AC Rally: Un-Forced Feedback

AC: Rally burst onto the sim-racing scene with surprising force, or should I say a lack of force? Force Feedback is AC:R’s big, contentious, topic. What did they do right? What needs to be improved?

I want to have a look a little deeper into the Force Feedback (FFB) feel that we’ve had delivered so far. Obviously it’s important to understand that this is in early access - this is not the final game, but a good, honest, frank talk about what is there, and what isn’t, is always needed. Speaking now is far better than polite silence and suffering later, like some kind of quietly fuming rally monk. 

As always, things change, so the further away from November 2025 we get, the potential for the game to have been improved only gets higher. If you want to see my overall thoughts (which hold true even considering this article), check here.

Force Feedback 101

The basic goal of any force feedback is to inform you of how a vehicle is behaving and help you feel your way around the limit. Most of us mere mortals don’t own a full motion rig, so translating what the wheel is doing into correcting a slide, is absolutely essential to the experience. You shouldn’t need a crystal ball - the wheel should give you the muscle-memory cues you’d rely on in a real car. That’s vital in rallying, where you can’t memorise the stage and have to react to what the car is doing in real time

I personally don’t have experience of driving on loose surfaces, but I do know how to put a car around a track in a reasonable manner. Thankfully (for me, not the game) that’s where I’m picking up the most issues, and I can offer some insight. 

Right now the FFB feels like the bare minimum - basically just rack force, and even that feels muted. It almost completely disregards anything outside of the rack and somehow misses the subtleties of each of the wheels actually attached to it. 

Many sim racers want more than just rack force, admittedly some are fine with this raw rack-only feel. I prefer to understand what the whole car is doing - if that means that a few extra lumps and bumps are thrown into the FFB to indicate the rear of the car, or ABS, then so be it. 

Unfortunately, this means that sliding, or grip feedback in general, through the wheel is incredibly lacking. I appreciate it needs a starting point. But for someone who relies on the feel of a car in the real world (and subsequently feedback through the virtual wheel) it definitely increases the difficulty in being competitive. 

Gravel, the hero Tarmac wishes it could be..

Let me be fair: gravel can feel pretty good. Not amazing. But good enough to be fun - the looseness hides the lack of precise force feedback, and the chaos of rallying over dirt masks a lot of missing detail. I’m sure it could feel better, but it’s playable, and enjoyable.

Tarmac? Tarmac is where the game wobbles into “return to sender” territory.

There’s little indication of tyre loading; almost no self-aligning (gyroscopic) torque; and minimal feedback when you exceed the limit of grip. On a paved stage you feel strangely disconnected, less Lancia Stratos, more Hovercraft.

And when you regain traction? You’re lucky if you notice it at all, once it finally comes back from over the edge of a very big cliff. AC:R’s tarmac currently feels like the first rain after a long dry spell - not undriveable, but slippery enough to make you question the physics, your life choices, and even the concept of roads.

Doubt is not what you want, piling into a ‘square right’ at over one hundred miles an hour. Rally fans are used to reading subtle signals: a twitch of weight, the bite of front tyres, that delicious moment where grip becomes slip. AC Rally often skips those pages entirely. It’s less “reading the car” and more “intuition and vibes.” 

Don't get me wrong - the vibes are brilliant. The locked wheel sound is gorgeous, but should I not be greeted with slightly more than noise? Why is the force feedback staying constant, having checked and seen only my front left was locked? I should at least feel a decent tug to the left.

It’s not a great feeling when your £1,000 wheel provides the same feedback as a yo-yo on a fishing line. 

There is also a strange part in the middle of the feedback that feels incredibly loose, even at low speed on cars with no power steering. I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car where the steering feels loose at low speed, power assisted or not. I don’t expect an un-assisted wheel to feel like trying to lift Thor’s hammer, but a little consistency to the real deal would be nice. 

‘Turn up the dampening’! I hear you shout! ‘No’, I shout back! Why would I want to increase a fake force added to cover a lack of feel - this is not something picked up from the game; it’s like putting your hands in thick leather gloves and then asking you to do a spot of casual neurosurgery. The detail should be there without this.

Maybe it’s not “wrong”, just “not tuned for everyone”?

Maybe the intention isn’t to mimic a GT car’s razor-sharp precision. Maybe it’s to recreate a rally car’s vague, shifting balance - but right now, that vagueness feels more like blandness than realism. 

I appreciate that a Rally car is a much softer vehicle than a pure hot-lapping machine. To me - there is not enough feedback.

What I’d expect to happen (especially on the older cars) is a vague initial turn in. Waiting for the front to get loaded up and then the wheel to transmit that grip as you’d expect on a track. Once the wheel is loaded and directing the car, it has already passed the point of “numbness” - the tyre doesn’t need to deform any more, and the suspension has already bowed politely; you should get that weighty sense of controlling an actual machine.

Why, then, am I not receiving anything that lets me understand what the outside wheel is feeling? In all cars you will feel the understeer, tyre vibration, locking up. All of this can be felt through the wheel, let alone through “butt” feel. The fact you can’t feel the “contact patch” of the tyre means you’re guessing what the car will do - relying purely on visuals and sound. Far harder than any real car.

Pace notes for the developers.

When you watch AC Rally - from replays, from chase cam, from external views - the vehicles dance across the terrain exactly how you’d want them to. Weight transfers look believable. Suspension loads up. Cars compress, rebound, step out, come back. It’s beautiful.

Which means the important part - the part that actually determines force feedback - is already there. The data exists. The sim just isn’t translating it through your wheel properly yet. This isn’t a physics problem. It’s a communication problem. Like having an excellent co-driver who insists on whispering.

We need to be able to feel the contact patch grab and release, feel the lockups, and a vibration/lightness from understeer for example. The balance between weight transfer and tire slip needs to be improved, no more large intrusive dollops of torque. Maybe we could even have subtle things like rumbling for gravel - some grain, or surface feel. Connect us with the surface: let us know when we dip a tyre in the grass on a road stage or into a loose pile of gravel.

A lot of rally games struggle to perfect the tarmac right - perhaps something needs to change, how about a gravel/tarmac “filter” that changes based on the surface you’re on? Right now tarmac feels like gravel with extra grip and a new texture, which completely throws off the turn-in feel. Anything would be good to get the tarmac feeling less like a hovercraft. AC:Evo has more feeling - pop across the office and ask for some tips, if you need! 

If the FFB catches up to the rest of the experience, AC:R could easily become one of the most engaging rally sims in years.