DiRT Rally Wheel Setup and Settings

Overview

Due to bugs and lacking in-game descriptions and information, setting up your steering wheel properly to use in DiRT Rally can be a pain at this point in Early Access. With this guide I hope to help alleviate those grievances and inform you of any bugs related to steering with wheels, and to clarify what the different wheel settings do. This guide won’t cover force feedback however, at least yet as it’s being rebuilt by the devs anyway.

Welcome!

This guide is my attempt to help people setup their wheels and to clarify the wheel settings found in-game, as well as to inform of any bugs related to steering wheel controls. As I only have one wheel, Logitech Driving Force GT, any information about the settings or bugs with other wheels that deviates from what I give in this guide, is welcome. At this point this guide won’t cover FFB as that is being rebuilt by the devs at the moment.

Basic Wheel Setup

So, you have your wheel plugged in and you’re ready to hop onto the stages and start cras… racing.

The only thing close to such would be the real “factory default” settings of the actual car you’re virtually driving. The best settings are those which are most comfortable for you, and best fit your driving style and what you want it to feel like. The key is to start somewhere, drive, and adjust whatever you feel is off, then repeat. I hope this guide can serve as a starting point, help you understand the different settings, and help you find the best settings for yourself. Thus allowing you to enjoy DiRT Rally even more.

For starters, make sure that your active profile in your wheel’s software has default settings in wheel/throttle/brake axis’ for range/saturation and sensitivity/linearity. Saturation and sensitivity/linearity are also adjustable in-game, and if the values are non-default in both programs, results in handling can be unpredictable. Unless you’re familiar with your wheel/pedals and deadzone adjustment, leave it at 0% for each axis for now. You will also normally want the range setting to be default / 100% in each axis. It defines how much of the full axis range will be applied when the axis is at the end of it’s range. E.g. with 25% wheel range, turning the wheel all the way to the left in-game will result in your car only turning 25% of maximum.

I have no personal experience with other wheels, so any information is welcome about whether or not a software like the Profiler is required to be running to make the wheel behave as expected.

Basic Wheel Setup: Rotation

Rotation degrees means the amount of rotation from lock to lock. E.g. 900 degrees equals 2.5 turns lock-to-lock (from left/right lock to the opposite lock), or 1,25 turns from center to left/right lock. The game supports at least up to 900 degrees rotation (DFGT max), only the wheel animation in-game is locked to 180 degrees. At this point in time it is not possible to adjust steering lock on the cars in-game, which determines how far a car’s wheels can turn from the center. Without knowing the steering lock amount you cannot calculate nor therefore properly influence steering ratio. Hopefully that will be added in the future.

I personally use 540 degrees (1.5 turns lock-to-lock). After too much time spent digging into the matter in the past, majority of the info I found suggests that modern WRC cars use around 540 degrees. This of course can differ a bit to either direction depending on the car.

Start with a rotation you are familiar with or have used in the past. If this is the first game you’re playing with a wheel, and your wheel is 900 or 1080 degrees, I’d suggest you start with 540 and then find your preference from there as it’s realistic to WRC cars and between the extremes. If your wheel’s max rotation is less than 540, I’d suggest starting with your maximum. If after driving for a stage or two you start feeling that sharper corners require you to turn the wheel uncomfortably much, or that you can’t turn the wheel far enough fast enough, reduce the rotation degrees bit by bit until you find a comfortable setting. Or if instead you feel like the car turns too much compared to the rotation of your wheel, increase the degrees until you find your sweet spot.

Basic Wheel Setup Continued

And finally, check “allow game to adjust settings” or similar option, and make sure you are not using an option like “combined pedals”. Combined pedals make the system see your throttle and brake pedals as two halves of the same axis, and you won’t be able to utilise a technique called left-foot braking, which means braking without (fully) releasing throttle.

Shifters and Clutch

Now it’s time to go in-game. After you’ve set up your profile, from the main menu, go to Profile -> Game Preferences.

At the top in the Assists as the first thing you have Transmission. From here you can find all the different transmission options, including H-Pattern + Clutch. Many people seem to miss this as instead of having manual/auto/semi-auto here and the actual method of switching in the controls with keybinds, shifter styles are here as separate manual “modes”. Oddly enough, the game doesn’t have sequential + clutch option at the moment, so unless you have an H-shifter, you can’t use clutch.

