Replacing the Alt + Tab buttons

[Guest Ti0n3r]

But you are aware thats the reason there is the alt-tab "bug" in not just OFP but other DX8 based games?

Yes. Just want get rid of it in aras/ofp2.

[Gadger 0]

But you are aware thats the reason there is the alt-tab "bug" in not just OFP but other DX8 based games?

Yes. Just want get rid of it in aras/ofp2.

I'm sure everyone does.

But I think as much responsibility lies with hardware and O/S manufcaturers as what lies with game developers in issues of this nature.

[DBR_ONIX 0]

But you are aware thats the reason there is the alt-tab "bug" in not just OFP but other DX8 based games?

And if you read the open letter, it says ArmA uses Dx9

I'm pretty sure there wont be an alt-tab bug in ArA

- Ben

[kegetys 2]

The reason why alt-tabbing is not working (properly) in some games is the way it is implemented in Direct3D; When you have a fullscreen Direct3D device active, and the device window loses focus (you "alt-tab" out of the program) the whole device gets reseted, all loaded textures, buffers, etc. will be destroyed by Direct3D and you must create them again in your program. Sometimes this can be difficult to do, and not all developers go through the trouble of implementing it and they just block task switching entirely (which is quite dumb also). This "feature" is also the reason why you cant have two active full screen direct3D applications running at once if you have two monitors, as only one of them can have focus. You also cannot "click" anything in the secondary monitor if you have a fullscreen Direct3D device in the primary monitor (or vice versa) as that will cause the device to reset too when the focus changes to the app you clicked. And it works the same in all Direct3D versions as far as I know, including 9.

So yet again the one to blame is Microsoft for their wacky design descisions, and one more reason to hope for switch to OpenGL in OFP2

[shinRaiden 0]

The reason why alt-tabbing is not working (properly) in some games is the way it is implemented in Direct3D; When you have a fullscreen Direct3D device active, and the device window loses focus (you "alt-tab" out of the program) the whole device gets reseted, all loaded textures, buffers, etc. will be destroyed by Direct3D and you must create them again in your program. Sometimes this can be difficult to do, and not all developers go through the trouble of implementing it and they just block task switching entirely (which is quite dumb also). This "feature" is also the reason why you cant have two active full screen direct3D applications running at once if you have two monitors, as only one of them can have focus. You also cannot "click" anything in the secondary monitor if you have a fullscreen Direct3D device in the primary monitor (or vice versa) as that will cause the device to reset too when the focus changes to the app you clicked. And it works the same in all Direct3D versions as far as I know, including 9.

So yet again the one to blame is Microsoft for their wacky design descisions, and one more reason to hope for switch to OpenGL in OFP2

And which is why the only simple way to implement multi-monitors is to hope that the video card manufactor (nvidia has, afaik ATI has not) implements a proprietary hack to combine outputs into a single virtual display device.

Otherwise it requires a ton of messy code and dubious results to try and get it to work with components scattered all over. Besides, OpenGL already has the API structure to do all sorts of crazy spanning, distributed rendering, etc. With-in reason of course, but the addressing and logic is there, while it is not in DirectX.

One of the other very related issues is with (currently) mammoth displays. For example, a single Apple 30" requires both outputs of a special workstation grade nv6800 because the pixel count is too high. It's a scalability issue of refresh vs. pixel count, and there is a finite line we're rapidly approaching where you can't practiaclly drop the refresh low enough to refresh all the pixels. The workaround atm is to halve the pixel count and split it between two signal generators. It's not an issue with the GPU, take the Quadro NVS with minimal 3d capability. What it does have however is four post-GPU video signal generators, so each display gets it's own pixels @ refresh, instead of sharing them.

Again, OpenGL has dealt with this a long time ago by abstracting the interfaces and allowing the application to write out to however many devices it wants to. There are also genlock signalling bus systems available as well that provide frame reference and clock timing so that your distributed render farm is all chunking on the frame and not getting out of sync.

I guess this mess with DirectX is all to be expected though coming from he who said "640k should be enough for anyone"...

[Longjocks 0]

An easier fix for games that have trouble ALT-Tabbing is usually to simply hit CTRL-Esc (shortcut for your Start menu).

[Guest Ti0n3r]

http://forums.bistudio.com/oldsmileys/wow_o.gif[/img])]An easier fix for games that have trouble ALT-Tabbing is usually to simply hit CTRL-Esc (shortcut for your Start menu).

Doesnt work with ofp. I get the same effect as with alt+tab.