PiP == trashed FPS on main - need restart to recover - any idea ?

[Moorea]

I have this really annoying problem where after I switch my main window and clones a few times, the fps on the main drops from max (30) to 4 or 6, ie basically unplayable and doesn't seem to recover beside exiting wow - anyone else seen this ? any workaround ? any chance to get a newer release of keyclone with better PIP ? (june was a while ago since last release)

here is my regions settings if that helps:
[regions]
count=5
region_name_00='wow2'
region_00=1,1536,0,1920,300,0,0
region_pip_00=0,(113.1.1)
region_res_00=768,600,0
region_name_01='wow3'
region_01=1,1536,300,1920,600,0,0
region_pip_01=0,(114.1.1)
region_res_01=768,600,0
region_name_02='wow4'
region_02=1,1536,600,1920,900,0,0
region_pip_02=0,(115.1.1)
region_res_02=768,600,0
region_name_03='main'
region_03=1,0,0,1536,1200,0,0
region_pip_03=0,(112.1.1)
region_res_03=1536,1200,1
region_name_04='wow5'
region_04=1,1536,900,1920,1200,0,0
region_pip_04=0,(116.1.1)
region_res_04=768,600,0


edited: put "trashed" instead of "dropped" fps in subject in the hope ppl stop thinking I'm talking about background vs foreground fps

[keyclone]

i have seen a situation where the wow window won't realize it doesn't have focus, and will try to remain at maxfps (30 fps). at which point, 2 or more wows would be trying to get 30 fps, instead of 1 doing 30 fps and the others doing 12.

i normally run with the fps shown (ctrl+R to toggle it on by default)... and if i notice one of the windows above the maxfpsbk, i mouse in and the mouse out. nothing more. (with focus-follows-mouse enabled). this usually alerts the wow window of the fact that it lost focus and it drops its fps from maxfps to maxfpsbk

[Moorea]

that happens too but what I'm talking about here is that my main window drops way under the min fps - basically its like wow in that window gets hosed - strangely switching to an alt; that window is fine (can even go back to max fps) but getting it back as main and it drops to a few fps/horrible lag... it's really irritating as it happens about every few switches between my 5th and my main (shift-f5)

edit: at the moment it happens 100% of the time I switch to my 5th window :-( and I have to exit everything and restart everything to recover - extremely painful :-(

[Darelik]

dual monitor?

[Moorea]

no, single 1920x1200 (dimensions of each window in first post; with same aspect ratio)

[keyclone]

try this... i've been experimenting with it and its given very nice results.

let's say your main region is 1100x1200... odds are, you've set the in-game resolution on all your regions to 1100x1200 so when you pip swap, the minimap is proper. all the wows will then render an area that is 1100x1200, even though the screen is smaller.

try this instead:
set the in-game resolution on ALL regions to 1/2 of the current size.. dividing with width and height by 2 each. in my example, i would set the in-game res to 550x600 on ALL regions.

by doing this, i have told wow to render 25% of the original number of pixels... and the bitblt to fill the screen is just a 200% zoom, which is fast and done in hardware. this seems to reduce the cpu/gpu requirement and allows for faster swaps... at least so far on my set up.

let me know what you think.

[Moorea]

I use 1536x1200 1-1 on main and 384x300 with 768x600 for wow rez on small windows - so I have the same aspect ratio on all windows and all a factor of 1/2 or 2x in between and use all the space in my 1920x1200 screen - again the odd part is it works fine for most swaps and then suddenly enter a bad mode when swapping 5th and main

ps: Happy New Year to you all ! Best Wishes for 2009 !

[Moorea]

I tried your suggestion - I set all wows to 768x600 but when I swapped my main and first alt it entered the "5 fps" mode again when I switched back :-(

I think there is a problem with PiP

[Pact]

I get this problem sometimes.

The solution ive found that works for me is to pip switch through all your windows until you find the one that is running at the maxfps.
Once youve found it just swap back to whichever view you want and it should makes things normal again.

