Fullscreen window on a second monitor

[Michael Waskom]

Hi all,

The question of whether it is possible to use PsychoPy with a fullscreen window on the second monitor of a computer running OS X 10.9+ has come up a few times. The response seems to be that changes in OS X made this impossible (e.g. here and here).

I have encountered the issue as described in those threads. That is, when opening a `visual.Window` with `fullscr=True`, the value I pass for `screen=` is ignored and the window is always opened on my main laptop screen.

However I have determined that Psychtoolbox, running in the same OS on the same machine, seems quite capable of showing stimuli in a fullscreen window on the second screen.

After quite a bit of googling in an effort to try and understand this problem, I have been unable to track down an explanation of the stated change in OS X. However, in playing around with pyglet directly, I am able to reproduce the problem described here (c.f. here). Although this issue is claimed to be Linux-only, it seems very much like the behavior I'm seeing on my Mac when using PsychoPy.

My question is: what can I read to understand better what changed in OS X to prevent showing a fullscreen window on the second screen? Is there a basis for the claim that it "simply isn't possible using any software"? I would like to understand why it seems to work in Psychtoolbox and not PsychoPy. Is it possible that the problem is actually a bug in pyglet masquerading as an OS X change?

Sorry for resurrecting this old issue (again), but being unable to use an external monitor is quite debilitating for, e.g., fMRI experiments. I would very much like to be able to do so, or at least to have a good understanding of why I cannot, if it is really impossible.

Thanks,

Michael

[Jon Peirce]

Possibly Psychtoolbox is showing a stimulus, as you say "in a fullscreen window" on the second screen, and PsychoPy can still do that as well. This is different to being in fullscreen mode. Are you certain that PTB is in fullscreen mode (i.e. the mode in which no windows elements can exist, no dialog boxes can be presented etc...)?

If you're certain that this is what's happening (e.g. bring up your window on the 2nd monitor then drag a window across it from the first and see if you can obscure it) then I'll ask Mario at psychtoolbox for some clarification about how (that's scary because he generally chews people up for using macs, let alone developing for them).

cheers
Jon

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[Michael Waskom]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for this response and sorry for the delay. I will try to look into this issue further today and attempt to engineer a situation where a window would pop up on the second monitor when i'm using Psychtoolbox. I will say that there is one salient difference between the behavior of PsychoPy and Psychtoolbox on the second monitor: there is no menubar obscuring the top of the Psychtoolbox window, while there is one over a PsychoPy window that is set to size of the monitor but with fullscr=Fase. I'm not sure whether or not that means PTB is running in proper fullscreen mode, but it is a difference.

Best,

Michael

[Michael Waskom]

Hi Jon,

OK, following up. I think I've determined that PTB and PsychoPy are indeed using the second monitor differently. To test, I tried opening a window in the middle of stimulus presentation on the second monitor. That is, I ran `sleep 30 && mvim` and then booted up either a PTB script or a PsychoPy script. I ran PsychoPy with a window set to the size of the screen but with fullscr=False. The MacVim window popped up on top of the PsychoPy window, but not the PTB window (although it was waiting on the second monitor when PTB exited).

Please let me know if you need more information before you stick your head in the lion's mouth, but it really does seem to me that PTB is achieving something with the second monitor that PsychoPy isn't.

Best,

Michael

[Jon Peirce]

OK, cool. I'll have a word with Mario :-)

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[Michael Waskom]

Hi Jon,

Just wanted to check in and ask if you'd heard back about this. I'm happy to move the thread over to the discourse site if it would be helpful.

Best,

Michael

[Jon Peirce]

No, I sent Mario and email but haven't heard from him.

Jon

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