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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app

You are here: Home > Forum > Miscellaneous > Open mic (non-railway) > SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app

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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 11:52 #123460
bugsy
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postal in post 123458 said:
Leaving aside the technical issues about the scaling or whatever else is changing the size of the displayed elements, using a scaled-down display over three screens leaves an awful lot of wasted real estate along the top of the screens if I've understood the Bugsy set-up correctly. Is there any reason why setting the main and message windows to stay on top and then maximising the main view to fill the whole depth of the screen with the "stay on top" windows moved to the place where they are least intrusive does not suit the three screen set-up?
It's just a matter of personal preference. I could do as you say and run the sim with the dislay main view filling the depth of the screen, but I can see the display quite well and the "wasted real estate along the top of the screens" allows me to increase the disply height of some of the other windows, showing more information.
Each to his own, as they say.

Everything that you make will be useful - providing it's made of chocolate.
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 12:00 #123461
bugsy
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GeoffM in post 123455 said:
Depth of graphics usually refers to the colour depth and I can't see obvious evidence of that changing. I think Bugsy's issue is either the screen resolution is changing, or the scaling is changing (aka DPI). It's hard to tell from the screenshots though. Given the awful way that Windows (mis)handles scaling I'm leaning towards the that, but I've no idea what JaBaRu's program is doing to have an effect like that. I'm guessing he's just finding the window and using MoveWindow() which shouldn't affect scaling.

Bugsy, do you know if your Windows scaling is not 100%? On Win10 you right-click on desktop, select Display Settings, scroll down to Scale and Layout, what is the % value immediately underneath?
My Windows scaling is set to 125% (recommended) and I haven't changed this setting since buying the laptop a couple of years ago. The Display Resolution is 1920 x 1080. I've no idea what the settings are for the two monitors

Everything that you make will be useful - providing it's made of chocolate.
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 16:50 #123467
GeoffM
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6271 posts
bugsy in post 123461 said:
GeoffM in post 123455 said:
Depth of graphics usually refers to the colour depth and I can't see obvious evidence of that changing. I think Bugsy's issue is either the screen resolution is changing, or the scaling is changing (aka DPI). It's hard to tell from the screenshots though. Given the awful way that Windows (mis)handles scaling I'm leaning towards the that, but I've no idea what JaBaRu's program is doing to have an effect like that. I'm guessing he's just finding the window and using MoveWindow() which shouldn't affect scaling.

Bugsy, do you know if your Windows scaling is not 100%? On Win10 you right-click on desktop, select Display Settings, scroll down to Scale and Layout, what is the % value immediately underneath?
My Windows scaling is set to 125% (recommended) and I haven't changed this setting since buying the laptop a couple of years ago. The Display Resolution is 1920 x 1080. I've no idea what the settings are for the two monitors
Sorry, clearly I shouldn't write when I'm tired. I meant to go on to say that it looks like the second picture is of a different resolution to the first (there is more sim visible in one than the other). Is that just the cropping of the screenshot or is the screen size actually changing?

Internally Windows uses the convention of width (left to right) and height (top to bottom) when describing size. Depth is, as I said before, refers to colour depth which is not necessarily obvious to see unless it's really low.

SimSig Boss
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 17:41 #123472
JaBaRu
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That's why I'm also a bit confused here. It's hard to judge what might be going on here.
From the screenshots it looks like a resolution switching or... a neat "zoom" feature that I would actually love to have in SimSig :)
No matter how brutally I abuse and throw my poor View window around I wasn't able to reproduce this on my screen.

@GeoffM
You guessed it right The whole thing is not much more than a UI over MoveWindow() function.

@Postal
Regarding Alt+SPACE, M problem. I suspect "Use Space to pause" option interfering. You can disable it in "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab.
Darn... I should know better and check modifier keys... I'll fix that. I promise.

Last edited: 27/02/2020 at 18:18 by JaBaRu
Reason: None given

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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 17:48 #123473
bugsy
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GeoffM in post 123467 said:
bugsy in post 123461 said:
GeoffM in post 123455 said:
Depth of graphics usually refers to the colour depth and I can't see obvious evidence of that changing. I think Bugsy's issue is either the screen resolution is changing, or the scaling is changing (aka DPI). It's hard to tell from the screenshots though. Given the awful way that Windows (mis)handles scaling I'm leaning towards the that, but I've no idea what JaBaRu's program is doing to have an effect like that. I'm guessing he's just finding the window and using MoveWindow() which shouldn't affect scaling.

