I asked the following question in General Programming section of the forum, but it seems like nobody has the answer so I thought it wasn't the right place ask it since it's very 3D specific. So here it goes: ================================================================================== Hello All, Before I get to my post, I would like to say that I have been reading your forums for a long time and enjoying it very much. I think this is a great community and I am happy to be a part of it. Back to the topic, basically as you can understand from the topic, I am trying to do something that is very tricky and was asked many times. I searched the forums and the only 3 topics I could find are: 1)http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=445141 2)http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=359319 3)http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=359794 1) Is not generic, says it only works with nvidia cards, plus it is way too complicated for me (read below). 2) Does not work, gives a "pixel format was invalid as specified" error. 3) Completely runs in a different way than I need (read below). So now, next, let me explain what I need: a) It MUST be generic. I can not write a different version for dx7, dx8, dx9, dx10, dx10.1, opengl, etc. What I want is so simple and there has to be a way to do this in a generic way. b) Most of these examples include hooking/hacking into dx libraries when the game is run. That is not what I want. What I want is a program (imagine a winform in C#) running with no background (transparent), showing FPS on the corner of the screen BOTH in windows or in any other full screen applications. This can be games, this can be DVD movies, this can be 3d rendering in 3dsmax, etc. So please do read this line if you have to again -> I am not trying to do something just for games, I need something that will be ON TOP no matter what runs in the machine, not just games. c) It MUST be easy to understand. LOL. I barely have unmanaged C++ experience in this area. My primary language is C#/Java, I wrote some unmanaged C++ for retreiving hardware information, but that's it. I have no clue how directx works, I have no idea what DirectDraw is. What I need should be small library in C++ which I can call from C#, pass my parameters (can be fps, can be CPU temp, can be GPU temp, etc. that I want to display) and it should work. There are examples to what I want of course. Best example is xfire. Currently I am not planning on supporting chat feature in game, but I MAY in the future. The question is, does xfire "manually" draws in directx code? Or does it display a form/dialogbox during a game? If it's the first one, it's ridiculously impossible for me to do, it'd take me 2 years to learn to get to the level of drawing something that sophisticated on the screen with directx. Long story short, I need to put some text/form/program/dialogbox whatever you call on top of any program that runs. This should be running in windows and shouldn't be game library specific. There MUST be way to do this. I already spent about 1 week - 10 days on this and I am going out of my mind. Please consider I am a complete noob in this area before you respond. Thank you very MUCH for reading my thread. I wish I can get some help here. Thanks, TheQuestion