If you own a direct drive wheel and Automobilista 2 feels vague, floaty, or like you’re steering through wet sand, here is the fix in one paragraph. Set the base to 100% torque in its own software with the damper, friction and spring effects turned off or near it. In the game, pick the Default+ profile, gain somewhere between 50 and 65, low force boost at 0, FX at 30 to 40, damping at 10 to 20, menu spring at 0. Drive the Porsche 992 GT3 R at Interlagos for ten laps before you touch anything else. That gets you 90% of the way on a Moza R9, a CSL DD or a ClubSport DD, and the remaining 10% is per-car taste.

The reason this works is that AMS2 hands your wheel a pretty raw steering rack force and lets the tyre model do the talking. Most complaints about the game’s FFB come from a base’s driver settings arguing with that signal, or from someone carrying over a low force boost value that made sense on a Logitech and turns a direct drive wheel into a notchy mess around center. The game is not the problem anymore. It was, for a while. It isn’t now.

What the sliders actually do

Reiza gives you five controls and hides them behind names that could mean anything, so here is what each one does in practice.

Gain is overall output. It scales everything, and on a direct drive base it is the only thing standing between you and clipping. If gain is too high, the strongest cornering loads flatten out and the wheel stops telling you when the front tyres let go. That plateau is the single most common reason people say “I can’t feel the grip limit in AMS2.” They can’t, because the signal is pinned against the ceiling.

Low Force Boost lifts the bottom end of the signal. On a gear or belt wheel, small forces get swallowed by friction inside the mechanism and LFB pushes them up so you can feel the car around center. On direct drive there is no friction to overcome, and boosting the small stuff just makes the wheel jittery and produces a fake-feeling center detent. Zero. I mean it.

FX is the effects layer: road surface texture, kerb rumble, scrub vibration, the engine buzz you feel at idle in some of the older cars. It is separate from the tyre force, so raising it does not tell you more about grip, it just adds noise. Too much FX makes every track feel like Sebring. I run 30 on a 9Nm base, a bit higher on weaker wheels where the road texture would otherwise disappear.

Damping adds resistance proportional to how fast the wheel is turning. It calms oscillation on the straights and takes some of the snap out of a catch-and-correct. Most direct drive bases have their own damper in the driver, and running both stacked is where “heavy and dead” comes from. Pick one place to do it. I prefer doing it in the game at 10 to 20 and leaving the base’s natural damper low, because the in-game one tracks what the car is doing rather than just adding goo.

Menu Spring Strength is what centers the wheel in menus. Set it to 0 on direct drive unless you enjoy having the rim yanked out of your hand when you alt-tab.

Default, Default+, or a custom file

For years the honest answer to “which AMS2 FFB profile” was “download Karsten Hvidberg’s custom file, then argue about which version.” The Reiza forum thread on custom FFB files runs to hundreds of pages, Danielkart has published more revisions than some sims have had patches, and rFuktor’s file was for a long time the thing everyone pasted into Documents\Automobilista 2\ffb_custom_settings.txt on day one. They existed because the stock profiles in 2021 and 2022 were genuinely thin, and clever people found ways to rebuild the signal from telemetry channels the game exposes.

Since the 1.6 update at the end of 2024, which rewrote a big chunk of the tyre and suspension physics and reworked the stock profiles alongside it, I stopped using custom files on direct drive. Default+ now carries the lateral load build-up properly, you feel the rear stepping out through the rack before you see it, and the flat-spot and lock-up cues are there without a third party’s math. The custom files still work and some people still swear by them. On a 5Nm CSL DD or a T300 I can see the case, because a couple of them are tuned to squeeze detail out of a weak base. On anything 9Nm and above, the stock Default+ profile is where I’d start and probably where I’d stay.

Plain Default is the “purist” option with less of the FX layer and a slightly cleaner rack force. It’s fine. It is also a bit dull in the GT3s. Default+ is the one to run.

Moza: R5, R9, R12 and up

Moza’s Pit House software has more sliders than it needs, and the defaults are tuned for people who want a wheel to feel expensive in the first thirty seconds rather than for AMS2 specifically. Start here:

• Max torque output: 100%. Scale in the game, not the base.
• Wheel base rotation: 1080 or higher. AMS2 supports soft lock and will set the correct per-car lock itself. If you set the base to 540 for a formula car, the game’s own lock fights it.
• Road sensitivity: 10 is the default and fine. Dropping to 0 makes some cars feel muffled.
• Speed-dependent damping, natural inertia, natural damper, natural friction: 0, 0, 0 to 10, 0. The R9 and R12 have enough mass in the motor that adding inertia on top just slows the wheel down.
• Spring: 0.
• FFB reverse: off, obviously, but check it if the wheel pulls the wrong way after a firmware update. It has happened to more than one person after a Pit House update.

