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Comment by TehCorwiz | Hacker News Reader

Yes, or, at least it has been used to do so. Microsoft's xbox 360/xbox one USB controller adapter is actually a standard wifi adapter with a custom firmware.

Source: https://github.com/medusalix/xow#how-it-works

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That's only for the xbox one; the 360 was very nearly the only implementation of the wireless USB standard.

I've owned both adapters, the Xbox 360 adapter was significantly more reliable, and the Xbox One adapter has weird latency and handshake issues.

That's due to range and especially latency issues with Bluetooth. It's one reason competitive shooters were more popular on the 360 than the Ps3 with its Bluetooth gamepad.

There's been extensive study into the latency difference between 360 controllers and ps3 controllers. There is virtually none and it's definitely not noticeable with all the other latency sources in the signal chain.

Edit: one public, easy to digest source

https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/8wvf9u/contro...

That's on a PC. I'm not saying console results aren't similar but they aren't necessarily the same.

Regardless, it was the common perception at the time and thus affected the behavior of players.

You might be surprised to discover that the radio waves don't care if they're going to a desktop PC in a traditional case, or a slightly different desktop PC in a Microsoft/Sony case!

It was not "the common perception". At best it was common among your peer group?

Slightly off-topic:

Caring about slight latency differences but then still using joysticks for a shooter seems rather weird.

And yet when the military wants to shoot for real, it uses joysticks and not keyboards.

That implies nothing about their suitability as an interface for shooters. The military has other concerns that don’t apply here, like field reliability, and decades of established practices and equipment.

Of course because. A mouse cannot keep up with the real world. In a sense a mouse is too good. With a joystick it's fine if your actuation is slow because the joystick allready soaks up a lot of that shitty interface.

Huh? Who suggested that keyboards are better than joysticks for aiming?

For aiming in a shooter you have: keyboard < joystick < mouse or gyro.

For the military applications, the inertia of the thing you are aiming is important. In the most concrete example, think of swinging a rifle around to aim it. For a slightly more abstract think of aiming artillery.

> . It's one reason competitive shooters were more popular on the 360 than the Ps3 with its Bluetooth gamepad.

I played a LOT of Call of Duty and PS3. I never noticed input latency issues.

I think shooters where more popular on XBox because Halo took over a ton of the initial market share.

Does that mean something like an esp32 could interact with it, or does the xbox one have DRM like the PlayStation controllers do?

Is it still the case for the new Xbox?

Yes, the Xbox Series controllers are fully interoperable with the Xbox One, which they wouldn't be if they switched to some other technique.

Actually I think they switched to just bluetooth now, or at least the new ones can connect to my computer/phone just through bluetooth without an adapter (the old ones did require one though)

The third revision of the Xbox One (1708, doesn’t have the glossy plastic piece at the top where the Xbox button sits) added Bluetooth support. The consoles and the Xbox Wireless Adapter still use the “Xbox Wireless” (basically WiFi Direct), however.

Interesting the newer Xbox controllers can connect over Bluetooth with windows 10, but I found it much flakier than using their dedicated wireless adapter (which I guess works much more like the hardware in an actually Xbox)

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