Xbox 360 Controller

[Guest]

Hello,
i just recently found out about the Xbox 360 Controller for windows and the
associated XInput additions to the DirectX SDK.

Does this driver/api allow for full analog button support?
If not, Why?
Would this driver/api work for the standard Xbox controller?
If not, Why?

Why the Heck would the two analog triggers be treated as a Single Axis....i
know they explain it....but it makes absolutely no sense seeing as HID
drivers are free to override the parameters as they see fit when presented to
the windows input system (As is evident by the way XBCD driver for the Xbox
controller does it).

So far it seem as if everone of the Xbox to USB controller interfaces has
driver far more advanced than the one included for this controller.

Will there ever be full analog button support for these controllers under a
*currently released* version of windows?

Quite frankly this doesn't really make sense to me. The "standard" Xbox
controller drivers that have been created support reading full analog
information from the controllers, its just that DirectX in its current form
doesn't present it to the developer for use. And obviously the Xbox 360
development based drivers support reading analog information, so why would it
not be present in the XInput *addition* to the DirectX SDK?

This rant probably should span multipe of Microsoft's newsgroups, probably
leaning more towards the technical ones given some of it focus.

But this is really baffling me to no end.

*sigh*

Hopefully I have jsut missed smoething and just being quick to judge, but
oh, well.

Thanks in advance.

 

[James Robertson]

The Xinput API does support full analogue button support for the Xbox 360
controller. The controller itself however only has two analogue buttons -
the two triggers. Unlike the original Xbox controller which had more.

It doesn't need to work with the original Xbox controller. You can use
DirectInput with those.

 

[Guest]

Ummm, but the Xbox controller has full analog button support. The current
version of DirectInput as far as I know does not give access to analog button
information although it is readily available through the device and most, if
not all, non-Microsoft drivers provide support for it in their respective HID
interfaces.

In my opinion it makes no sense not to support the regular Xbox controllers
in this new interface, unless they are going to add comparable support in the
DirectInput layer at some point. There are even unofficial drivers for both
the memory card and headset interfaces for the old Xbox controller.

Outside of the fact that I actually prefer the original Xbox controller over
just about all later versions, in most respects, this seems like another
coninuing consistency issue when it comes to hardware and software support
from Microsoft.

Heck, even the new additions to the XBCD version of the Xbox controller
driver trying to add support for the Xbox 360 controller has more feature
than this driver. It's open source and the original driver has been around
for a long time. Given MS should know both its hardware and software better
than anyone (theoretically anyways), I really dont see how this could even be
an issue.

For reference:
http://www.redcl0ud.com/xbcd.html
http://www.matt-land.com/xbcd/