Explore How Force Feedback Changes the Way Players Race Online

The first time I raced with force feedback, I hated it. I had spent two years playing racing games on a controller, then bought a cheap wheel from a supermarket clearance shelf. It shook, rattled and fought me in every corner. I turned the force feedback off, went back to my controller times, and nearly sold the wheel. A friend persuaded me to try again with lower settings and a different game. Within a week I was over a second a lap faster than I had ever been. Force feedback had not been the problem. Bad settings had.

Force feedback is the single biggest reason a wheel feels different from a controller, and the single most misunderstood part of sim racing. Here is what it actually does, how to set it up sensibly, and why it changes the way players race online.

What force feedback actually is

Force feedback, usually shortened to FFB, is the wheel pushing back against your hands. A motor inside the wheel base turns the wheel based on information from the game. In a real car, the steering wheel moves and resists because of forces acting on the front tyres. A good force feedback system tries to recreate those forces.

The most useful information it carries is about grip. As the front tyres approach the limit of grip in a corner, the steering in a real car typically goes lighter. A good sim reproduces that lightening. Once you learn to feel it, you know when you are about to understeer before the car actually slides.

Force feedback also communicates:

• Weight transfer. The steering gets heavier under braking as weight moves to the front tyres.
• Oversteer. When the rear steps out, the wheel naturally turns towards the slide, which helps you catch it.
• Kerbs and bumps. Vibrations and jolts tell you what the tyres are running over.
• Surface changes. Grass, gravel and wet patches feel different.

Why force feedback makes players faster

On a controller, you rely almost entirely on what you see and hear to judge grip. With force feedback, your hands give you a second, faster channel. That changes driving in a few concrete ways.

Catching slides

Most controller players crash when the rear steps out because they see the slide too late. With force feedback, the wheel starts turning into the slide on its own. Many slides are caught almost automatically by relaxing your grip and letting the wheel move.

Driving at the limit

The lightening of the steering near the grip limit lets you push closer to it consistently. Most of the time drivers find in their first months with a wheel comes from this.

Consistency in races

Online races are long and full of distractions. Force feedback means less of your attention is spent judging grip by eye, leaving more for traffic and strategy.

Types of wheel and what their force feedback feels like

Direct drive wheels used to be very expensive. In recent years, several manufacturers have released entry level direct drive bases at prices close to good belt driven wheels. Our gear writer compares the options in budget gaming wheels for players new to sim racing.

Setting up force feedback without fighting it

This is where most beginners go wrong, as I did. Strong force feedback feels exciting for ten minutes and exhausting after that. It also hides detail, because when the motor is working at its maximum, it cannot express anything stronger. This is called clipping.

Start low

Set the overall strength around 50 to 60 percent of maximum on a gear or belt wheel, or lower on a strong direct drive base. You should be able to drive a full race without sore arms.

Avoid clipping

Many sims show a force feedback meter. If it regularly hits the top in fast corners, reduce the strength. Lighter, detailed force feedback beats heavy, flat force feedback.

Turn down the canned effects

Many games add artificial effects, such as engine vibration or road rumble, that are not real steering forces. They can drown out the useful information. Reduce or disable them until you can feel the grip changes clearly.

Match rotation to the car

Set your wheel's rotation to match the real car, or let the game set it automatically. A GT3 car typically uses less steering rotation than a road car.

Change one setting at a time

Drive five laps after each change on the same track. Changing everything at once makes it impossible to tell what helped.

Is force feedback essential?

Some players argue that you need an expensive direct drive wheel to race seriously online. I disagree. Plenty of drivers in mid divisions of good leagues race on gear driven wheels and are fast and clean. A cheap wheel with sensible settings beats an expensive wheel set up badly. And some very quick players still race on controllers, particularly in console racing games built with controllers in mind.

What force feedback does is make driving at the limit more intuitive and more fun. It shortens the learning curve. It does not replace learning the track, the line and the braking points.

How force feedback changes racing with others

One benefit is rarely mentioned. In wheel-to-wheel racing, force feedback helps you sense when you have lost grip because you are in another car's dirty air, or because you have touched a kerb while side by side. That extra awareness makes racing closer and cleaner. In our league, drivers moving from controller to wheel almost always cause fewer incidents within a season.

If you are ready to put a wheel to the test in real competition, see how to find an online racing league that suits your skill level. More on equipment is in our Racing Gear section.