Mouse Pointer vanishing in Fullscreen Mode

[Yshnal]

Yeah, it's still not fixed as of 2.1. It's annoying to be forced to play in windowed mode, with everything that that entails.

This is a known issue that is planned to be fixed during or after the 2.1 update. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue

It hasn't been fixed yet. So, after 2.1 will mean in 2 years or can we expect a fix anytime soon, please? 2.15 maybe?

[SideWays]

Yeah, it's still not fixed as of 2.1. It's annoying to be forced to play in windowed mode, with everything that that entails.


It hasn't been fixed yet. So, after 2.1 will mean in 2 years or can we expect a fix anytime soon, please? 2.15 maybe?

The "Or after 2.1" is just a excuse at best. It really means if it does not get fixed at 2.1 then we do not know when we will fix it or if we even will fix it.

[Raist]

most likely it's either a DirectX or driver issue, or a combination of both. Don't experience it at all on my Asus laptop running Win8--settings are locked to 32 bit color and full acceleration (NV GTX670MX, running Asus latest 311.00 drivers, stock mouse and sound drivers), so I can't force it to happen on that system.

It also runs just fine on my old XP Pro SP3 box as well (ATI 5870, drivers from around Nov. 2012 I think, Asus Xonar DX Sound with their last stable XP drivers, and a Logitech cordless Trackman Trackball mouse with their last XP driver package). I can however force it on my XP box by notching back DirectX 9 Acceleration one notch--which essentially just disables Hardware Cursor.

Barring some funky method SE may be using for rendering the cursor in a not-so-generic way that is causing it to notget along with all drivers, perhaps it is more of a Microsoft or specific group of vendors that need to address the issue. Getting a third party into the mix can really bog things down.. especially with how tight SE is with their IP assets.

[Foxydoe]

Yeah, it's still not fixed as of 2.1. It's annoying to be forced to play in windowed mode, with everything that that entails.


It hasn't been fixed yet. So, after 2.1 will mean in 2 years or can we expect a fix anytime soon, please? 2.15 maybe?

I know, right?

The "Or after 2.1" is just a excuse at best. It really means if it does not get fixed at 2.1 then we do not know when we will fix it or if we even will fix it.

Ugh.

<snip>

Those of us having this problem are on Vista machines. And the cursor issue *only* happens in this game. No other "fixes" suggested we try on our end fix it, so the problem is on SE's end. They need to fix it.

[PastelioDibiaggio]

still no cursor. great job square-enix, really delivering with those promises just like Obama. Great work on the new patch but wow, to think you could be stopped by something so simple as a disappearing mouse cursor. Faith level decrease.

I mean really, you are the ones that broke it in the first place. I think you should be able to figure out how to fix it. Oh wait, I forgot I have 2000 dollars sitting around for a new computer system. Nevermind. /endsarcasm

Note: For any square-enix employees not aware of the seriousness of this problem, it has been going on for almost two years now. Please inform you superior immediately. Thank you.

[Raist]

Those of us having this problem are on Vista machines. And the cursor issue *only* happens in this game. No other "fixes" suggested we try on our end fix it, so the problem is on SE's end. They need to fix it.

That's just it though.. it isn't just an XIV problem--but it is indeed something specific to Vista, and has been for about 5 years now (give or take...forget exactly when it came out).

Windows Vista has always had off and on problems with hardware cursor. Granted, it may very well be tied into how the game engine is getting along with the DirectX emulation in DX9 (or DX11 after the platform update and the hardware is only DX10 compliant)--but that is still an issue with the Vista components moreso than the game. Those DX calls are coded to that level of DX, and SHOULD be consistent---but Vista's DirectX has been the red-headed stepchild that frequently didn't get along well with others ever since it's initial release.

And yes... this is NOT isolated to just XIV. It can be traced back about 5 years to many games... not necessarily obscure games either. Command and Conquer series... Borderlands Series... Civilization... We're tallking reaching back into old GeForce 7x00 and 8x00 territory, and it still persists on the 500 series cards as well. The common element amongst them? Vista.

Early fixes were to disable all things Aero--both the Desktop and Mouse themes. Then, it came back again... the Win7 injections with the Platform Updates brought more wonkiness, including the corrupt and missing mouse--hello Hardware Cursor issues. People were once again reproducing the issue in games that allowed you to toggle HW Cursor in settings. This time, people got around it by running things in SP2 mode with desktop compositing disabled.

