Best EA Sports WRC Settings for Thrustmaster T248

EA Sports WRC is Codemaster's successor to DiRT Rally 2.0 and you can easily see that pedigree. As expected, the Thrustmaster T248 works great with it, though the default settings make the wheel too heavy with way too many vibrations.

They have added more force feedback settings in this game, so there is a lot of customization available. The goal is to make the wheel lighter and livelier. With these settings, the wheel won't get overwhelmed in the heavy corners and will have much more reasonable vibrations.

In this guide, we will look at the settings you need to set in-game, on the wheel and in the Thrustmaster Control Panel, when playing on PC, to improve the force feedback.

Thrustmaster Settings

EA Sports WRC has a Soft Lock feature, so it will automatically set the proper steering angle for each car in the game. Set the rotation to Auto on the wheel and calibrate the wheel in-game.

FORCE at 4 bars with FFB at 1 creates a perfectly linear force feedback response with no clipping, which is the ideal for any racing game.

Rotation and Overall Strength are identical to the ROT and FORCE wheel settings, respectively. Changing it in one place overwrites the other. I recommend changing these on the wheel and ignoring the values in the Thrustmaster Control Panel.

Spring is not used by EA Sports WRC, so the value doesn't actually matter. I keep it at 100% since it is required for some games to function properly.

Damper is used in EA Sports WRC for the Wheel Friction and Tire Friction effects.

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

EA Sports WRC Settings

In Options & Extras > Control > Thrustmaster T248 > Advanced:

Steering Linearity should be kept at 0 for linear steering. If you lower this, the center of the wheel will get more sensitive.

Soft Lock should be On so that each car will use its real world steering angle. Make sure to calibrate the wheel for this to work.

In Options & Extras > Control > Thrustmaster T248 > Vibration:

Self Aligning Torque is the main force controlling the force feedback. Setting this too high makes the wheel get too heavy. You shouldn't be fighting for control of the wheel very much in a rally car.

Wheel Friction is a mostly constant damper force that simply makes the wheel heavier, not adding any useful information. I turn this off completely; it doesn't feel good on these wheels. It can leave the wheel feeling too loose at times, but the downsides don't make up for that.

Tire Friction is another damper force that is based on the tire data. This needs to be set quite low, or it will overwhelm the Self Aligning Torque, making the wheel feel numb. A little of this is important on tarmac stages. The wheel won't feel right with it turned off.

Suspension controls the vibration felt from the bumps in the road surface. This can be a strong force. Setting this too high will make the wheel very noisy.

Tire Slip vibrates the wheel when the wheels lose traction. While this can be useful information, it gets annoying. I would keep this low, or turned off completely.

Engine vibrates the wheel when you hit the red line. This is surprisingly strong on these wheels, so I've turned it way down.

Collision controls the vibration when you hit a rock or something on the side of the road. This is very light, so can be kept high.

Soft Lock is the force you feel when trying to turn the wheel past the real-world steering angle.

Steering Centre Force centers the wheel at the start of a stage or when you have to recover the car. It has no effect when you are driving.

Conclusion

I've been looking forward to this game for a long time, since DiRT Rally 2.0 is one of my favorites games, especially when played in VR. The long stages and the wide variety of cars are great and with VR coming in a later patch, this could become a new favorite.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.