Set your max force so a hard, repeatable shove lands at 100%, leave the software curve linear or close to it, and do any shaping in the sim’s own brake setting rather than in two places at once. That’s the whole method. The rest of this article is the specific clicks for each brand and the numbers I’d start from, because every one of these four companies hides the same two settings in a different place and calls them something different.

The mistake almost everyone makes in the first week is turning max force down until the pedal feels “normal.” It won’t feel normal. A load cell brake that is set up correctly feels like a brick for about five sessions, and then your calf muscles adapt and you can’t go back. Set it low and you’ve just bought a very expensive potentiometer pedal that locks the fronts at 60% travel.

What the two settings actually do

A load cell reads force, not position. The elastomer or spring stack gives you some travel so your foot has a reference, but the number the sim sees comes from how hard you push. So “max force” (Moza calls it a percentage, Simagic shows kilograms, Fanatec calls it BRF, Thrustmaster makes you demonstrate it) is simply the push that registers as 100% brake. Everything below that scales down from there.

The curve decides how that scaling happens. Linear means 50% of your max push equals 50% brake. A progressive curve (concave, bowed toward the bottom right) makes the first half of your push gentle and the second half aggressive. A degressive one does the opposite. With a load cell, linear is right for most people, because the whole point of sensing force is that your leg already produces pressure in a linear and repeatable way. Add a curve on top and you are fighting your own hardware. The one time a curve earns its keep is if your elastomer stack is far too soft for your max force setting, in which case fix the stack.

Dead zones matter more than people think. A low dead zone of 2 to 4% stops the brake lights flickering when your foot rests on the pedal. A high dead zone of 1 to 3% guarantees you can hit a clean 100% without needing to stomp with your whole body weight. Set both.

Moza: Pit House

Open Pit House, pick the pedal set in the left bar (the Moza SR-P and Moza CRP2 both show up under Pedals whether they’re wired through the base or on the USB adapter), and click the brake tab. You get three things: a calibration button, a max force slider, and a curve window with draggable points plus a few presets.

Run the calibration first, press fully, release, confirm. Then set max force. On the SR-P, which uses a 75 kg rated cell and ships with two elastomers and a coil spring, I’d start around 50 to 55% on a solid aluminum profile rig, which works out to something like 35 to 40 kg of actual push. On a wheel stand or a folding cockpit, go nearer 35 to 40%. The CRP2 has a 200 kg cell and a much stiffer stack out of the box, so its percentages don’t translate; start at 25% there and work up.

Leave the curve on linear. If you must touch it, drag only the middle point and only a few percent.

Two Pit House quirks worth knowing. Firmware updates have a habit of wiping pedal settings, so screenshot or export your profile before clicking update. And the SR-P’s low dead zone defaults to 0, which means a boot resting on the pedal will register. Bump it to 3%. The SR-P brake is the main reason the two-pedal set at around $200 is the default recommendation on r/simracing for anyone on a Moza base, and the usual gripe isn’t the software, it’s the heel plate sliding on carpet.

Fanatec: the App and BRF

Fanatec has two paths depending on how the pedals connect, which trips up half the support posts. If the Fanatec ClubSport V3, Fanatec CSL Elite V2 or Fanatec CSL Pedals LC are plugged into the wheelbase with the RJ12 cable, the brake force setting lives in the base’s Tuning Menu as BRF, and you adjust it from the wheel itself or from the Tuning Menu page in the Fanatec App. If the pedals are on USB, the App gives them their own page with a Brake Force slider and manual min/max calibration.

BRF is backwards from how most people expect. Lower BRF means less force needed to reach 100%. Higher means more. On a V3 with its 90 kg cell and the stock elastomer, BRF 50 is a reasonable place to start on a rigid rig. The CSL LC kit uses a softer two-elastomer-and-spring arrangement, so a BRF around 60 to 70 gives a similar real-world push. On a CSL Elite V2, start at 55.

Then calibrate. The App’s manual calibration is the only reliable way to set the top of the range, because the auto mode will happily record your single hardest ever stomp as 100% and leave you unable to repeat it in lap 20. Press to what you’d call a hard stop, not a crash stop, and lock it there.

The V3 also has vibration motors in the pedal faces. The ABS setting in the Tuning Menu triggers the brake pedal motor at whatever percentage you choose. I run it at 95 so it buzzes only when I’m genuinely at the limit. Lots of people run it around 80 and effectively use it as a training wheel; no shame in that for the first month, but turn it up later or you’ll brake to the buzz instead of to the car.

Fanatec gets a paragraph on reliability because it still comes up in every thread. The Corsair takeover in 2024 improved shipping times and the App is far better than the old Control Panel, but support tickets for a dead load cell can still take weeks. Register the product the day it arrives. The brake elastomers on the CSL LC also take a set over the first fifty hours and feel softer than day one, so expect to raise BRF a notch after a month.

Thrustmaster: the T-LCM Calibration Tool

The Thrustmaster T-LCM is still the sleeper buy at around $230, often less on sale, and its software approach is the oldest of the four. There’s no slider for max force. Instead you download the T-LCM Calibration Tool (separate from the Thrustmaster Control Panel), click into the brake axis, and press the pedal to the point you want to be 100%. The tool records it. Hold that press steady for a second; a twitchy press records the spike.

