mouse cursor somehow always visible

[Mahiko Konishi]

Hi everyone, 

I'm on 1.80.07, Windows version, using the builder.

Basically the mouse cursor is always visible during the experiment, even if the "Show mouse" setting is ticked off in the experiment settings.

This seems to be caused by the fact that at some point in my experiment I have a rating scale (with default parameters, nothing fancy). If I completely eliminate the routine from the experiment (not only from the flow), the cursor then disappears as it should.

It's a minor problem but an annoying one, and I'm struggling to understand how to fix.

I hope someone has an idea on what's causing this.

Cheers,

[Matthias Hartmann]

Hi,

I have the same problem (v.1.81.02, mac) - the cursor is shown as soon as a mouse response is entered, irrespective of the "show mouse" setting. For my experiment it is essential that the cursor is not visible. Did you find a way to fix it - or anyone else? Solutions are much appreciated!

[Matthias Hartmann]

Hi,
I have the same problem (v.1.81.02; mac): the mouse cursor is always shown as soon as a mouse response is entered into the builder, irrespective of the "show mouse" option. For my experiment it is essential that the cursor is not visible. Did you find a way to fix it? Or anyone else? Solutions are much appreciated.

[Mahiko Konishi]

Hi Matthias,

no sorry I haven't found a way to fix it. I tried adding any line of code that would normally hide the cursor visibility but none work.

I suspect this is a psychopy bug.

[Alex Holcombe]

I have that problem sometimes but not always (on OSX Yosemite). One way the problem occurs more often is if you don't use fullscreen, or if you do but have two screens. With one, fullscreen, it happens less, probably because there's less (no?) opportunity for other applications to gain control of the mouse and redraw its pointer.  But perhaps if you're using the builder, you always have one screen, on fullscreen anyway?

If the problem is that you don't want the user to see the mouse pointer during the trial, a workaround I developed is to require the user between trials to click on a rectangle in the top-left corner of the screen, so that the mouse is out of the way. However, that in my case created its own problem, where it was as if my many calls to clearEvents between trials were ineffective- sometimes Psychopy seemed to register the mousebutton as continually pressed after a few trials. But I haven't been able to isolate that problem to be 100% sure of its existence.

Alex

[Mario Reutter]

Hi,

I used to have the same problem but fixed it with the following work-around code using coder:

event.Mouse(visible=False) #before trials where the mouse shouldn't be visible
event.Mouse(visible=True) #before the rating scale screens (or others where the mouse should be visible)

#note 1: you have to import the event module in the beginning of your coder-file: "from psychopy import core"
#note 2: this creates a new Mouse object with the visibility set as specified overriding the old mouse object. Theoretically, you could just set the visibility-parameter of the old mouse object but this didn't always work fine for me (using psychopy 1.81.00).

Hope this helps you.
Mario

[Alex Holcombe]

Nice, Mario, that indeed sounds like it might work, thanks.

[Mahiko Konishi]

Hey Mario,

that works indeed, that's a great workaround thanks!

Cheers,

Mahiko

[Tanja]

Heya,

I know this is some time ago, but I really hope someone will see this post.
I have exactly the same problem. I need the mouse cursor invisible for the whole experiment except for the answering on the scales. Even though I've turned off the mouse in the builder it is always visible.
I tried to follow this workaround, but unsuccessfully. I've imported the event with this code : from psychopy import core, event
Then I've put this bit in event.Mouse(visible=False), but the mouse is still always visible. I'm not entirely sure where exactly to put this command to make it work. Any pointers would be welcome.

Thanks,
Tan

[Mahiko Konishi]

Hi Tanja,

I haven't used an updated version of Psychopy in a while so I'm not sure if this still works in the newer versions, however this is how to make this work if you're using the Builder:

you should add a Code component to your routine, then under the Begin Experiment tab you can just put "from psychopy import core", and then in the routines where you don't want the mouse to be visible, add another Code component and under the Begin Routine just put "event.Mouse(visible=False)".

By the way, I believe that this google group is now obsolete as the forums have been migrated to http://discourse.psychopy.org/.

Cheers