How to use xbox one controller in C# application

Question

There already exists a large amount of information for using an xbox 360 controller in C#, but I didn't find as much info for an xbox one controller.

I need very basic operation out of it, specifically the joystick and trigger values.

The majority of information online is for C++ applications, but rather than attempting to write a custom library, I'd like to use something like SharpDX. How do I use this in my application?

Note: I'm posting this to share info that I found, as well as documenting my findings for myself. I'd love to hear other methods of getting controller input into a .NET application though.

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '16 at 19:52

The easiest way I found to get started was to use SharpDX. From the SharpDX website:

SharpDX is an open-source managed .NET wrapper of the DirectX API.

SharpDX is available on nuget, so it's very simple to get started with it inside Visual Studios.

To get started, go to Tools -> NuGet Package Manager -> Package Manager Console inside Visual Studios (I'm using 2015 community edition).

Then simply type: Install-Package SharpDX into the Package Manager Console that appears at the bottom of Visual Studios.

Visual Studios will then download and add it to your solution. Now onto the code.

Since I wanted input from the xbox controller, we just need to add:
using SharpDX.XInput to the top of our program.

And the code to get all the values is fairly simple:

class XInputController
{
    Controller controller;
    Gamepad gamepad;
    public bool connected = false;
    public int deadband = 2500;
    public Point leftThumb, rightThumb = new Point(0,0);
    public float leftTrigger, rightTrigger;

    public XInputController()
    {
        controller = new Controller(UserIndex.One);
        connected = controller.IsConnected;
    }

    // Call this method to update all class values
    public void Update()
    {
        if(!connected) 
            return;

        gamepad = controller.GetState().Gamepad;

        leftThumb.x  = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.LeftThumbX ) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.LeftThumbX  / short.MinValue * -100;
        leftThumb.y  = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.LeftThumbY ) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.LeftThumbY  / short.MaxValue * 100;
        rightThumb.y = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.RightThumbX) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.RightThumbX / short.MaxValue * 100;
        rightThumb.x = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.RightThumbY) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.RightThumbY / short.MaxValue * 100;

        leftTrigger  = gamepad.LeftTrigger;
        rightTrigger =  gamepad.RightTrigger;
    }
}

This creates a deadband because the joysticks on the controller never fully return to zero. It also inverts the left X axis so that both stick inputs match. Y positive is up, X positive is to the right:

leftThumb.x  = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.LeftThumbX ) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.LeftThumbX  / short.MinValue * -100;
leftThumb.y  = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.LeftThumbY ) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.LeftThumbY  / short.MaxValue * 100;
rightThumb.y = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.RightThumbX) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.RightThumbX / short.MaxValue * 100;
rightThumb.x = (Math.Abs((float)gamepad.RightThumbY) < deadband) ?  0 : (float)gamepad.RightThumbY / short.MaxValue * 100;

Hopefully this will be helpful to someone in the future looking to add an xbox one controller input to their .NET application!

+1 An alternative lightweight is https://github.com/speps/XInputDotNet and for deadzones you probably want to do this instead https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee417001(v=vs.85).aspx#dead_zone — aybe, Aug 23 '16 at 20:19
Thanks for the additional info! @Aybe I'll have to give XInputDotNet a look! I had to decrease my polling rate to the controller to about 100mhz( 10ms of delay) because it was kicking off the garbage collector every 2 seconds at max polling. No noticeable difference at a 10ms poll rate. — Xander Luciano, Aug 23 '16 at 20:30

How to use xbox one controller in C# application

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