DXGI Desktop Duplication causes stuttering with FreeSync/G-Sync - c++

Using DXGI Desktop duplication with FreeSync/G-Sync monitor causes stuttering in full screen games. It happens in games which are in the "borderless fullscreen" mode by Windows 10 (you can check it e.g. when you change volume, you see the slider in the left top corner even in game).
I tried the sample desktop duplication and also tried to update the DuplicateOutput1 function. https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Desktop-Duplication-Sample-da4c696a
Tested e.g. with Overwatch.
From Windows 10 1809 on Microsoft changed how the games run in fullscreen, so DDupl is almost unusable while playing since then.
Didn't anyone find a solution for this?
Thank you.

Related

Windows 8 tablet does not display TabTip (on-screen keyboard) on top of Qt OpenGL application

I have a full screen QT OpenGL application which needs to display the virtual keyboard (tabTip.exe) when input textboxes are entered. The problem I'm facing is that the virtual keyboard appears behind the application when the keyboard is invoked. I have tried many different things and found that the only way I can make it appear in front, is if my window is not fullscreen (e.g. making it 1 pixel less than full screen in the width and/or height). If I have the tablet in portrait mode this also still displays the keyboard even in full screen.
Now I'm trying to figure out if this is a driver issue, Qt issue, OpenGL issue or general windows issue.
Any suggestions?
Update:
I have investigated this a bit further and I think I see what's going on.
Windows 8, upon detecting that the monitor rotation is set to zero, and that it has an OpenGL window that matches the desktop resolution and covers the whole screen, kicks into legacy mode that blocks any Windows 8 themed animations from running (including virtual keyboard).
Do you have any suggestions on how I can stop windows from doing this? DwmEnableComposition has been removed in windows 8.

Full screen Direct3D9 device only displays at native resolution when second monitor is plugged in

With a single monitor my program works in both windowed and full screen mode (using any resolution chosen from EnumAdapterModes), but when I plug in my second monitor (running the same code) I can create a full screen device at any resolution from EnumAdapterModes, but only at the native resolution (1600 x 900) does it display the scene, otherwise the screen is just black among other problems listed below.
What I've discovered so far:
This problem does not occur in windowed or multihead mode
I can still render to a texture (I had to switch modes to display it though)
All function calls return success codes (including TestCooperativeLevel)
If I try to draw to the back buffer using Clear or the DrawPrimitive functions or call Present (which still leaves a black screen), than calls to GetRenderTargetData fail and attempting to lock a volume texture will return different slice pitches at sub levels
Commercial games that use Direct3D9 (Portal) don't have any problem switching between resolutions with my second monitor plugged in so there must be a solution
The problem seems to be related to the back buffer created by the Direct3D9 run time but the only solution I can come up with is to force multihead mode on devices with multiple monitors, any ideas?
Question that seems to have the same problem but lacks a solution: How do I render a fullscreen frame with a different resolution than my display?
Finally figured it out, seems to be a driver bug in Windows Vista and later and using Direct3D9Ex fixed the problem.
I didn't want to use Direct3D9Ex because it was only introduced on Windows Vista and I wanted to support Windows XP as a minimum, but MSDN has some sample code on how to support both so it's all good.

Can a Windows Time Limit App, bump a game out of Full Screen (DirectX?) mode when time is up?

I work on software that keeps track of time (C++/MFC), and when time is up (after a handful of warnings as the time limit approaches), we need to bump the person off of the computer.
Works great with Windows apps, however, it seems that a fair number of games, typically when they are in full screen mode, can be played even after we've done our work to hide other windows and/or swap to another desktop.
I know nothing about DirectX, and since I know nothing about it, I'm eager to blame it. :-)
My assumption is that when in some kind of "DirectX" mode, the game is interacting with the hardware and whatever the Windows API is doing, the game and the video hardware could care less.
The problem is that I have unhappy parents who thought our software was going to be effective at getting little Jimmy out in the sunlight to play, and it's not.
Is there a way that my Windows App can give the game "the boot" when time is up, forcing the Windows desktop to be displayed, pausing the game, or at least detecting that we're in a hopeless situation with the display mode being in full-screen DirectX mode which can't be programatically switched out of?
Sure, this isn't exceptionally hard. The most obvious thing to do would be to send the game a few messages. There are quite a few games which will respond to WM_QUIT. A bit more drastic is LockWorkStation(). If that fails, TerminateProcess works at the core OS level and ignores details like DirectX.

