Can't Get Out Of "Fullscreen" View - v5

[MHargrove]

I have a multi-PC networked simulator on which I recently installed P3Dv5. There are six PCs total, five of which support scenery-only views and one of which is my "master" PC that drives the others. The installation and configuration on all six systems is essentially identical. There are a couple of add-ons on my "master" pc that aren't on the scenery PCs (like ChasePlane, for example), and the scenery-only PCs use a dummy aircraft that has no internal geometry. The flight model on the scenery PCs is set to 'simple'; graphics settings are identical.

Upon simulator launch, though, there is a weird difference -- all of the 'scenery' PCs come up in a mode with no title bar for the simulator windows. It sort-of looks like full-screen mode with a menu bar, but there is no actual Windows, er, window with the usual close/minimize/maximize controls -- and I cannot find a way to make a normal window appear. Alt-Enter enables true full-screen mode (which really must means the menu bar disappears). Hitting alt-enter again makes the menu reappear -- but it's still not a "regular" Windows 10 window.

My "master" PC does NOT have this issue. The simulator is in a normal window which I can toggle into or out of full-screen mode with Alt-enter. I've looked at every configuration setting that could reasonably seem to affect this and found nothing that helps. I've scrubbed the prepar3d.config file to see if any particular setting there jumped out out me -- no joy.

This is definitely a P3Dv5 issue -- my side-by-side P3Dv4.5 HF3 installation doesn't display this behavior.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

[Pete Dowson]

I have found it to be an enhancement. It only occurs with maximised windowed mode, and for me it allows ViewGroups to operate better, especially in retaining precise alignment, compared to "full screen" mode.

I would guess you might be able get out of Maximised mode by right clicking on the P3d5 icon in the task bar (not that I've tried), Otherwise, before loading, change the Maximised parameter in the Prepar3D.CFG file.

Pete

[MHargrove]

Agree that it's a nice enhancement -- I just need to be able to temporarily disable it if I need to get to another application (OpusFSI, for example). I cannot get to the task bar with this mode active, so that's not an option. I also already tried changing the 'maximized' param to 'false' in prepar3d.cfg. No apparent affect, which surprised me -- I thought that was the answer as well.

-M.

[MHargrove]

Pete,

As it turns out, your post indirectly gave me the answer I needed -- the behavior is caused by having a viewgroup selected on my 'scenery view' PCs. My "master" computer doesn't use a view group, so it had a normal window. All of my external view PCs do use viewgroups to achieve view alignment. If I toggle the viewgroup off, I get a normal window which allows me access to the task bar. When I'm done with whatever I needed to do, I toggle the viewgroup back on again.

-M.

[Beau Hollis]

We changed the styling of View groups to fill the screen. So, yes, activating a view group is similar to entering full screen but without blacking out other displays. The FOV is generally configured for full screen viewing, so ViewGroup alignment is off in windowed mode. You can still use the windows key to bring up the start menu, and Alt+Tab to switch between applications. We can add a cfg option option to allow the old window styling.

[Beau Hollis]

In the upcoming hot fix, we added a new entry to revert view groups to standard windows styles when in windowed mode:
ViewGroupWindowBorders=1 (default is 0)

[MHargrove]

Nice, Beau, thanks!

I'm coming to really appreciate the new mode -- it is indeed what's appropriate the majority of the time.

Is there a parameter to set to automatically hide the menu bar when you activate a viewgroup? (or alternately, to automatically go into fullscreen mode?)

-M.

[Beau Hollis]

If you leave the new cfg value at the default value of 0 it should continue hiding the task bar and styling the windows. Under the hood it calls the same style change function switching to full screen, but only for the members of the view group, so any other floating windows or panels would be left as-is.

[dafyddp3d]

Just caught up with this mod, I also posted about it, so you have at least two happy customers Beau!
Now I can minimise the app (which I could not do via the Windows Key, nor using ALT+Tab), while I temporarily do something else, then easily switch in again.
Thanks for the response!

[Beau Hollis]

There are also keyboard shortcuts for minimize/maximize state ( Win + Down, Win + Up ) that might be worth trying out:
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/window ... -shortcuts

[Britjet1]

Thanks Beau,
Like other posts I have got used to the new mode - but it’s nice to have the option..
Peter

[dafyddp3d]

"There are also keyboard shortcuts for minimize/maximize state ( Win + Down, Win + Up ) that might be worth trying out:"

Thanks Beau
I guess I need to buy a copy of Win 10 for Dummies!