[keyclone]

i don't think it's pip, as the maxfps and maxfpsbk are set when wow starts up.

if the fps drops to 5 fps, that's telling me the system is getting crushed and is only able to get 5 fps for some reason. i would check the fps on the other windows. are 2 or 3 of them getting the maxfps? that would leave very little for the others.

i find if i mouse over with mouse-click-passing on (or just click on each wow), it seems to force wow to figure out that it should dial up to maxfps .. then dial down to maxfpsbk when you click off.

[Moorea]

yes, my main window / wow becomes super slow; when it is the main one, but I can run 3 or 4, including the main as a small at 30fps (my max) for some reason the main which was fine gets messed up - sometimes I was able to recover it by changing the video settings (but that makes it gone from keyclone list (maybe that's why it fixes it ?) and after that even if I add the window back it can't be maximized back into place...)


I didn't mean to say pip is setting the fps low; I meant to say that pip screws up my main wow after a few switches... I'll try to get more recent video drivers maybe that'll help

is there anyway way to get a debug or something version of keyclone to track down what's happening at that point ?

[keyclone]

before the main gets messed up... how many wows are you running and what is the size and fps for each one? (hit ctrl+R to show the fps)

ie:
wow1 800x600 40 fps
wow2 400x300 10 fps
wow3 400x300 10 fps
wow4 400x300 10 fps

then... after a few pip swaps and the fps seems messed up... do the same

[Moorea]

Sizes and geometry are above


I starts at 30 fps on main, 10 fps on slaves (or 9.9 and 29.9 sometimes)

After swapping often more than 1 windows is at 30 (I have to click in extra windows and click back on main window to back the small ones go down back to 10 fps)

Then suddenly the main one (original window) lags horribly and drops to a few fps - surprisingly though switching that "bad" window to one of the small one; I can get *both* to be 30fps with no lag - just can't get the original window on the original "big" space to work ok after that and need to restart every wow and keyclone

Note that I upgraded the nvidia drivers to the most recent one and that made the problem less frequent and less bad - I suspect somewhat the PiP swapping triggers some sort of memory leaks in the 3d drivers or the card itself maybe

[Pact]

keep swapping through all your windows. i find if it happens ill do a swap going down the list of my alts until i find the one that is running smoothly. then swap back to your main. This usually fixes the problem. If not. repeat.
but ive never actually had to restart keyclone or wow using this method.

[keyclone]

sounds like the wow window doesn't realize that it is no longer active... and is trying to maintain the maxfps (30 fps). the solution would be to force the wow window to understand that it has lost focus, which is what you are doing if you start flipping the windows around.

for me, when i notice that... i mouse into and out of those windows while having 'focus follows mouse' enabled. by moving the mouse over the problematic window, keyclone pushes focus to that window... forcing it into the foreground. upon mousing out of the window and into another, keyclone pushed focus to the new window... and away from the problematic one. as that happens, wow normally recognizes that it lost focus and dials down to maxfpsbk (or 10 fps in this case)

oh... and no amount of pip swapping would result in 'memory leaks in the 3d drivers'. memory leaks are memory leaks, regardless of the position or size of the window... or the number of times its moved around... afaik, of course. :D

[Pact]

hmm....in all this time its happened i dont think ive ever tried just mousing into each window. ill have to give that a go next time.
Im always using focus follows mouse now as well, forcing each window by clicking on it is just annoying after a while.

[keyclone]

yea, same here. it's the one feature, besides the maximizer, that helps the most to smooth out game play while multi-boxing (well, besides normal key passing, of course :D)

i am working on a fix for the mouse getting stuck outside a side window for next release (there is a hold up... but i'm working through it now)

[Moorea]

As I said a few times already, I'm able to get back to correct background fps settings by clicking in each window; but that's not the same problem as my main window becoming corrupt fps wise (way below even the low fps, all choppy and laggy) (and again that same window when put in place of small one can run at maxfps again; and the slaves ones can also run at maxfps in place of the main; just the main in the main spot runs at crawling speed)

[zanthor]

so to clarify...