Bugsy, do you know if your Windows scaling is not 100%? On Win10 you right-click on desktop, select Display Settings, scroll down to Scale and Layout, what is the % value immediately underneath?
My Windows scaling is set to 125% (recommended) and I haven't changed this setting since buying the laptop a couple of years ago. The Display Resolution is 1920 x 1080. I've no idea what the settings are for the two monitors
Sorry, clearly I shouldn't write when I'm tired. I meant to go on to say that it looks like the second picture is of a different resolution to the first (there is more sim visible in one than the other). Is that just the cropping of the screenshot or is the screen size actually changing?

Internally Windows uses the convention of width (left to right) and height (top to bottom) when describing size. Depth is, as I said before, refers to colour depth which is not necessarily obvious to see unless it's really low.
Yes there is more of the sim visible and the screen size (height of the sim) actually changes. Also, I've now dicovered that this effect can be made by dragging the sim across to the left-hand edge of the left-hand monitor. Regarding the "depth", not being used to computer-speak, I wasn't aware that the term meant something different to that which I was trying to describe. Perhaps I should have said height then it would have been clear.

Everything that you make will be useful - providing it's made of chocolate.
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 17:55 #123474
GeoffM
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6271 posts
bugsy in post 123473 said:
Regarding the "depth", not being used to computer-speak, I wasn't aware that the term meant something different to that which I was trying to describe. Perhaps I should have said height then it would have been clear.
Just making sure I understand exactly what you mean, not being fussy, sorry!

SimSig Boss
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 18:01 #123475
bugsy
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GeoffM in post 123474 said:
bugsy in post 123473 said:
Regarding the "depth", not being used to computer-speak, I wasn't aware that the term meant something different to that which I was trying to describe. Perhaps I should have said height then it would have been clear.
Just making sure I understand exactly what you mean, not being fussy, sorry!
No apology required Geoff. Perhaps I should have phrased it better.
I trust that you do understand. Is it just a quirk of Windows on my system that's causing the changes?

Everything that you make will be useful - providing it's made of chocolate.
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 18:07 #123476
GeoffM
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bugsy in post 123475 said:
GeoffM in post 123474 said:
bugsy in post 123473 said:
Regarding the "depth", not being used to computer-speak, I wasn't aware that the term meant something different to that which I was trying to describe. Perhaps I should have said height then it would have been clear.
Just making sure I understand exactly what you mean, not being fussy, sorry!
No apology required Geoff. Perhaps I should have phrased it better.
I trust that you do understand. Is it just a quirk of Windows on my system that's causing the changes?
Thanks. I don't know why it's doing that. There is nothing funky about the SimSig windows so what JaBaRu is doing should be fine. Maybe it's to do with scaling but I'm not sure. I run a 4k monitor with a high % scaling to match and Windows does have a fit with some software (or vice versa) sometimes. Even Windows Media Player used to fail to scale properly until a few months ago, and Remote Desktop is dreadful with icons at 200% size and text at 50% size!

SimSig Boss
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 27/02/2020 at 18:47 #123477
postal
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JaBaRu in post 123472 said:
@Postal
Regarding Alt+SPACE, M problem. I suspect "Use Space to pause" option interfering. You can disable it in "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab.
Darn... I should know better and check modifier keys... I'll fix that. I promise.
Works fine with the Space to pause option unchecked.

“In life, there is always someone out there, who won’t like you, for whatever reason, don’t let the insecurities in their lives affect yours.” – Rashida Rowe
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 28/02/2020 at 08:39 #123480
alvinhochun
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Thought I'd chime in for a bit regarding @bugsy's issue with display scaling:

There is an inherent fault as to how Windows 10 handles high DPI scaling (per-monitor DPI to be precise). Windows prefers working with "real pixels" when drawing application windows to the screen. It all works well when a window is completely within the area of one monitor -- the content of the window is scaled and is then drawn onto the screen (in simplified terms), with the content scaled by the same factor as the scale of the monitor. However, it breaks down completely when one tries to extend a window across multiple monitors with a different scale factor setting. Windows needs the content of the window to be scaled before being drawn onto the screen, but which scale factor should it use? As it turns out, Windows keeps track of which monitor a window is associated with. This association can be changed when one moves or resizes the window, and it is roughly determined by "which monitor has more area (i.e. number of real pixels) covered by this window". That's why when you move or extend the window across the boundary of monitors, you can see the size of the content of the window change abruptly at a certain point.

