There are a few settings in Gran Turismo 7 that can vastly improve how the cars feel when racing with a controller. Here is our guide to the best Gran Tursimo 7 controller settings.
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Gran Turismo 7 is a game that is just as enjoyable with a controller as it is with a racing wheel. While a racing wheel offers greater immersion, racing GT7 with a controller is both convenient and allows comfortable sim racing from your couch.
Gran Turismo 7 is a game that has at its core been designed to be played using either a controller or a racing wheel. A racing wheel will no doubt improve your overall immersion, and it can give you finer levels of control over how your car handles on track.
However, a controller is what the majority of players will use to race Gran Turismo 7. And there are many that will find a controller allows them to be much faster than with a racing wheel.
With that in mind, in this guide, I’m going to show you our recommended controller settings for Gran Turismo 7. I’ll show you which settings you absolutely must change to get the best feel out of your controller in GT7.
If you are racing GT7 with a racing wheel, view our recommended Gran Turismo 7 wheel force feedback settings. Or check out the best racing wheels for Gran Turismo 7 if you’re considering buying a wheel.
Before getting to our controller setting recommendations, I’ll quickly look at how you can adjust your controller settings in Gran Turismo 7. This is incredibly easy to do, but it can be hard to find where to adjust certain controller settings.
For the best Gran Turismo 7 controller settings, follow our recommended settings below. Use the below settings while following the steps above to input the settings.
The recommended controller settings below for Gran Turismo 7 are our preferred settings when racing with a controller. You can use these as a base, and adjust them to suit your driving style and preference. I have included alternate traction control settings for some scenarios in brackets.
If you’re racing Gran Turismo 7 with a sim racing wheel, you should ensure that you have the best force feedback settings. View all of our recommended force feedback settings for Gran Turismo 7 for all racing wheels.
There are a few different places where you change settings in GT7 that will change how your controller feels and how your car behaves while racing with a controller.
The first set of settings I’m going to explain are the assist settings in Gran Turismo 7. These will change the level of driver aids that you have enabled. These will dramatically affect how your car behaves on track.
Lowering many of these assist settings can make the cars in GT7 harder to drive. But lower assists in GT7 can unlock additional lap time and speed.
The first option is the choice between manual or automatic gears. In Gran Turismo 7, you can decide to let the game handle your gear changes, so you can focus on the driving. Or you can choose manual gears, which requires you to change the gears yourself.
Manual gears will always be the faster choice, as you can manipulate and time your gear changes to shave tenths of a second off a lap. Automatic gears in Gran Turismo 7 won’t always shift at the most optimum time.
Changing gears manually will give you full control over how fast you downshift, and how close to the max RPM you rev your car, and both of these will change how your car behaves, and your ultimate lap time.
The traction control setting in GT7 can be set across a range, rather than simply turned on or off. When it is set to 0, there will be no traction control assistance, meaning you’ll have to modulate your throttle and any potential wheel spin manually.
The higher you set this, the more assistance the game will provide to prevent your wheels from spinning. Turning traction control to max or to zero isn’t necessarily the best option here.
Just remember, many cars will have traction control enabled in the real world. GT3 cars use traction control for example, so turning it off in GT7 can result in unrealistic outcomes.
The ABS setting allows you to choose between turning your anti-lock braking system off, weak or default. Much like traction control, ABS in Gran Turismo 7 will intervene when it detects that your brakes will lock. Each setting has its benefits and drawback here, and a lot is based on driver skill and confidence when changing this setting.
Auto-drive will allow the game to handle braking or steering for you. This can be helpful for those new to racing games, but in most scenarios, this should be turned completely off.
The driving line assistance in Gran Turismo 7 will allow you to turn on visual indicators that can show you when to brake and the best racing line throughout a lap.
This is a great assist if you are trying to learn a track, but once you feel comfortable with a track, I’d recommend turning this off for the best immersion.
The braking indicator is another form of visual aid to help you learn when to brake into a corner. Much like driving line assistance above, I’d recommend turning it on if you’re learning a new track, and turning it off once you feel comfortable.
Again, much like the two visual aids above, the braking area is another way of learning braking zones.
This setting will warp your car back to the track if you go off or crash. This can be helpful during time trial or while learning, but is recommended to be turned off to achieve realism.
ASM is a driving aid that makes each car easier to drive. It will work to keep the car’s balance stable and keep the car under control.
This works in a similar way to traction control and ABS, but is more generalised to ensuring you don’t lose control over your car. I would highly recommend leaving this off, to feel the full performance of any car.
With countersteering assistance, you can choose between off, weak or strong assist levels. In Gran Turismo 7, this assist will help catch your car in the event of oversteering or the start of a spin. This isn’t fool proof, and you can still spin your car with this assist enabled, so I’d recommend leaving this set to off.
The controller settings will directly change the amount of force feedback, vibration and sensitivity present in your controller when racing in Gran Turismo 7. These are the core settings that will change how your controller feels and behaves.
The steering sensitivity setting in Gran Turismo 7 will have the biggest impact on how your car behaves using a controller. It will adjust the response time and just how sensitive your car is to your steering inputs.
The Best F1 24 Racing WheelsHigher steering sensitivity settings will allow your car to respond faster and be more on edge while applying steering input. This will give you the chance to make very quick inputs, but can come at the expense of overall stability.
Lower sensitivity settings will slow the car’s reaction to your steering inputs. This will make your car slower to respond, which will improve stability. But it will negatively affect how quickly you can get your car turned into corners.
This setting affects the maximum torque output when using a racing wheel in Gran Turismo 7. This won’t have an effect on your controller.
Much like the force feedback setting above, the sensitivity doesn’t have an effect on your controller, and only affects racing wheels.
The vibration settings in Gran Turismo 7 will change how strong the vibration in your controller is, and gives you control over how the Dual Sense adaptive triggers feel when braking and accelerating. These settings can be found in the controller settings in the main menu.
The strength setting will change how strong the controller vibration is. Turning this up will make your controller vibrate more, and turning it down has the opposite effect.
The trigger effect settings change how much resistance there is in both triggers when accelerating and braking. Effect Brake
The final touch when adjusting your controller settings in Gran Turismo 7 is to adjust your button mapping. This option is found in the controller settings, just above sensitivity.
This button mapping allows you to change which buttons control certain inputs. You can change which buttons are used to change gear, or look back along with a variety of other configurations. Follow the steps below to learn how to quickly and easily adjust your button mapping in Gran Turismo 7.
How to change your button mapping in Gran Turismo 7;
View the best controllers for F1 22 for all consoles.
By adjusting your controller settings in Gran Turismo 7, you can adjust the way your controller feels, and the way the cars in-game behave to your own personal preference. I would recommend using the settings above as a baseline, and making any finer adjustments to fit your own personal preference.
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Rich is the co-founder, and one of the main F1 setup creators and content writers for SimRacingSetups. With over a decade of experience as a graphic designer, marketing director, competitive sim racer and avid motorsport fan, Rich founded SimRacingSetup.com to share his passion and knowledge of sim racing and Formula 1 with other sim racers.
View all articles written by Rich
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