The “mouse/key capture” has been fundamental to Windows since the 1990s.
In the 90s I had to write C++ code to capture mouse/keyboard messages. Also called “mouse focus”.
Only one window can receive mouse/key events. Read that again!
Like on browsers if the cursor is not in the correct place, when you type nothing happens.
It’s not a bug, just necessary behaviour due to multiple programs running, including the Windows GUI.
So if FS does not have mouse capture it will not receive key bindings from USB Human Interface Devices (HID), aka flight controls.
Clicking in the FS window should be sufficient, ideally full screen.
Pop-up Panel Manager may help, as the developer understands the mouse focus issues and has got touch screens working for popout windows.
Hm… then I wonder why I can easily click around in Webbrowsers, the Navigraph Charts app, FlyElise and hundreds of other applications WITHOUT loosing working controls.
Only If Windows from the original MSFS ('20/'24) are undocked, it doesn’t work anymore.
And to be able to control the aircraft without having the focus set on the FlightSim is btw. possible with at least P3D and X-Plane. Same for AAOs, Mobiflight, SpadNext and FSUIPC. None of them requires the focus to be able to catch and forward the control inputs. It’s just MSFS that is impossible in case of hovering over undocked panels.
BTW. In case the of not hovering over undocked MSFS windows its even possible for MSFS to capture and use the input signals.
I doubt, that FSX and DCS do not support that as well.
So it’s definitely doable to “catch controller Inputs” without having the focus AND mouse hovering over a part of the application…
It depends how the controller inputs get into the sim. Mobiflight injects and reads signals via SimConnect and WASM. So Mobiflight and similar programs are fairly bullet proof in behaviour.
The undocked pop-out windows absorb mouse inputs to resize them. Somehow that stops controller inputs getting into the sim.
The best analogy is we can only type into the single window that has the flashing text cursor - if that makes sense.
Thinking about it again, if the mouse moving/hovering over a popped out window blocks joystick inputs in a repeatable way, we could record it as a bug.
The code solution is what’s called a “message pump”. The popout should scan messages (like from controllers) and send them to the main sim window, even if the mouse is hovering over the popup.
There’s a chance the popup code doesn’t do the full job, but nobody has noticed until now.
So if someone can reliability repeat the problem step by step, we can inform Asobo.
Best to keep it simple. For example: Cessna G1000 spawned at a small airport and a joystick; popout the PFD.
Ive just revisited this today, so I popped out the G1000 to my air manager monitor, and low and behold there was 0FPS impact! Zero! Unbelievable, after all these years it actually works! At last! And it even works with frame gen!
Totaly a FPS killer ! 100FPS in flight but if i try to open 2 instrument pop view for 2D Panel FPS in main screen drop instant to 30 FPS and this continue to to worsen 20FPS..Game is over !
I don’t have a second monitor to test this, but when I pop out either a 530 or a TDS 750, I get a dip of a few FPS for a second or two, but then it stabilises. Does the drop only occur for you when you actually move that window to a different monitor?
I just wanted to report that I was facing this issue in the latest MSFS2024 SU4 release version, but I found a solution deep within this thread which worked for me. It was the NVidia Control Panel frame limit cap that I had set previously to 60FPS in an attempt to improve performance on older versions of the sim. I have 4 gauges plus the EFB popped out of the Fenix A320 using MSFS Popout Panel Manager. Previously, with the frame rate cap, I was losing 10FPS for every gauge I popped out. With the cap removed, I am now losing just 2-3 FPS in total, having gone from 55FPS with no panels popped out, down to 53FPS when sitting on the runway at EGLC London City. I’m pretty happy with this performance!
UPDATE: I saw another thread slightly higher up refererring to frame-capping as the issue - that poster is correct and it resolved my issue. I’ll leave the post here in case someone else hits the same issue.
Unfortunately - pop out panels once again cause a massive performance degradation. With my eyesight I find it extremely difficult to fly without popping them out so when I effectively can’t it’s very impactful. This is a reversion back to pre-SU3 times - it was fixed at some point in SU3 but SU4 has broken it again.
Recreating is simple.
Load into the ini A330-300 (all planes do it but 1st party also) and take a baseline framerate - don’t need to power up - literally enter the cockpit. When I do this at LPFR I am getting 40fps.
Then - right-alt click to pop out the PFD - I lose 20 frames as soon as it’s out
Then pop the ND - I lose 7 for that one on top of the 20
Finally the ECAM - that costs 3 - so in total, popping out 3 key screens I go from 40 down to 20.
I have tested this in 4 other planes so far and results are always the same.
As you can see - it takes 5 minutes worst case to test and validate so I’d be really grateful if someone could pick this up and add to the list.
strangely this bug came to me with an Nvidia driver update, never had issues with it before.
Now I can’t get rid of it, I tried DDUing the driver and re-instal the old version to no avail. I have not capped fps and I noticed when running either the sim or the pop-out in windowed mode the performance is well again. Only if both are in fullscreen mode the framerate halves and stutters are introduced. I also tried re-installing the sim and it seems like nothing helps