You have 5 sessions on one monitor,

ONEBIG
2345

When you swap back and forth eventually ONEBIG gets screwed up if it's in it's original PIP slot but 2 3 4 or 5 work fine in that slot and ONEBIG's FPS is correct in background but NOT in foreground?

[Pact]

i am working on a fix for the mouse getting stuck outside a side window for next release (there is a hold up... but i'm working through it now)

/bow ....if i donate again does this come out faster :P

[Moorea]

so to clarify...

You have 5 sessions on one monitor,

ONEBIG
2345

When you swap back and forth eventually ONEBIG gets screwed up if it's in it's original PIP slot but 2 3 4 or 5 work fine in that slot and ONEBIG's FPS is correct in background but NOT in foreground?Yes, ONEBIG is working at maxfps or bgfps (depending on focus) when in 2,3,4,5 but not when back in ONEBIG where it's just trashing, after that point, no amount of clicking or swapping gets back to a point where ONEBIG in ONEBIG works again and exiting all wows and keyclone is the only way to get back to normal

[emesis]

I have something like this happen with some regularity (one window, semi-randomly out of my 5 windows running on 2 screens, goes to like 1 fps and lags the whole system down).

For me, it is 100% fixable by hitting ctrl-alt-delete and then simplying cancelling the popup dialog - this forces all windows to refresh.

I have a separate issue with Keyclone that happens when I do this, however. Whenever I hit ctrl-alt-delete, keyclone (or windows?) seems to get locked into thinking I have the ctrl and alt buttons held down. So, if I type "Z", warcraft is seeing it as ctrl-alt-Z. My workaround to fix this is to go into keyclone, bringup the do-not-pass tab, and tap the ctrl and alt keys while this has the focus - this seems to reset things.

I'm running Windows XP x64, btw.

[elsegundo]

with focus follows mouse, i find that if i mouse over the slave window, the slaves will run at foreground fps rates, leaving the main window to run at bkfps rates.

if its fixed like this, i sometimes minimize everything manually, then open them back up indiviually through the taskbar at the botton of windows. see if that works. good luck.

[Moorea]

emesis:

thanks ! I'll try ctrl-alt-delete to see if that helps !
I noticed when I alt tab or something else like that that keys get stuck in keyclone: I found an easy workaround for that (easier than yours I think) : just press and release alt and then ctrl alone; once to "reset" the state (basically the press will not be doing anything to the window(s) that think it's already pressed but the key up will reset) : one easy way to see that is to have one of your button/macro using [modifier] and you'll see the icon changed on some window; as a visual reminder you need to press alt or control to reset (I have 9 set to be healing stream totem by default and mana spring with modifier; so if I see mana spring icon showing I know something is out of sync)



elsegundo:



for the last time my problem has nothing to do with windows running at
background vs foreground fps - this is a different and minor problem
easily fixed indeed by clicking on the windows (I know you guys try to
be helpful; but please read the problem description...)

[ahnubis]

happens on my pc as well but like others said I PIP swap between all windows I.E shift+f1 then shift+f2 and so on until i get to the 5th window then swap back to my main and the FPS jumps back up to 50FPS.... when my FPS dumps it goes down to 4-6 FPS it can happen a few times during my session, however I don't have any issues with it not fixing it with the aforementioned workaround. I have never had to shut wow down to fix this.

also might want to try turning off SLI if you have it turned on. I had a HUGE FPS issue when SLI was turned on with my PC a Dell xps m1730 x9000 cpu oc to 3.4ghz 4 gigs of ram and dual 8800gtx's

[Greythan]

I had the same problem. If I switched between windows it would often correct. However, in many situations the fastest solution was a reboot.

This is one of the reasons I switched tools to InnerSpace. Not only don't I get session freezes, but the PiP speed changed the way I multibox. Not sure I could go back to something that took fast and reliable session switching out of the equation. I really like KeyClone, but for me there's no comparison. IS flat out makes session (window) swapping an integral part of my play style versus something I tried to avoid utterly when using KeyClone.