Dirt 5 – How to fix Controller Deadzones

Dirt 5 controller deadzone fix –  Dirt 5 has a ton of deadzone for the analog sticks on controllers resulting in almost 50% loss of total input. Wondering how to fix it? Here is a guide.

Dirt 5 – How to fix Controller Deadzones

First you have to enable Steam Controller Support

Follow the steps below to turn on Controller support on Steam:

  1. Launch Steam
  2. Click on the Big Picture Mode located at the top right corner of Steam
  3. Now click on Settings
  4. Select Controller Settings
  5. Now check the following Options:
    PlayStation Configuration Support
    Xbox Configuration Support
  6. Now just exit Big Picture Mode

Now it is time to Tweak your controls for Dirt 5

The issue that I have mentioned before, Dirt 5 cuts your total input range by about 50%. And this can lead to issues like not knowing when the car is going to start turning and how much it will turn and when it reaches maximum turning.

Dirt 5 loses about 25% on both inner and outer deadzone. This basically means you need to push your stick quite a bit off the center to start turning, but you also reach maximum input well before your stick hits the edge of the socket.

  1. In order to fix this, let’s start by making sure that your controller is connected and working properly. If it is then you should see a Controller Configuration button on your Steam Library page of Dirt 5. Kind of like this:
  2. Simply click on that button to proceed and you should arrive at the screen shown below. Go to the left stick configuration because majority of the controller users use the left stick for steering.
  3. Once you’re in, you should see what is shown below. Do not touch anything here yet and click on the Additional Settings option.
  4. You can just copy the following Horizontal Scaling and Anti-deadzone values as these are adequate enough to patch the game’s excessive deadzone:

If you find that you have some stick drift, run the game, keep this window open and slowly increase “Deadzone Inner” until the drift is gone but don’t change the anti-deadzone.

The best way to tune deadzone is going in the cockpit view in a well lit area where you can clearly see the car’s steering wheel moving as you move your analog stick.
Ideally you’d want the car to start turning when you think you have moved the stick just enough for a small input to be read by the game, but once you release the stick it should always recenter the wheel.

For me the steering was still a little too sensitive so I adjusted the response curve so I can do finer adjustments easier. (Less sensitive inputs near the center for an ease-in effect)

In case you are wondering what are the functions of these settings:

  • Horizontal scaling will set the maximum input the game will receive by multiplying your total input range by the value you’ve set, effectively getting rid of outer deadzone. DiRT 5 will reach maximum steering at 81% input, by setting the scale to that 81% reaching full input in your controller will match the steering maxing out.
  • Anti-deadzone works as the name says, it removes the game’s deadzone and it does it by raising the minimum input your controller will send to the game. After some tinkering DiRT 5 seems to only respond to inputs over 25% (which would be 0.250).
  • IMPORTANT: Horizontal scaling is the last filter to be applied which means we’ve lost 19% of our total input range, so we need to make sure we still get 25% anti-deadzone, not 81% of 25% anti-deadzone (which would be 20%).
    To get 25% anti-deadzone after it gets cut by 19%, just divide 25% by 81% and we get our 0.309 anti-deadzone value.

Before you close everything, I’d recommend going back to the controller overview and getting rid of the default deadzones Steam adds to the other analog inputs like the triggers and the other analog stick:

Configuration for the Triggers

Settings for the Stick

[Credits : Nismo]


If you think that this guide has helped you then let us know in the comment section below. Also, try checking out our other guides on Dirt 5. Who knows, you might end up finding a something you have been looking for.


That’s all folks!

Last Updated on November 4, 2020

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