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Forcing a DirectX window into full screen mode

Started by virnovus Sep 3, 2009 at 9:32 PM 5 replies 2.7k views
Original Post
virnovus
virnovus
I've seen plenty of examples of people forcing a full-screen directX application to run in windowed mode, but right now I'm interested in finding out if I can force windowed DX applications to run in full-screen mode. Reason is, I just got a pair of those nVidia shutter glasses that let you see any full-screen directX application in actual 3D. Of course, there are a couple of applications that only run in windowed mode, albeit with resizable windows, and I'm interested in forcing them into full-screen mode so I can get the shutter glasses to work. If I can get either DX9 or DX10 applications to work, that's good enough for me, although I would prefer to get DX10 working. I've tried using some dxhook.dll, but presumably that won't work under Vista or Windows 7, one of which is necessary for using the nVidia shutter glasses. My next thought is to try and interface with the DXGI system (DirectX Graphics Infrastructure) in order to try and link to my application window and set it to full screen. After reading some of Microsoft's documentation on DXGI, (at the link at the bottom) it seems like I might be on the right track, but I still don't know how easy it would be to create one application specifically to control another application. So any ideas anyone? Thanks in advance. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc835730(VS.85).aspx
B_old
B_old
This doesn't answer your question, but are you sure that those shutter glasses work with any fullscreen application? I was under the impression, that it has to be specially recognized by the driver. That would mean, that nvidia has to "support" that application which would mean that the application probably can run in fullscreen anyway.
At what applications are you targeting this btw?
virnovus
virnovus
So far, the shutter glasses have worked with every full-screen directx app I've tried, even ones I've written myself. That's the great thing about the new nVidia shutter glasses, they're backwards compatible with all these old games, although admittedly some old games work better than others.

Ideally, I'd be able to use it with various mesh viewers and 3d editing software, and if I'm very lucky, perhaps even 3DS Max. I wrote a simple mesh viewer that works pretty well for looking at mesh files in stereo, but obviously it's not very full-featured.
B_old
B_old
Quote:
Original post by virnovus
So far, the shutter glasses have worked with every full-screen directx app I've tried, even ones I've written myself. That's the great thing about the new nVidia shutter glasses, they're backwards compatible with all these old games, although admittedly some old games work better than others.

Ideally, I'd be able to use it with various mesh viewers and 3d editing software, and if I'm very lucky, perhaps even 3DS Max. I wrote a simple mesh viewer that works pretty well for looking at mesh files in stereo, but obviously it's not very full-featured.

Cool! The reason I was so skeptical is that I tried it with those cheap polarization "glasses". There is a testdemo integrated into the nvidia-gpu-driver that works quite good and a long list with titles that are supposed to work as well. It did not, however make a difference with my own app. So I figured you need explicit support.
Is this different with the shutter glasses or did you do something special?

One problem I can see, is that 3d editing software often isn't fullscreen because of all the controls. Would it still be useful if you only saw the actual 3d-portion?

virnovus
virnovus
Quote:
Original post by B_oldIs this different with the shutter glasses or did you do something special?

Not that I'm aware of. Are we both referring to the green and black nVidia 3D Vision shutter glasses?

Quote:
One problem I can see, is that 3d editing software often isn't fullscreen because of all the controls. Would it still be useful if you only saw the actual 3d-portion?

In a program like 3DS Max, I know the keyboard shortcuts well enough to get by without the menus and such, at least for many aspects of editing 3D meshes. So yeah, that would be useful, although I'm starting to have doubts as to whether what I want to do is actually possible.
B_old
B_old
I mean those really cheap paper glasses with colored foil. The driver has to output 2 images encoded into one with those.
virnovus
virnovus
Quote:
Original post by B_old
I mean those really cheap paper glasses with colored foil. The driver has to output 2 images encoded into one with those.


Oh, those are anaglyphic 3D glasses, not polarization glasses. I seem to remember hearing that nVidia was shipping them with certain video cards as a promotion for their 3D Vision shutter glasses. And yeah, the shutter glasses are way better. ;)

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