The tool also sets start and end dead zones per axis. Put 3% on the low side. On the high side, leave 2%. That’s the whole software story, and it is stored on the pedal set itself, which is why it carries across to PS5 and Xbox when you plug the pedals into a compatible base.

Because there’s no software force setting, the T-LCM leans on its physical setup more than the others. It ships with springs in three stiffnesses that you stack in different combinations inside the brake, and the combination matters more than anything in the calibration tool. The stock medium pair is fine for a wheel stand. For a proper rig, go stiffer and recalibrate. The metal pedal arms and the 100 kg cell are better than the price suggests; the pedal faces are the cheap part and the throttle spring is weirdly light.

Simagic: SimPro Manager

SimPro Manager puts everything on one pedal page, which makes it the easiest of the four to understand once it’s installed. Select the Simagic P-HPR, Simagic P1000 or P2000, open the brake axis, and you’ll see Set Min and Set Max buttons, a max force box shown in actual kilograms, a curve editor with presets and draggable points, and on the P-HPR and the modular P1000 a haptics panel for ABS, traction control and lock-up.

Showing kilograms is a genuine advantage. Start at 40 kg on an aluminum rig and 28 kg on a stand. The P1000’s 200 kg cell gives you enormous headroom, so don’t feel you need to use it; a 60 kg max is already more than most people hold consistently through a stint. The P-HPR, at around $300 to $400 depending on pedal count, is the one I’d actually point most people at. Its elastomer stack has a nice initial soft stage that mimics pad knock-off before the pressure ramps.

Curve: linear preset, then forget it. Haptics: ABS at 95%, lock-up around 90%, TC off until you’ve driven with it for a week and know whether you like the throttle buzz. The haptics are the main argument people have in the Simagic Discord, with one camp calling them a gimmick and the other refusing to drive without them. I’m in the second camp but only at high thresholds.

Simagic’s documentation is thin and the software occasionally forgets pedal settings after an update. Same advice as Moza: export the profile.

Now go into the sim and stop shaping it twice

Every sim has its own brake curve setting, and the default assumes a cheap potentiometer pedal. With a load cell you want that setting at or near linear.

iRacing’s Brake Force Factor defaults to 1.80, which adds a noticeable curve. Set it to 0 for fully linear, or 1.0 if you like a touch of softness at the top. Assetto Corsa Competizione has a Brake Gamma slider under controls; 1.0 is linear and that’s where it belongs. Le Mans Ultimate and rFactor 2 both use a brake sensitivity slider where 50% is linear. Gran Turismo 7 gives you nothing per pedal, so the base or pedal-side setting is all you get, which is one more reason Fanatec and Thrustmaster are the console picks.

Then check your work with telemetry rather than feel. iRacing’s F9 black box shows a brake bar, ACC’s HUD has one, LMU too. Do five hard stops into Turn 1 at Monza in a GT3. Your peak should land between 85 and 95% on the ones that feel right. If every stop pins 100% for a full second, max force is too low. If you can’t get above 80% without standing up, it’s too high.

Reasonable starting points, assuming a solid rig:

Knock each one down by a third on a wheel stand.

The part nobody tells you about the rig

A load cell is pointless on a desk clamp. Above about 20 kg of brake force a desk-mounted setup flexes, slides or tips, and all the repeatability you paid for goes into the carpet. Wheel stands are better but still move at 40 kg, which is why the stand numbers above are lower. If you’re on a Wheel Stand Pro or similar and the pedal plate rocks, the fix is a plywood sheet under the whole thing or a rear brace, not a lower max force. Lower max force just moves the problem into the sim.

Seat position matters too. Your heel should sit on the plate with the ball of your foot on the pedal and your knee bent enough that a hard push comes from the thigh, not the ankle. People who find load cells exhausting are almost always pushing with the ankle.

FAQ

How much brake force should I set on load cell pedals? Start around 35 to 40 kg of real push on a rigid rig and 25 to 30 kg on a stand, then adjust until your typical hard stop peaks at 85 to 95% in telemetry. Real race cars run far higher, but you don’t have a harness holding you in place and you’ll be doing this for two hours.

Should the brake curve be linear with a load cell? Yes, almost always. Force-sensing already matches how your leg works. Shape the response in the sim’s single brake setting if you need to, not in the pedal software as well. A mild progressive curve is only worth trying if the elastomer stack is softer than you’d like and you can’t change it.

Why do I lock up more with load cell pedals than I did before? Because max force is set too low and you’re hitting 100% with a push that used to be 70%. Raise it. The second common cause is a low dead zone at 0, which lets rest pressure count as brake and compresses your usable range.

Buy this if, check this before you order

If you’re on a Moza base, the SR-P two-pedal set is the obvious buy and the CRP2 is only justified if you’ve already got a proper rig. On a Fanatec base, the CSL Pedals plus LC kit covers almost everyone, and the V3 is for people who want the vibration motors and a metal pedal under their foot for the next decade. Console drivers on a Thrustmaster base should buy the T-LCM and stop reading reviews. Anyone building a PC rig from scratch should look at the Simagic P-HPR before paying more.

Before you order any of them, check two things. First, how the pedals connect to your base, because a USB-only set on a console base is a paperweight, and some pedal-to-base cables are sold separately. Second, what the pedals are going to bolt to. If the answer is a desk clamp or a stand you can’t brace, spend the money on the mounting first. The best load cell on the market can’t measure force into a surface that moves.