This structure is used by the structure when polling for changes in the state of the controller.

The specific mapping of button to game function varies depending on the game type.

The constant XINPUT_GAMEPAD_TRIGGER_THRESHOLD may be used as the value which bLeftTrigger and bRightTrigger must be greater than to register as pressed. This is optional, but often desirable. Xbox 360 Controller buttons do not manifest crosstalk.

returns to indicate the characteristics and available functionality of a specified controller.

sets the structure members to indicate which inputs the device supports. For binary state controls, such as digital buttons, the corresponding bit reflects whether or not the control is supported by the device. For proportional controls, such as thumbsticks, the value indicates the resolution for that control. Some number of the least significant bits may not be set, indicating that the control does not provide resolution to that level.

The SubType member indicates the specific subtype of controller present. Games may detect the controller subtype and tune their handling of controller input or output based on subtypes that are well suited to their game genre. For example, a car racing game might check for the presence of a wheel controller to provide finer control of the car being driven. However, titles must not disable or ignore a device based on its subtype. Subtypes not recognized by the game or for which the game is not specifically tuned should be treated as a standard Xbox 360 Controller ().

Older XUSB Windows drivers report incomplete capabilities information, particularly for wireless devices. The latest XUSB Windows driver provides full support for wired and wireless devices, and more complete and accurate capabilties flags.

Wireless controllers are not considered active upon system startup, and calls to any of the XInput functions before a wireless controller is made active return . Game titles must examine the return code and be prepared to handle this condition. Wired controllers are automatically activated when they are inserted. Wireless controllers are activated when the user presses the START or Xbox Guide button to power on the controller.

When is used to retrieve controller data, the left and right triggers are each reported separately. For legacy reasons, when DirectInput retrieves controller data, the two triggers share the same axis. The legacy behavior is noticeable in the current Game Device Control Panel, which uses DirectInput for controller state.

This function is meant to be called when an application gains or loses focus (such as via WM_ACTIVATEAPP). Using this function, you will not have to change the XInput query loop in your application as neutral data will always be reported if XInput is disabled.

In a controller that supports vibration effects:

• Passing will stop any vibration effects currently playing. In this state, calls to will be registered, but not passed to the device.
• Passing TRUE will pass the last vibration request (even if it is 0) sent to to the device.

Callers must allocate the memory for the buffers passed to . The resulting strings can be of arbitrary length.

Wireless controllers are not considered active upon system startup, and calls to any of the XInput functions before a wireless controller is made active return . Game titles must examine the return code and be prepared to handle this condition. Wired controllers are automatically activated when they are inserted. Wireless controllers are activated when the user presses the START or Xbox Guide button to power on the controller.

returns to indicate the characteristics and available functionality of a specified controller.

sets the structure members to indicate which inputs the device supports. For binary state controls, such as digital buttons, the corresponding bit reflects whether or not the control is supported by the device. For proportional controls, such as thumbsticks, the value indicates the resolution for that control. Some number of the least significant bits may not be set, indicating that the control does not provide resolution to that level.

The SubType member indicates the specific subtype of controller present. Games may detect the controller subtype and tune their handling of controller input or output based on subtypes that are well suited to their game genre. For example, a car racing game might check for the presence of a wheel controller to provide finer control of the car being driven. However, titles must not disable or ignore a device based on its subtype. Subtypes not recognized by the game or for which the game is not specifically tuned should be treated as a standard Xbox 360 Controller ().

Older XUSB Windows drivers report incomplete capabilities information, particularly for wireless devices. The latest XUSB Windows driver provides full support for wired and wireless devices, and more complete and accurate capabilties flags.

Future devices may return HID codes and virtual key values that are not supported on current devices, and are currently undefined. Applications should ignore these unexpected values.

A virtual-key code is a byte value that represents a particular physical key on the keyboard, not the character or characters (possibly none) that the key can be mapped to based on keyboard state. The keyboard state at the time a virtual key is pressed modifies the character reported. For example, VK_4 might represent a "4" or a "$", depending on the state of the SHIFT key.

A reported keyboard event includes the virtual key that caused the event, whether the key was pressed or released (or is repeating), and the state of the keyboard at the time of the event. The keyboard state includes information about whether any CTRL, ALT, or SHIFT keys are down.

If the keyboard event represents an Unicode character (for example, pressing the "A" key), the Unicode member will contain that character. Otherwise, Unicode will contain the value zero.

The valid virtual-key (VK_xxx) codes are defined in XInput.h. In addition to codes that indicate key presses, the following codes indicate controller input.

?

The dwPacketNumber member is incremented only if the status of the controller has changed since the controller was last polled.

The left motor is the low-frequency rumble motor. The right motor is the high-frequency rumble motor. The two motors are not the same, and they create different vibration effects.