Hardware cursor: FFXIV Custom invisible in fullscreen

[Sushou]

Hello.

I am on Windows 11. I've recently changed to playing in fullscreen. This was in response to stuttering issues suffered in borderless windowed; I disabled fullscreen optimisations and went through the usual troubleshooting methods and thankfully it helped.

The issue now is that for whatever reason, the default FFXIV style hardware cursor is invisible in fullscreen. It still exists, like I can still technically click things and move the camera and all that, it's just... not visible.

This issue is not present with the OS standard cursor or the software cursor, but I'd prefer to be able to use the one I've grown accustomed to over the years. I've attempted to search for similar problems but the threads are either 10-11 years old and the only recent one was closed due to no response from the original poster.

I do not use any overlays or extensions, everything is vanilla, and I do not play through Steam. Running in administrator mode, or compatibility mode, does not help. Restarting the PC does not help, and nothing is overclocked. I do not have any external devices connected either, and I do not use a controller. Graphics drivers are up to date and have been cleanly reinstalled. There are no outstanding Windows 11 updates, and I do not use a third party antivirus.

Any help is appreciated.

[Votraftur]

Good morning! Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for any inconvenience you have been experiencing. There are a few situations that can cause the error you are describing, please provide us with the following:

Are you on a Desktop or Laptop?
Does this only happen with Final Fantasy XIV?
Does this issue occur for all characters?
Does the issue persist if you switch between Fullscreen mode and borderless windowed mode?
Have you tried connecting the device using a different method (wired, different port, etc.)?

We recommend double checking both the in-game settings as well as your Windows mouse settings.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

[Sushou]

Hello. I will try to answer in order.

I am playing on a desktop. This issue only occurs in Final Fantasy XIV to the best of my knowledge. Changing characters does not resolve the issue.

The issue is no longer present in borderless windowed mode. It is also not present in windowed mode. It only persists in fullscreen.

Switching the mouse to different ports has no effect, and all windows mouse settings are at their default states.

I did notice however that using the OS standard cursor and attempting to directly change the size of the windows cursor through the windows settings exhibited the same behaviour as using the FFXIV custom cursor; if the cursor size is at the default value, it can be seen in FFXIV, but if I attempted to make it bigger, it would also become invisible in-game. I am unsure if this is fully relevant, but it may be useful to know.

I hope this information is useful.

[Votraftur]

Good morning! Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for any inconvenience that has occurred when playing Final Fantasy XIV. Unfortunately at this time it appears that we may only suggest using FINAL FANTASY XIV in borderless windowed mode rather than full screen if the issue does not persist in the other mode.

If you feel like the issue may be a bug and would like to report it, please create a new thread entry in the Bug Reports > In-Game Bugs section with the required information as shown in the main thread sticky.

Thank you once again for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

[Sushou]

Hello.

I've attempted some other fixes such as enabling and disabling fullscreen optimisations, and fiddling with my mouse's polling rate to see if that had any effect. Perhaps it was something that broke briefly after a windows update because I found that turning the disable fullscreen optimisations' on and off seems to have addressed the disappearing cursor issue, but has returned the small stuttering issues that I had sought to eliminate initially. The actual size of the cursor seems to influence the rate of stuttering, with the 'normal' size contributing almost nothing, but the 'large' and 'maximum' sizes creating their own micro stutters when appearing and disappearing. This leads me to believe that it is ultimately a graphics issue, and I can only hope that a future driver update will address this.

Thank you for your time in troubleshooting.