Is the FFB on TDU2 really bad, or am I doing something wrong?

[Excrubulent]

I've just started playing this again with the TDU World launcher and attendant patches, and I'm really disappointed in the FFB.  It seems like it's just a centering spring that turns off when understeer is detected, some vibration effects, and that's it?  It doesn't even help you find your countersteer angle to recover slides?  Also, it seems like even with the deadzone set to zero, there's a pretty noticeable deadzone with a pretty large jump to the minimum steering value once it actually starts steering, so you're constantly hunting back & forth trying to centre your car on the road.

When I played this about 10 years ago, I only had a Logitech MOMO wheel, and there still wasn't a proper hardcore physics mode, so maybe I just never had the information to see how bad the steering really was.

At first I thought it was a problem with my wheel, since it's an obscure simpli.city SW20_V3 wheel, so it's often not supported and the game calls it a joystick.  However I've actually tried it on an old G29 wheel that I keep lying around and it's exactly the same.  The game detects that it's a wheel but it still has all the same glaring problems.

I followed these instructions (wayback link because the site is down):  https://web.archive.org/web/20190923012211/http://solidlystated.com/software/test-drive-unlimited-2-steering-wheel-support/

That made it a little better, but not much.

I then installed the FFB tweaks mod:  

It's possible I don't have it set up properly, but I can't really tell if it's making much difference.  Also it's kind of made the handling a lot more arcadey compared to the Unofficial Patch hardcore mode, which was extremely punishing with the terrible FFB & wheel input.

I guess I'm asking, am I doing something wrong?  Is there a fix for this or is this as good as it gets on this game?  Is the situation better with TDU1?  I used to play that all the time, and I loved the physics, but the thing that stopped me playing that game was the low-poly roads bouncing you all over the place all the time.  I see there's a mod to fix that on these forums.  Is the driving just better on that older game?

Edited September 6 by Excrubulent