Best The Crew Motorfest Settings for Thrustmaster T248

The Crew Motorfest has greatly improved the driving experience with a wheel compared to its predecessor, The Crew 2. Still, this is an unabashedly arcade-style racing game, much like the Forza Horizon series, so don't expect too much. The force feedback is basic, but it works and isn't distracting.

The Thrustmaster T248 works very well, but the default settings make the vibrations too strong. Thankfully there is a setting to fix that. The game has quite forgiving physics, so most of my changes are just turning off all the assists to get a more dynamic driving experience.

In this guide, I will show you how to adjust the settings on the wheel and in the game itself to get the best experience.

Thrustmaster Settings

It actually doesn't matter what you set the rotation value to. The Crew Motorfest 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.

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

Damper is used for the in-game Damper setting.

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

The Crew Motorfest Settings

In Options > Difficulty:

Auto Braking and Auto Steering should obviously be turned off.

Cockpit View should be On. This is only forced On in races, so you can still use the external camera views when you're just driving around.

ABS is personal preference.

Traction Control can easily be turned off for most cars. I haven't tried all the cars in the game, so it's possible there are some that are more difficult, but the physics seem very forgiving.

ESP is the Stability Control. Like Traction Control, leave this off most of the time.

Drift Assist will help with drifting. Feel free to use this if you aren't into drifting and need to get through some events.

Counter Steering Assist will help when you spin out.

In Options > Controls > Wheel Controls:

Force Feedback is the strength of the main forces you feel. I lowered this slightly because I found it could get a little heavy in high speed corners.

Damper adds weight to the wheel. This is most noticed when you are stopped.

Vibration controls the vibrations when you hit something or run over bumpy surfaces. I lowered this quite a bit, since the vibrations are quite strong on these wheels.

Gearbox should match the equipment you have. Use Sequential to use the paddles or H-Shifter to use an H-Pattern shifter.

Dynamic Range will automatically set the properly steering angle for each car. If you turn this off, you can set a universal angle that every car will use.

Steering Preset should be left on Default. This is linear steering that uses the full range of the wheel.

Throttle Preset, Brake Preset and Clutch Preset use linear inputs as their Defaults. This works perfectly well. If you find you have a problem with that, you can try the other presets. In particular, it can be helpful to adjust the linearity of the throttle to make it easier to gently accelerate.

Conclusion

After the disastrous wheel support in The Crew 2, I had very low expectations for The Crew Motorsport. Thankfully, they learned from those mistakes and created a much better feeling wheel in this game. The game has been a lot of fun, so it's great to be able to play it with a wheel.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.