How to add a blank window for your video feeds!

[lax]

I just got this set up today. With Inner Space build 5428 and ISBoxer 38.3.414.1, you can add a blank window (or more) to your team, controlled by your Window Layout however you like.

Here is an example (proof of concept) of using a second monitor for custom feeds:


Using Video Feed Sets you can easily switch between many views. More examples (though mostly within a single game window) in this thread http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1214

So a basic explanation... ISBoxer 38.3.414.1 includes a program I call dxNothing. It is just a blank Direct3D9-rendered window, like a game without the game. The idea is that you add a Character to ISBoxer that is set up to launch dxNothing instead of an actual game. Then you add this Character to your Character Set, set it up appropriately in your Window Layout, and you have a fully customizable "game" window with all of your favorite ISBoxer functionality available. This new Character can be configured so that Video Feed Viewers are permanently visible, instead of hiding when you switch windows. This makes it ideal for hosting video feed mashups outside of your game windows!

Conceivably, some games could be played entirely within one of these dxNothing windows with interactive Video Feeds. The main annoyance in doing so is mouselook isn't too pretty at the moment, but that could potentially get solved in a future build.

Now for the step by step...
To add dxNothing to IS:
1. Right click the Inner Space icon in your system tray (notification area) and select Add Game
2. For the name field, put dxNothing (or something else easily recognizable)
3. For the game executable, point it at dxNothing.exe, which will be in your Inner Space folder (typically c:\program files (x86)\innerspace)
4. Click OK

To add a Character to represent this window...
1. In the top pane in ISBoxer, right click on Characters and select New Character
2. Name it dxNothing
3. Check the "Video Feed Viewers stay when in background (blocks Video Feed Sources!)" box
4. Select the dxNothing Game and Game Profiles

To add this Character to a Character Set...
1. In the top pane in ISBoxer, select your Character Set
2. In the bottom left pane in ISBoxer, right click on Slots and select New Slot
3. Drag dxNothing from Characters in the top pane, to the new Slot number that popped up in your Character Set
4. You will probably need to update your Window Layout since you just added a new Character to the set. You can start doing that via the Window Layout Wizard; right click "Window Layout" in the bottom left pane and select Window Layout Wizard.

You will need to figure out how you want to do your Window Layout, of course. This window can go anywhere though. In my case, my Window Layout is Full Screen Stacked. I moved Region 6 (the extra one) to my second monitor, with the rest remaining stacked on my main monitor. I set Region 6 with Always On Top Mode "On, if a game window is foreground" and enabled "Focus game windows via mouse without clicking (Focus follows mouse)" in my layout so I can just mouse between the screens and interact directly with everything, without extra clicks involved.

At that point it's pretty standard, it's just another window that your ISBoxer hotkeys work in, the ISBoxer Control Panel is available in, and so on! Set up feeds, Click Bars, etc!

[Alge]

This is a great addition to ISBoxer Lax. Here's my first ideas...

I'm probably going to offload my feeds of is1-is5 to my second monitor, like in the first screen shot. Then I used the new hold mapped key on enter/exit feature to expand a feed on mouseover - and they are fully interactive! The only problem now is that I need to re-do my whole UI again

Wow, that is just awesome!

Currently I have 3 characters in Rift. One on main screen and 2 smaller character windows on the second screen. This would work out so much better though. Currently my video feeds are all blurry as the secondary windows are shrunk in size. Your way though Lax keeps the secondary character windows at full size (stacked) so the feeds are nice and then still allows smaller interact-able windows on the secondary monitor.

Now I have to go and redo my setup again. I am still only level 21 in Rift because I keep fiddling is ISBoxer

I am already thinking what elements to pull out and make larger...

Is there any performance hit enabling the blank DX window and then filling it with video feeds?

[lax]

The performance difference should be pretty small, very similar to having the same feeds in the main window. Even over multiple video cards

I got my dxNothing window set up and working.
For others looking for the dxNothing.exe I had to tell ISBoxer to update as it hadn't done it automatically.

I set up my 3 game windows to stack on the main monitor, put the dxNothing on the secondary monitor and put up video feeds of each character screen. Looks pretty awesome and they can be interacted with for looting or clicking quest givers.
All good but I now have a bit of an issue - on the game windows where I created the full screen Video Sources I can't get beneath them to add other video sources for mini maps, etc. When I hit Ctrl Shift ALT G the little UI pops up but if I click anywhere it just selects the full screen video source and I can't add any more sources. There must be an easy solution to this but I couldn't figure it out.

Another thing is that the dxNothing window doesn't shut down when I exit all game windows. Doesn't really matter but I just assumed that it would for some reason.

Thanks again for another kick arse feature Lax, this opens up millions of options

Now what to do with all that space left over in my dxNothing window....

[Alge]

Another thing is that the dxNothing window doesn't shut down when I exit all game windows. Doesn't really matter but I just assumed that it would for some reason.

dxNothing.exe is a separate application essentially and your game clients know nothing about it. I just shut it down by right-clicking its icon in the task bar and selecting Close Window.

All good but I now have a bit of an issue - on the game windows where I created the full screen Video Sources I can't get beneath them to add other video sources for mini maps

You don't need to create full screen sources - they already exist but are not shown in the ISBoxer GUI for (I imagine) the very reason you describe. These full screen sources are called is1, is2, is3, etc. So, just skip the step where you create equivalent sources and use those names for your viewers.

Now what to do with all that space left over in my dxNothing window....

If you don't find anything to do with the space, you can make the region which dxNothing goes into smaller. You do this in your Window Layout. Just remember that the coordinate origin is in the top left corner, so if you are shrinking an existing window you'll need to move your feeds to be in the top-left (or top or left) part . Here's what mine look like as an example:



You can even set regions to show/hide on a hotkey, which is what happens for Region 7 for me.

You don't need to create full screen sources - they already exist but are not shown in the ISBoxer GUI for (I imagine) the very reason you describe. These full screen sources are called is1, is2, is3, etc. So, just skip the step where you create equivalent sources and use those names for your viewers.

Cool. Apart from I know have full screen video sources that I can't get below to turn off...D'oh!

Lax, is there any way to get rid of the big Video sources I made?

[Alge]

Apart from I know have full screen video sources that I can't get below to turn off...D'oh!

Try right at the top, you should be able to select a tiny sliver of the title bar and drag down. Then just close the feed with the x button. Make sure to then save your feed set or they will re-appear.

Apart from I know have full screen video sources that I can't get below to turn off...D'oh!

Try right at the top, you should be able to select a tiny sliver of the title bar and drag down. Then just close the feed with the x button. Make sure to then save your feed set or they will re-appear.

Thanks Alge, I'll give that a shot and report back.

Try right at the top, you should be able to select a tiny sliver of the title bar and drag down. Then just close the feed with the x button. Make sure to then save your feed set or they will re-appear.

No luck. I have a large green video source taking up my whole screen and I can't get below it anywhere.
Is there a way to kill all video feeds and start again?