My game uses SDL to create a fullscreen OpenGL window.
However, for those users with multiple monitors I get very mixed results.
Often the game appears spread across both screens, which is decidedly wrong especially if the monitors are different sizes.
However, SDL_ListModes() is not making it obvious to me what the real resolution choices are for full-screening an app in a multiple monitor scenario. Always the virtual screens are listed, and are indistinguishable from the physical screens.
How can you use SDL to list the available physical displays, and how do you create full-screen windows on them?
If you can't get SDL 1.2 to do the right thing automatically you could let the user specify the window position in a config file or via the command line.
Then you should be able to set the window position via SDL_VIDEO_WINDOW_POS before you init SDL.
Related
In GLFW, you can tell a window to go fullscreen on a particular monitor when you create it, but is there any way to make it stretch across multiple monitors?
On most platforms, what you are asking for is not really possible using a framework as portable as GLFW.
Fullscreen modes generally fill one logical display. You need something lower-level to setup multi-monitor topologies (AMD and NV have entire APIs and driver settings for this).
You can stretch a window across multiple monitors though and using the DECORATED flag (specifically turning it off), you may be able to make this window spanning multiple monitors appear to be fullscreen (e.g. no border / title bar). Hiding the taskbar (Windows) / launcher/menu (OS X) is another matter though.
I want to draw a small dot at the center of the screen so that it must remain after running of any application. A dot should stay even after I launch an application in full screen mode. Like a dead pixel.
I have already installed Visual C++ on my computer with Windows 7. I have some experience with C++, but I never worked with graphics under Windows OS.
How can I draw a dot on a screen?
Many graphics cards have overlay features, and it is likely possible to set one up to be foremost on the screen regardless of what other applications are rendering in other layers.
But the method to do that would be specific to the video card model and driver.
Or, you can try to get your code inside the application doing full-screen rendering, find their rendering context, and draw to it at the ideal time. Which still requires a bunch of variants for all the different graphics APIs.
Here is someone who describes Steam's attempt to solve the portability issue (with a zillion implementations) and how to take advantage of that.
I would create a properly positioned 1x1 pixel (or whatever size you need) window with no borders or title bar, all client area and paint it appropriately. It's important that the window is created with the WS_EX_TOPMOST style. As long as your program is running, the window will be visible as long as there are no other windows with that style overlapping it.
I've done this as a prank. It worked really well over a full-screen OpenGL game (Quake III). I installed it on a friend's machine so that it would flash the word LOSER! in big letters in the center of the screen at random times during the game.
This worked perfectly well on an XP system. I imagine it should work on Windows 7.
I want to develop one OpenGL application that is using the two monitors for display. However, if I specify the window size in glutInitWindowSize() to be the size which is the sum of the two monitors, then the result window is still always in one monitor, even though I can drag the window to another monitor or reshape.
Does OpenGL automatically detect another monitor and use the total size of the two monitors?
It's not OpenGL that is limiting the size of the window, it's GLUT.
You have to figure out a way to change the way GLUT sets up and creates a window. On Windows, it seems you can use win32 API to change these settings during runtime.
I have Win 7 OS on my machine and have Multi-touch capable monitor which supports up to 2 simultaneous touches.
I have created MFC Dialog application with two sliders and am trying to move them simultaneously with two fingers, but can only move one slider. If I touch the dialog box with two fingers then it receives two touches but two different sliders don't receive simultaneous touches.
On MS Paint I can draw using two fingers.
I also tried to search for multitouch application involving more than one controls but could not find any, and I am starting to wonder if its possible at all on Windows 7
Thanks.
You need not only your OS to support multi-touch, but your controls too. Have you done the Hands on Labs for MFC and Multitouch? http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Windows7/Multitouch has several Native and MFC examples.
If you don't have a real need in your app for two sliders moving at once, but were just trying it out, try something a little different, like zooming by pinching or panning by dragging two fingers, rotating etc. If you want multiple independent touches (ie not interpreted as a pinch zoom) the source code for games is your best examples.
if using WPF is feasible, the "Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch" provides a full suite of touch optimized controls that can be used simultaneously.
you could perhaps host the WPF controls inside your MFC UI but be aware that all of the WPF controls would need to be in a single hwnd - Win7 has an OS limitation that multitouch can only be done with one hwnd at a time.
I've seen an application that simulates a fullscreen application by removing the title bar and the window borders. I've done some research and found getWindowLongPtr() for that.
Now my question: How can I find and identify the application and get the appropriate window handle? How can I distinguish multiple instances of the application (running from different locations on disc)?
Just to make "simulate" more precise. If you make an application go fullscreen and you click on a different monitor, it minimizes itself. If the application runs in a window and you click on a different monitor, the window is not changed. If you remove the borders of the window and position it on the left or right monitor, you can still work with the other monitor without minimizing the application. Still it looks like the application running fullscreen on one of the monitors.
As an example: you can set Eve (www.eveonline.com) to fullscreen and windowed mode. In fullscreenmode you can not click on a second monitor without Eve minimizing itself. In window mode you can. There are tools like evemover that allow you to setup your window on one monitor, looking like fullscreen, but being in window mode. That's what I want to archieve. Evemover actually provides some of it's source code, that's why I know that removing the border and setting the position is done using the Win32-API with setWindowLongPtr and setWindowPos.
Many applications use divergent and confusing applications of the phrase "fullscreen".
A fullscreen application simply - occupies the full screen area.
DirectX applications can request a fullscreen exclusive mode. The advantage of this mode to DirectX applications is, with exclusive access to the (full) screen they are then allowed to change the resolution, bit depth etc, as well as gain access to vertical sync synchronized hardware buffering where the screen surface is 'flipped' between display intervals so that 'tearing' does not occur.
Anyway, the windows desktop understands 'fullscreen windows' - windows that occupy the full area of a monitor and have no non client elements. When windows like this are created, things like desktop gadgets and task bars automatically hide themselves. Modern games have come to call this mode 'fullscreen windowed'.
Back to your question: 'FindWindow' is the API used to discover other applications windows. Getting the path to the application that created the window is much harder. GetWindowThreadProcessId can get you the process id of the owning process. OpenProcess will get you a handle that you can pass to QueryFullProcessImageName (implemented on Vista and above) to get the full path to the process.
I think you are refering to applications like window aggregators, that 'plug in' to the system and act from outside the application.
Look at the code for the freeware app PuttyCM (for aggregating Putty (SSH) shell windows as tabs). IIRC, it ensures that the Window pointer passed to the application has the flags already set.
On applications running from different places, you will probably need some way of identifying it - registry entries / install log etc.