In the game, on an Moza R9 at 9Nm I run Default+, gain 55, LFB 0, FX 30, damping 15. The Moza R5 wants gain around 65 because it runs out of headroom sooner, and I’d bump FX to 40 there so the road texture survives. The Moza R12 goes down to about 48 gain, and at that torque the Formula V10 Gen2 through the Senna S at Interlagos will genuinely tire your forearms in a way that tells you something about how those cars were driven.

The thing people gripe about with Moza in AMS2 is a slight rubbery softness right at center in some of the older road cars, the Copa Classic Fusca and Gol for instance. That is partly the cars, which have real steering slop modelled, and partly Moza’s default filtering. Turning off the natural damper and dropping speed-dependent damping to 0 cleans most of it up. Moza being the newer brand, their firmware moves fast and the Discord is a decent place to check whether a particular Pit House version broke something before you spend an evening chasing a ghost.

Fanatec: CSL DD, GT DD Pro, ClubSport DD

The tuning menu on the wheel is where AMS2 setups go to die, because people copy an ACC profile and wonder why everything feels like it is underwater. Fanatec’s own recommended settings for AMS2 are okay but conservative. This is what has held up for me:

• SEN: Auto. Let the game set rotation.
• FF: 100.
• FFS: Peak on the 5Nm CSL DD, Linear on the 8Nm boost kit and up.
• NDP: 20 on a Fanatec CSL DD, 15 on the ClubSport DD. Fanatec bases oscillate on the straights at 0 in AMS2, especially in the formula cars, and this is the cheapest way to stop it.
• NFR: 0. NIN: 0.
• INT: 3. Below that the CSL DD gets grainy on tarmac texture. Above 5 it starts smearing detail.
• FEI: 100. This is the one people set to 80 “for smoothness” and then lose the flat spot rumble.
• SPR: 0. DPR: 100, but it does nothing unless the game asks for it, and AMS2’s in-game damping slider is what asks.

In-game on the 8Nm CSL DD: Default+, gain 60, LFB 0, FX 35, damping 10. The 5Nm version wants gain 70 and I’d run FX 40 to keep the road texture from vanishing. The Fanatec GT DD Pro is the same base in a PlayStation shell, so the same numbers apply on PC. The ClubSport DD at 12Nm or the DD+ at 15Nm drop to gain 45 to 50, and at that point the Mercedes AMG GT3 at Bathurst over the top of the Mountain gives you every kerb and every bit of camber change through the rack in a way that makes 5Nm feel like a suggestion.

One warning that has nothing to do with settings. Fanatec’s support and shipping reputation earned every bit of its bad name in 2023 and 2024, and while the Corsair takeover has improved delivery times, an RMA is still slower than it should be. If you are buying new specifically for AMS2, the Moza R9 is cheaper, ships faster, and in this game I cannot tell the two 9Nm-class bases apart with my eyes closed. That is not a knock on the CSL DD. It’s a knock on paying more for the badge.

Logitech: G29, G920, G923, Pro

The G29 and G920 are gear driven at a nominal 2.2Nm, and the gears have friction and a bit of backlash you can hear if you rock the wheel gently. That friction is why LFB exists. In G Hub, set operating range to 900 degrees, sensitivity 50 (that’s linear, anything higher is a curve you don’t want), centering spring off, and leave the game to handle the rest.

In AMS2 on a Logitech G29: Default+, gain 100, LFB 20 to 30, FX 45, damping 0. The damping stays at 0 because the gearbox already provides plenty. The LFB is what brings the center of the wheel to life so you can feel the front tyres start to slide in the Stock Car Pro at Curitiba rather than just noticing you’ve stopped turning. Push LFB past 35 and the wheel starts to feel like it has a notch in it at straight-ahead. A few people run custom FFB files on the G29 specifically to get more mid-range detail, and this is the one case where I’d say it’s worth twenty minutes of your time. Danielkart’s Logitech-tuned versions are the usual suggestion.