Windows also plays some number tricks on programs which does not know about per-monitor DPI, or opt to let Windows handle it for them. It gets more complicated when programs tries to programmatically move windows from other programs around and resize them. (Curiously, MSDN's docs on `GetWindowRect` and `MoveWindow` does not mention DPI awareness at all. I suspect they are a bit screwed up regarding DPI scaling.)

There are multiple ways of using SimSig with multiple monitors on different scale factor. They are not perfect but here's my take:

- In SimSig, create a new view ("Show"->"New view" on the menu bar) and arrange one view per monitor so that each view gets its own scaling.
- If none of your monitor use a very high scaling (think > 150%), you can set "High DPI scaling override" to "Application" for SimSig (see below). This disables the automatic per-monitor DPI scaling for SimSig, which I guess @bugsy would like.
- Change the display settings in Windows such that all monitors use the same scale factor.

I don't know how exactly @JaBaRu's tool handles DPI scaling, but as I suspect it is using .NET Framework, it's complicated. Anyway, one can try messing with the "High DPI scaling override" settings of the tool and see if it changes how it behaves.


To change the "High DPI scaling override" settings:

1. Open the "Properties" dialog for the application. (For SimSig, open "C:\Program Files (x86)\SimSig" or "C:\Program Files\SimSig" in Windows Explorer, then right-click on "SimSigLoader.exe" and click on "Properties".)
3. Switch to the "Compatibility" tab.
4. Click on "Change high DPI settings".
5. Check "Override high DPI scaling behaviour", then select "Application" from the drop-down list.
6. Click "OK" to save the settings.

_ _ _ _,_ _ _ _! (censored by the Hong Kong national security law)
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The following users said thank you: GeoffM, BarryM, nroberts
SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 01/03/2020 at 10:37 #123516
JaBaRu
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A little experiment this week...



Changes:
- [Get Layout] button changed to a toggle.
Values will keep updating in 1 second intervals until it is clicked again.
- While [Get Layout] is active:
- use W,A,S,D keys to move active window around
- use Shift + W,A,S,D keys to resize it
- [Save changes] button removed - settings are automatically saved

Hopefully you will find this workflow easier.

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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 09/05/2020 at 06:27 #126649
Airvan00
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Great tool, especially for those with multiple monitors. However I noticed that every time there is an update of SimSig, the tool looses the settings and you have get the layout again and save the changes.
PS. could we have a version number to check we have the latest.

Last edited: 09/05/2020 at 06:29 by Airvan00
Reason: None given

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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 25/06/2020 at 19:09 #127878
9pN1SEAp
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Hi JaBaRu,

Excellent tool, but now seems to have stopped working with Loader v5 :(

Thanks
Jamie

Jamie S (JAMS)
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 25/06/2020 at 19:10 #127879
Meld
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Third party not supported by Simsig officially
Passed the age to be doing 'Spoon Feeding' !!!
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 03/07/2020 at 17:29 #128894
9pN1SEAp
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I stand corrected - seemingly working happily again since recent updates.
Jamie S (JAMS)
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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 03/07/2020 at 18:09 #128905
y10g9
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9pN1SEAp in post 128894 said:
I stand corrected - seemingly working happily again since recent updates.
This will only be coincidental.

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SimSig Tools - SimSig helper app 14/07/2020 at 10:00 #129571
9pN1SEAp
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9pN1SEAp in post 128894 said:
I stand corrected - seemingly working happily again since recent updates.
The issue I found was that if you had opened extra windows such as F2, F7 etc, BEFORE the save had finished loading, the tool could not reposition them or learn their current location. Closing and re-opening the windows seemed to get everything back.

This will be something to do with the way hWindow's behave in SimSig, rather than a fault with the tool. Either way, no biggie - just something to be aware of.

Jamie S (JAMS)
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