OpenGL Window Overlay

What I need to do is create a program that overlays the whole screen and every 30 seconds the screen needs to flash black once.
the program just needs to be on top of everything, doesn't have to work over the top of games, but wouldn't say no if it did!
But i've got no idea where to start. Ideally the solution would be cross-platform for both windows and osx.
Does anybody have any ideas about where I should start or could whip up a quick demo?
OpenGL (you tagged it as such) will not help you with this.
Create a program, that overlays the whole screen,
The canonical way to do this is by creating a decorationless, borderless top level window with some stay-on-top property being set.
and every 30 seconds the screen needs to flash black once.
How do you define "flash back once"? You mean you want the display become visible for one single vertical retrace period or a given amount of time? Being the electronics tinkerer I am, honestly, I'd do this using a handfull of transistors, resistors and capacitors, blanking the analog VGA signal.
Anyway, if you want to do this using software, this is going to be hard work. If you'd do this using the aforementioned stay-on-top window, when you "flash" it away, all the programs with visible output would receive redraw events, which to process would take some time. In the best case scenario the system uses a compositing window manager which can practically immediately show the desktop. Without a compositor its going to be impossible to "flash" the screen.
Ideally the solution would be cross-platform for both windows and osx
A task like this can not be solved cross plattform. There's too much OS dependent work to do for this.
I presume this is for some kind of nerological or psychological experiment. I think doing this using some VGA intercepting circurity would be actually the easier, quicker to implement solution. I can help you with that. But I think there's another StackExchange better suited for this. Unfortunately digital display interfaces (DVI, HDMI and Display Port) use a complex line code scheme, which can not be blanked as easily as VGA, so you must have a computer capable of analog (=VGA) output and a display with a VGA input.

Other monitors go black when switch one monitor to fullscreen with DXGI

When I switch one of my monitor to fullscreen mode, sometimes the other monitors just become black and won't show anything. Did I do something wrong or it is just some bug?
I created a window, and then created a swapchain binded to that window. And I called the swapchain's SetFullScreenState with first parameter true, and second parameter the IDXGIOutput object of the monitor I wanted to switch fullscreen. Sometimes it works fine, but sometimes all the other monitors are lost (with only the fullscreened one showing things).
My graphics card is Radeon HD6750, and driver version is 12.3.
I found the MulitMon10 sample has the same problem, while some games don't. Or do Skyrim and The Tales of Monkey Island use D3D or OpenGL...?
This question is two years old. I just came across it.
I had a similar issue with DX11, sometimes happening in debug version, systematicaly in release version.
In my paradigm, the primary monitor hosts a console and an optional 'press buttons' GUI. The secondary monitor (one among available ones) is the fullscreen application window where 2D professional images are displayed and GPU transformed using 1D and 3D lookup tables.
Having the primary monitor going blank was a show stopper. All needed dialogs are childs of the console window (thus, opening on the primary monitor). The secondary monitor is a motion picture digital projector .... enough 'blabla'.
So, my solution was to create the swapchain in windowed mode while the targeted window was already in fullscreen mode.
Do not ask me why. It works for me. Here is a bit more:
First, my display window is set to fill the entire monitor surface ( no border, no everything).
Second, I create the swapchain for this window with “windowed = true”.
In facts, even if it looks fullscreen, it is windowed. With no border, it works the same as far as displaying/rendering 2D images is concerned. Feeding directly the backbuffer works too.
Then, and only then, you can switch the backbuffer to real administrative fullscreen. Since this operation is extremely brutal for the eyes, I tend to only do it when absolutely necessary. In effects, Win7 will reset the entire desktop (thus, all monitors, all windows) and create multiple light flashes.
When going real fullscreen after the backbuffer is created, I never experienced the desagrement of being stuck in the midle of a desktop reset (back to the original question).
To be complete, there is a difference between ‘Windowed fullscreen’ and ‘Real fullscreen’. Something you may use.
Windowed fullscreen: other windows/dialogs will overlap your 2D creation.
Real fullscreen: other windows/dialog should stay underneath (not visible, but there).
Toggling between the two modes upon need would be nice, except the desktop reset stress is an heavy penalty to live with.