Gamepad thumbsticks active range

Question

for my current project I use gamepad. I was successfull in hooking it up in C# through SlimDX. Everything works fine, only problem is that thumbsticks don't fully use the active range.

If I move stick all the way to left on X axis, I get maximum value half-way through. Then the driver clips the values returned.

I understand, why this happens. The driver operates in square area, but the stick in circle.

The red circle marks values I get from driver. The blue area represents actuall physical range of sticks and the green one is what I want to get from the gamepad. I get these readings in calibration utility and in my program too.

My question is: is this normal behaviour for gamepads? Do I have to buy better one? Currently I'm using really cheap one - Genius MaxFire Grandias 12, as I don't want to invest much into this.

Answer 1

As it turned out. The Genius MaxFire Grandias 12 gamepad is not good one. I have tried with different model, and it was working as expected.