisions happening.

Landing Feedback seems to have no effect. Presumably it's supposed to shake the wheel when you land from a jump, but I can't feel any effect.

Surface Feedback provides some shaking and vibration when you drive over certain types of surfaces.

Tyre Slip provides force feedback and vibration when your tires lose traction. This is actually quite strong and can become annoying if set too high.

Conclusion

There are times when it feels a little silly to use a wheel in this game, as it was obviously designed with controllers in mind. However, it is entirely playable with a wheel, and most of the time it works really well. Part of this is simply using the cockpit view camera. Some of the vehicles have very limited visibility, making it much more difficult than a third person camera.

Overall, I prefer using a wheel, though there are certain events that are certainly made much harder than they would be with a controller and a chase camera. If you have a VR headset, you may be interested to know that DIRT 5 works surprisingly well in VR using VorpX.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.