Best Richard Burns Rally Settings for Thrustmaster TMX / T150

Richard Burns Rally, originally released in 2006, is still one of the best rally games available today. The community has built so much new content for this game, adding rally stages, cars, and even updates to the physics engine. Over the years, several online communities have popped up around this game, creating their own modded versions even with leaderboards and championships.

The most popular version today is RallySimFans, sometimes called the "Hungarian plugin." It has its own installer and launcher, making it simple to get up and running. A ton of work has been put into it, helping to modernize the game so that it runs well on modern computers, even supporting triple monitors and VR.

The Thrustmaster TMX and T150 have surprisingly good force feedback in it. There are very few customization options, but we have enough to make the game feel great.

In this guide, we will look at the installation process and what you need to set in the RallySimFans Launcher and in-game to get the best force feedback.

Installation

The RallySimFans installer includes the base game along with all the mods preinstalled. On the Download page, there is a detailed install guide that is very important to read. Perhaps most importantly, DO NOT install the game in any of these locations:

• C:\Program Files\
• C:\Program Files (x86)\
• C:\Users\Your Account Name\ (or any subfolders)
• And DO NOT use any special or localized national characters in path names. Everything not part of western-latin1 charset is considered as special character in RBR. The safe charset is a-z, A-Z, 0-9, space and - and _ characters.

If you want to install the game to C:\RBR, the installation steps would be:

1. From the Download page, download the Rallysimfans_Installer.exe and rsf_installer_files_V3.torrent. The torrent contains all the extra community content, but you will still need to use Rallysimfans_Installer.exe to install the game.
2. Use a bittorrent application to download the content of the torrent to C:\RBR\rsf_installer_files. This is a large download.
3. Only once the torrent is 100% complete, run Rallysimfans_Installer.exe.
4. In the installer, set the Destination folder to C:\RBR and the Source folder to C:\RBR\rsf_installer_files.
5. All of the components needed are preselected. The only additional things you might want are the triple screen or VR mods.
6. The installer will extract all of the files from the torrent and download the main game files, which is about 14 GB.

To run the game, you will use the RallySimFans Launcher. There are important settings that you will need to adjust for graphics, controls and force feedback.

Thrustmaster Control Panel Settings

Richard Burns Rally automatically sets the proper steering angle for each car, so it is best to leave the rotation set to the maximum in the Thrustmaster Control Panel.

Spring and Damper are not used by Richard Burns Rally, so can be set to any value without issue. As a general rule, I leave these 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.

RallySimsFans Launcher Settings

To run the game, use the RallySimsFans Launcher. There are important settings you need configure in it. Make sure to set all the Graphics options appropriate for your system.

In RallySimsFans Launcher > Controls:

None of the pedals should be inverted with Thrustmaster pedals.

In RallySimsFans Launcher > Controls > Force Feedback Settings:

Parallel FFB Effects controls how many times per second the game updates the FFB. This should be as high as possible. If you don't have any force feedback, try lowering this.

FFB Sensitivity changes the linearity of the FFB curve. Lower values will make the FFB curve less linear, which raises the lighter forces. Higher values will make the FFB more linear, lowering the lighter forces.

Unfortunately, different cars have very different strengths in this game, and so require different values. In general, RWD and FWD cars have lighter FFB than AWD cars, so they will need a lower sensitivity. You can set these separately for each type of surface. I only lighten the feel on snow a little bit. The values I listed are very good for most cars in the class, but there could be some outliers since each car is a little different.

After you have driven a stage with a car, it will appear in the Advanced Options > My Cars section where you can set the sensitivities on a per-car basis.

FFB Deadzone Range and Force Threshold are ways to remove very light forces when the wheel is around the center point. I don't see any use for this on these wheels.

Adjust Steering Wheel Range Per Car will enable the Soft Lock so that each car will use its real world steering angle.

Richard Burns Rally Settings

When you launch Richard Burns Rally through the RallySimFans Launcher, it will automatically put the menu into the RallySimFans section, which has its own Options section. You will need to back out using ESC to get to the real Main Menu for the following settings.

In Richard Burns Rally > Main Menu > Options > Controls > Controller Setup:

You need to manually bind the controls, as the defaults are incorrect for these wheels. Make sure to unbind "Accelerate and Brake" completely, or the pedals won't work right.

In Richard Burns Rally > Main Menu > Options > Controls > Force Feedback:

Strength controls the overall strength of the force feedback. You can leave this at 100%, or lower it a little bit if the strongest forces are stronger than you like.

Direction is for inverting the force feedback on certain wheels.

Autocenter Wheel seems to have no effect, so I leave it off.

Conclusion

Richard Burns Rally fully lives up to its reputation. While its graphics are dated, the driving mechanics are still one of the best rally experiences available. There is an incredible amount of content, so you'll pretty much never run out of new stages.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.