The G923 is the same hardware with TrueForce, which AMS2 does not natively support, so treat it as a G29 and don’t pay extra for it if the choice is between the two. The Logitech G Pro at 11Nm is a different animal and settles into roughly the ClubSport DD numbers: gain 50, LFB 0, FX 30, damping 15, with the base’s own filtering turned mostly off in G Hub. It’s a lovely wheel. It’s also around a thousand dollars with the rim, and for AMS2 alone that money buys a Moza R12 and a load cell pedal set with change left over.

Thrustmaster: T300, T248, T818

The T300 has been the default budget belt wheel for a decade and it still does the job in AMS2, with two caveats. It clips early because 4Nm of belt drive runs out of ceiling fast, and it gets hot, which makes the fan spin up and the FFB fade slightly over a long stint. In the Thrustmaster control panel: 1080 degrees, overall 100, constant 100, periodic 100, spring 0, damper 0. Then in the game on a Thrustmaster T300: Default+, gain 80, LFB 10 to 15, FX 35, damping 5. Belt drives are smoother than gears so you need less LFB than the G29, and going higher just makes the center feel artificial. The T248 hybrid is close to the same numbers with LFB nudged up to 15.

The Thrustmaster T818 at 10Nm is Thrustmaster’s direct drive effort, and the numbers land near the Moza R9: gain 55, LFB 0, FX 30, damping 15, with the base’s own damper and friction settings at 0 in the Thrustmaster panel. The T818’s quirk in AMS2 is a faint high-frequency buzz at speed on some tracks that the FX slider controls, so if it bothers you, drop FX to 20 before you touch anything else.

Check for clipping before you chase feel

Turn on the telemetry HUD in the game’s HUD options. There is an FFB output bar that goes red when the signal saturates. Take the Formula V10 Gen2 to Spa, run Pouhon and Blanchimont flat, and watch it. If the bar pins red through the whole corner, drop gain by five and go again. A tiny flicker of red at the peak of the fastest corner in the fastest car is fine and means you’re using the full range. Constant red means you’ve thrown away the information you bought the wheel to feel.

This is also where cars diverge. The V10 has the heaviest steering in the game and the Copa Classic B cars have some of the lightest, and one gain value will not suit both. I keep a note of two numbers, one for formula cars and one for everything else, and swap them at the setup screen. It’s a small ritual, and less annoying than it sounds.

The rig matters more than the numbers

A direct drive base on a desk clamp is a different wheel from the same base bolted to an aluminium profile rig. On a flexing desk the peak forces in the V10 go into wobbling the furniture instead of your hands, and what you feel is a smeared version of the signal with the sharp edges rounded off. People then raise gain to compensate, hit clipping, and conclude AMS2 has bad FFB. If your desk moves when you turn the wheel hard, the fix is a cheap wheel stand or a rig, not a slider. Every 9Nm base I’ve had on a desk has felt worse than a 5Nm base on a rig.

FAQ

Why does AMS2 feel lighter than ACC or iRacing at the same gain? Because it is not adding a canned weight layer, and because most GT3 cars in AMS2 have power steering modelled properly. ACC feels heavier at the same in-game percentage because its signal has more constant load in it. Raising gain until AMS2 feels like ACC will put you into clipping. Compare the grip-limit information instead, not the static weight.

Does Automobilista 2 support soft lock? Yes, for most direct drive bases and the mainstream Logitech and Thrustmaster wheels. Set the base rotation to 900 or higher in its own software and the game will apply each car’s real lock, so a Formula car stops at around 360 and the Stock Car goes to 540 or so. If soft lock isn’t working, check that the rotation in the base software isn’t set lower than the car’s lock.

Should I use a custom FFB file in 2026? On a direct drive wheel, no. Run Default+. On a G29, T300 or 5Nm CSL DD, a Logitech or Thrustmaster-tuned custom file from the Reiza forum thread can add mid-range detail that the stock profile struggles to push through a weaker mechanism. Try the stock profile for a week first so you know what you’re comparing against.

Buy this if, check this before you order

Buy a Moza R9 if your main sim is AMS2 and you’re moving from a G29 or T300. It’s the cheapest base that gets you the full V10 Gen2 experience without clipping, it ships quickly, and the price sits around $440 for the base alone. Buy the CSL DD with the 8Nm boost kit if you already own Fanatec pedals or want the PlayStation option later. Skip the G Pro and the T818 unless you have a reason beyond this game.

Before you order anything, sit at your desk, grab the edge, and shove it sideways. If it moves, budget for a stand first. A 5Nm wheel on a solid mount will teach you more about what the Stock Car Pro is doing at Cascavel than a 12Nm wheel on a desk that flexes, and no FFB setting in the world fixes furniture.