I don’t have a clutch pedal myself but this is what I’ve read on the forums. Correct me if I’m wrong, and feel free to share any relevant information related to clutch and shifters.

Keybinds Issue

Advanced Wheel Settings: Deadzones

Now it’s time to go adjust the wheel options. Go to options -> Controls -> Advanced Wheel Settings. Here you can adjust deadzones, saturation, and linearity.

Deadzones are an amount of “empty space” before any movement on an axis is registered. On the wheel this means around the center, and on pedals at the beginning. If you e.g. want a bit more “center space” on the wheel where the in-game wheel won’t yet turn, you can increase the deadzone. Unfortunately at the moment the in-game deadzone only goes in 5% increments which can be a bit much. So if you want more fine adjustment, use your wheel’s software like Logitech Profiler. I use a 2% deadzone on the wheel personally (my wheel’s center point feels weird and “jumpy” for some reason), and 0% on my pedals.

Advanced Wheel Settings: Saturation

Steering saturation (as well as pedals’ saturation) is basically effective range percentage here, and is pretty much the opposite of the range setting in Logitech Profiler. If you put saturation to 50, it means that you will reach the end of the range at the halfway point of an axis. For example, you have your wheel on 900 degree rotation which is it’s maximum. When the steering saturation is at 100, you need to turn your wheel left all the way to have the car turn all the way left to the lock. If you put saturation to 50 instead, you will reach the left lock of the car after rotating your wheel left half of the full range, as if you were using 450 degree rotation. This way you can effectively control your wheel rotation amount in-game; leave it at the full setting of your wheel from the software, and then adjust it with saturation. Of course you’ll have to do some math there if you go by degrees, but this way you can change your rotation for different cars without the need to alt-tab.

For throttle and brake it’s the same thing, at 50 throttle saturation you will “floor it” when you press your throttle pedal down halfway. I recommend 100 on all saturation settings unless you want to fine tune, use it to change your wheel rotation amount, or for some reason want to reach the max brake/throttle without having to press your pedals all the way down (like if you have a worn/faulty pedal not registering some part of the range near the end).

Advanced Wheel Settings: Linearity

Linearity is the relative sensitivity around the center of the wheel and the locks. To clarify how linearity works, imagine a horizontal line with a dot in the center, like the linearity slider in the game. That is your wheel when centered. Now when you turn your wheel left or right, the dot moves accordingly, reaching the edges of the line when the wheel is turned all the way to the left/right. This is how your car wheels will turn.

At 0 linearity it moves smoothly. Turning the wheel 1% of it’s maximum rotation to right/left moves the dot 1% of the line to the same direction. Turning the wheel 2% of rotation moves the dot 2%, and so on continuing in 1:1 ratio to 100%. If you increase the linearity (positive number), turning the wheel to left/right will move the dot in an increased amount at the center part of the wheel rotation, and in a decreased amount on the later part. Meaning that with a linearity of 1, turning the wheel 1% will result in the dot moving more than 1% of the line. With a linearity of 2, the dot will move more than with 1 linearity. As you keep turning the wheel with a positive linearity, it will then move the dot less and less per rotation degree the further from the center you go.

What this means is that with a positive linearity, you can turn the car more while turning the wheel less right off the center. But you will of course lose fine adjustment as you can’t turn the car only ever so slightly. The higher the linearity, the more fine adjustment you lose in turning near the center. Also, the further you turn from center, the more you have to rotate the wheel to keep turning the car more. (e.g. 1:3 ratio at center <-> 3:1 ratio at lock)
With a negative linearity, the same applies in reverse. Meaning you have to turn the wheel more off the center to turn the car, and nearing the end of wheel’s rotation you will lose fine adjustment as the car turns more per degree of wheel rotation.

My personal preference is 0 linearity in-game and wheel software (i.e. 50% sensitivity in Logitech Profiler), which means 1:1 ratio from center to lock. Depending on your software, you might be able to get more out of this setting there than in-game. If you prefer to adjust linearity with your wheel software, leave it to default zero here.

Closing

That’s pretty much it. I hope this guide was somewhat helpful, at least in clarifying the different options and saving time and energy figuring out what they do, until the game gets proper descriptions into the wheel settings. If you have anything to add, corrections or questions or comments in general, fire away.