The fix has almost always been a workaround of disabling a Vista feature to restore proper behavior of Hardware Cursor. We may be back in that same boat again. The trick is for someone to stumble on that one more little tweak to make it start behaving again....

EDIT:
Out of curiosity... I was poking around in the config file to see if maybe there was some hidden gem in there. Of course, not lucky enough to spot a toggle for HWCursor, but it was the first time I noticed MouseOpeLimit. Never was concerned about mouse before, so never paid attention to that setting. Has anyone tried toggling to limit mouse operation to game use? Just curious if this config option just takes over mouse control or perhaps does something with how it renders as well.

[Yshnal]

EDIT:
Out of curiosity... I was poking around in the config file to see if maybe there was some hidden gem in there. Of course, not lucky enough to spot a toggle for HWCursor, but it was the first time I noticed MouseOpeLimit. Never was concerned about mouse before, so never paid attention to that setting. Has anyone tried toggling to limit mouse operation to game use? Just curious if this config option just takes over mouse control or perhaps does something with how it renders as well.

That's the same as enabling the "Limit mouse operation to game window" option in-game. It doesn't help with the issue.

And anyway, regardless of if there are more games with the same issue or if it could be a native problem with Vista, the system requirements of the game specify that it's compatible with that OS. So it falls on SE hands to fix it so that it works properly, as countless other games do. Or, at the very least, they should inform us that it can't be fixed and remove said OS from the requirements. But they haven't done that, they've said that it was going to be fixed, and so we're still waiting for that fix.

[Raist]

That's the same as enabling the "Limit mouse operation to game window" option in-game. It doesn't help with the issue.

And anyway, regardless of if there are more games with the same issue or if it could be a native problem with Vista, the system requirements of the game specify that it's compatible with that OS. So it falls on SE hands to fix it so that it works properly, as countless other games do. Or, at the very least, they should inform us that it can't be fixed and remove said OS from the requirements. But they haven't done that, they've said that it was going to be fixed, and so we're still waiting for that fix.

In the past though, the fixes didn't come at the game level though--it was fixed at the OS level. At least, not at first... maybe further down the line through expack/patches to the engine things were optimized better--but it was always due to Vista's screwy API's, and the fix was always something done at the OS level to counter them.

It's all more or less because of DWM. Never liked the decision to move away from the more direct hardware access of XP and earlier OS's --it effectively removed the ability to effectively troubleshoot these issues at the user level, forcing us to be more dependent on M$ and the Hardware vendors to sort things out--which can be painfully slow sometimes. At least in Vista and Win7, you had a means to disable DWM when it was knackering things up--in Win8, we're flat out stuck with it (unless we want to break login screens and such, may not even be able to do it at all now in 8.1). You can't even drop from 32-bit color anymore like we used to. We're becoming more and more dependent on Microsoft's DirectX rules and the vendors drivers. I fear one day it may be to the point that the dev's have to code explicitly to Micro$oft's rigid API restrictions and we'll be completely reliant on the GPU vendors and Microsoft to fix things like this. Starting to wonder if we aren't already approaching that point...

Time for companies to revisit OpenGL again?

[Yshnal]

snip

While I understand what you mean, I quote again:

This is a known issue that is planned to be fixed during or after the 2.1 update. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue

So, in the end, it doesn't matter why the pointer doesn't work or how it was fixed in other games. Like I said, if they think that it can't be done they should at least tell us that directly, instead of saying that it's planned to be fixed. It's as simple as that if you say something then people expect that what you said happens or that, at the very least, you give an update apologizing and explaining why it can't be done in the end.

But anyway, I think that it would be good if we could get an update regardless, to know if this is still being worked on and if there's a more specific ETA than "after the 2.1 update" (as said update has been deployed already and it wasn't fixed on it).

[KrazedSanity]

I would not have purchased this game had I known about this issue. Square Enix clearly states that the game is compatible with Windows Vista. Not being able to see the cursor in full screen mode deems it unplayable and therefore not compatible. The only way this game operates at all on Windows Vista is in windowed mode and the performance is decreased dramatically. The support ticket response is unacceptable and the moderator post in this thread is too vague. "2.1 or after"?! So when will that be? Customer service is absolutely horrible. This has clearly been an issue for a long time and Square Enix should not be able to claim this game is compatible with Windows Vista when it is not.