Best Expeditions Settings for Thrustmaster T248

Expeditions is the latest installment of the MudRunner series, following SnowRunner. These games are a sort of driving puzzle, figuring out how to navigate a difficult environment and use the right type of vehicle and driving techniques to achieve the goal. The force feedback is nearly identical to SnowRunner, which worked very well, so I'm glad they didn't try to reinvent the wheel.

I wasn't expecting much from the force feedback in a game like this, since there isn't a need for the kind you would have in a racing simulator. I was pleasantly surprised to find it actually has very good force feedback designed specifically around driving through the mud and other rough terrain.

The Thrustmaster T248 doesn't have a preset in the game menu, but you can use the T150 preset instead. These force feedback defaults make the wheel much too heavy, but otherwise work well. With a few adjustments, we can make the wheel feel very good in this game.

In this guide, I will show you the settings I use to improve the force feedback and what you may want to adjust for your own setup.

Thrustmaster Settings

Expeditions doesn't have a way to set the steering angle in-game, so you have to do it on the wheel itself. I found using a larger, more realistic steering angle gets annoying when you're stuck and having to turn the wheel a lot, but feel free to set whatever you are comfortable with.

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 Expeditions, so the value doesn't actually matter. I leave this at 100% since there are some games that require it.

Damper is used by Expeditions for the Friction Gain setting.

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

Expeditions Settings

In Settings > Game:

It's important to tell the game you are using a steering wheel and not a controller.

In Settings > Wheel:

Wheel Presets selects the preset button bindings for each wheel. The T248 doesn't have a named preset, but the preset for the T150 works perfectly.

Wheel Sensitivity lets you change the steering linearity. 1.00 is linear steering.

Force Feedback is the overall strength of the force feedback.

Tilt Gain will make the force feedback react to how tilted the truck is. Setting this too high exaggerates the effect to a point where the wheel feels very odd.

Friction Base Level is the constant low level of friction in the wheel at all times. Setting this to 0 will make the wheel have no weight when you are driving on normal roads. Setting this too high will make the wheel heavy all the time.

Friction Gain is the maximum amount of friction that will be added to the wheel. This is quite light on these wheels and so can be set to the maximum without issue.

Spring Gain makes the wheel want to pull back to the center. Setting this too high will make the wheel very heavy when turning.

Collision Gain is the force when you hit something. This isn't very strong, so can be set at the maximum without a problem.

Vibrotactile Force Gain is only used by the Logitech G923 for its TrueForce feature. It has no effect on these wheels.

Conclusion

The wheel feels really good in this game, but I don't know if it's necessarily the best way to play. Much of the time you need to use a third-person camera, which can feel more awkward with a wheel. You will certainly want to keep a mouse and keyboard close by for using the drone and the map.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.