VPX Help Solved Can't see floating DMD in full screen

Fatmeatball

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Joust (Williams)
Does anyone know how to force a floating DMD (as seen on, for example, https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/6116-pin·bot-williams-1986/) to show up as PART OF the main window, in full screen?
I've already asked this question on vpforums and didn't get much help. My problem is:
1: I exclusively play in desktop mode with one monitor
2: The DMD does show up the first time the window is displayed
3: However, If I alt-tab for any reason, which I do pretty often as sometimes Visual Pinball doesn't listen to keyboard controls until I switch out of the window and back in, the DMD disappears
4: Now I can only see the DMD if I switch out of VP, because fullscreen windows display above any other window after you explicitly focus on it

The practical upshot is that I can't see the score on any desktop-mode table using a floating DMD. It feels redundant to explain this twice in a row, but from what I've seen from the few forum posts about this problem, most VP users trying to help others with this problem genuinely don't seem to understand this. Maybe nobody uses desktop mode, I don't know.

I've been offered a couple fixes including turning off Cabinet Mode in the pinMAME options (does nothing but add a splash screen) and turning off exclusive fullscreen in the VP preferences (promising, but doesn't work). The only way so far that I can see the DMD is if I set VP to windowed mode with a resolution of something like 1280x720, small enough that there's room on my screen for the DMD to display uninterrupted. This, however, also means the table is far too small to read in any way.
 
Instead of Alt-Tab, try moving mouse to toolbar area, and click your windows key. (The key between L-Alt and L-CTRL)
Now click on DMD window in toolbar.
When DMD window comes up, click on DMD window with mouse and move it a bit left and right.
Now click Table window with mouse, and DMD should stay on top of Table window. (Unless you have Force Exclusive Fullscreen checkmarked.)
 
Instead of Alt-Tab, try moving mouse to toolbar area, and click your windows key. (The key between L-Alt and L-CTRL)
Now click on DMD window in toolbar.
When DMD window comes up, click on DMD window with mouse and move it a bit left and right.
Now click Table window with mouse, and DMD should stay on top of Table window. (Unless you have Force Exclusive Fullscreen checkmarked.)
Huh, somehow that both worked and lets me alt-tab as well. Only thing I did differently was restart Visual Pinball after changing fullscreen options... I guess that was the solution? Confusing, but as long as it works.
 
Huh, somehow that both worked and lets me alt-tab as well. Only thing I did differently was restart Visual Pinball after changing fullscreen options... I guess that was the solution? Confusing, but as long as it works.
You should always close the VP program fully, after making changes, and saving any settings changes.
Glad it worked for you.

Here are pics showing where to find and turn off the "Force Exclusive Fullscreen Mode" setting, to help others with same problem.
For VPX7 the setting is here...
New Bitmap Image.png

For VPX8 the setting is here...
New Bitmap ImageVPX8.png
 
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