Best The Crew 2 Settings for Thrustmaster TX / T300

The Crew 2, in terms of wheel support, is a shocking disappointment compared to the original game. Unlike most racing games, the wheel is treated as just another gamepad input, which feels nothing like an actual steering wheel. The default settings even include the deadzone you would use for a joystick. I'm guessing this is a result of having motorcycles, boats and planes in addition to cars as playable vehicles. Since you wouldn't be able to use normal car controls and force feedback in those other vehicles, they just removed it entirely.

On the plus side, the Thrustmaster TX and T300 are fully supported and have all the buttons properly mapped and displayed in the UI. Unfortunately, the force feedback is lackluster at best. It is almost entirely a centering force with some vibration effects whenever you use the boost or drift.

Playing with a wheel doesn't feel nearly as good as it should, but if you want to try it, I present the best settings I could find that lean heavily into using the wheel as a gamepad-style input device.

Thrustmaster Control Panel Settings

It doesn't matter what you set the rotation value in the Thrustmaster Control Panel. The Crew 2 will change it directly in-game. Unfortunately, it won't set it back to the original value when you exit the game. You will have to manually reset the Rotation back to normal every time you want to play another game.

Spring is not used by The Crew 2, so the value doesn't actually matter. I leave this at 100% since there are some games that require it.

Damper will add weight to the wheel in The Crew 2, but it isn't adjustable in-game. 100% damper is needed to balance the game's inherent centering force.

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

The Crew 2 Settings

In Profile > Vehicles > Performance > Pro Settings:

When using a wheel, it helps to turn off all the driving assists to give you more control of the car. Even so, the physics of the game are very forgiving. This may vary depending on the vehicle, so feel free to adjust any of these as needed.

In Options > Controls:

Cockpit Camera Animation moves the camera in the cockpit view as you turn the wheel. I find this very disorienting, so I turn it off completely.

In Options > Wheel Controls:

Force Feedback controls the vibrations and the force feedback. Setting this too high will make the boost vibrations too aggressive. There is no numerical display, so I just move this 2 clicks to the right of center.

Gearbox should be set to Sequential if you are using Paddle shifters or H-Pattern if you have an H-pattern shifter addon.

Wheel Range sets the rotation angle. This has to be set quite low due to the physics of the game. You can adjust this to make the wheel more or less sensitive.

Steering Preset controls the linearity and deadzone of the steering input. The default has a ridiculously large deadzone that is completely wrong for a wheel input. The Precise setting removes the deadzone and makes the wheel a little less sensitive towards the center, which works pretty well in this game. If you choose Custom, you can make the wheel perfectly linear, but I found that tends to be too sensitive.

Throttle Preset controls the linearity and deadzone of the throttle pedal. Again, the default has a large deadzone which I don't like. The Precise setting removes the deadzone and lowers the sensitivity, which works well.

Brakes Preset controls the linearity and deadzone of the brake pedal, exactly the same as the Throttle Preset.

Conclusion

This game was such a disappointment to me. I really like these types of games with a huge map to explore, but it just feels terrible to play with a wheel. If you are looking for a game like this that actually plays well with a wheel, I would suggest the original The Crew or the Forza Horizon games instead.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.