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Convert
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
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Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Tue Sep 04, 2012 11:38 pm

While I am not new to having multiple displays, I am to having them mismatched. My main screen is a 37" LCD TV in normal orientation (1920x1080) and I just hooked up a second monitor that is a 24" LCD that I have in portrait mode (1200x1920). I actually looks pretty good as the physical screen sizes are pretty close when oriented this way. Plus I love being able to throw a wall of text up on the portrait screen.

My complaint is that when transitioning from screen to screen the mouse hits a brick wall and wont move over to the other screen unless I travel a significant distance. I know this is "normal" behavior and usually it's not enough to matter. With this layout though the bottom of my LCD TV is a little past the middle of the LCD monitor according to windows (again, not physically). So if I need to transition my mouse from the LCD monitor to the TV I have to bring it a little less than halfway up the screen before it will show up on the TV. This is rather annoying, obviously. I can play with the positioning of the screens and have them centered to each other but then I still have roughly 20% of the screen on top and bottom that don't align in mouse world.

Is there any multimonitor software packages out there that will allow you to do mouse transitions that match more closely with the physical world?
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Diplomacy42
Gerbil
Posts: 63
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Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Wed Sep 05, 2012 12:36 am

Convert wrote:
While I am not new to having multiple displays, I am to having them mismatched. My main screen is a 37" LCD TV in normal orientation (1920x1080) and I just hooked up a second monitor that is a 24" LCD that I have in portrait mode (1200x1920). I actually looks pretty good as the physical screen sizes are pretty close when oriented this way. Plus I love being able to throw a wall of text up on the portrait screen.

My complaint is that when transitioning from screen to screen the mouse hits a brick wall and wont move over to the other screen unless I travel a significant distance. I know this is "normal" behavior and usually it's not enough to matter. With this layout though the bottom of my LCD TV is a little past the middle of the LCD monitor according to windows (again, not physically). So if I need to transition my mouse from the LCD monitor to the TV I have to bring it a little less than halfway up the screen before it will show up on the TV. This is rather annoying, obviously. I can play with the positioning of the screens and have them centered to each other but then I still have roughly 20% of the screen on top and bottom that don't align in mouse world.

Is there any multimonitor software packages out there that will allow you to do mouse transitions that match more closely with the physical world?



if you are running windows, its built in. open up the config screen that lets you select a primary display and try to match the actual setup. you can move either screen up or down so that the bottom or top corners are aligned or anywhere in between
 
Convert
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
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Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:21 am

Thanks for the reply, but as I said I already did this. Either I can have the issue where around half (~40% I suppose) of the LCD monitor lines up with the bottom LCD TV or I can have both screens centered with each other and have roughly 20% brick wall action on the top and bottom. Obviously I can move this as much or as little as I want in either direction but the sum of the brick wall is going to be the same.

I searched around and found other people looking for a fix for this but it appears no one has any solutions. Clearly it would need to be some kind of a video driver feature or third party program but it doesn't seem impossible. I've found programs that will actually slow down a mouse when it gets to the edge of a multi-monitor setup, will delay the transition itself for a period of time to give you a "are you really sure" moment, or even give you the option to hotkey mouse teleportation between screens. This would be a slight variation of this where the end dead zones are mapped pixel to pixel between the screens and then it simply ports the mouse to a set pixel on the other screen when the threshold is reached within the dead zone. Basically if your mouse ever hits the edge of the screen in a dead zone on the larger monitor it simply moves it to the first or last vertical pixel on the smaller screen.
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Chrispy_
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Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Wed Sep 05, 2012 12:14 pm

I know your problem, and I don't think windows or any multi-monitor software has fixed the issue yet:

Your portrait screen is much higher dpi than your landscape screen, so the pyhsical representation of your screens (where pixels on different screens are of different sizes) does not match the virtual representation of your screens (where all pixels are the same size)

Your actual desktop (the things on your desk) is a wide rectangle, because the widescreen rectangle has the same height as your portrait screen. Your eye sees one rectangular shape (ignoring the bezel).
I feel that if you moved the mouse two inches right it should move the same distance across the screen whether that's on the low-dpi screen or the high-dpi screen.

Your virtual desktop (what windows thinks you have) is a rotated L-shape, because all pixels are equal - there is no concept of physical size and the portrait screen just has more vertical pixels than the landscape screen.
The mouse is constrained to this L-Shape because it has one coordinate scale, based on pixels rather than physical location. At the point where you cross to the other screen, the DPI change affects both the cursor location but also the sensitivity; Suddently two inches of mouse travel equates to six inches of cursor movement instead of ten.

Until Windows (or some 3rd-party software) recognises the physical scale (dpi) of each screen, no mouse driver will have a way to take advantage of this info and compensate accordingly.
Windows cannot become resolution-independent fast enough, in my opinion ;)
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Grand Gerbil Poohbah
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Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Wed Sep 05, 2012 9:21 pm

Yep, you nailed it Chrispy_.

Oh well, I guess I will have to get used to it.
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mgth
Gerbil In Training
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Joined: Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:04 pm

Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Fri Feb 27, 2015 7:11 pm

I know it's a bit late, but I did a small application to deal with that. It's still beta but work quite good.
It's opensource : LittleBigMouse at github : https://github.com/mgth/LittleBigMouse/releases
I also need people to beta test it.

thank you all,
Mgth
 
Rectal Prolapse
Gerbil
Posts: 54
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Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:33 pm

Thanks Mgth!

Wow, I've been wanting a utility like that for a LONG LONG time. It's working great with my Dell 4K 24" monitor with my secondary 24" 1080p monitor.

This is awesome. Thanks again.
 
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Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:36 pm

Oh - you also wanted feedback. It was rather tricky to re-arrange the monitors in the proper order. I didn't read any instructions though. Also it wasn't clear how to apply the settings - I checked the Enable checkbox and I think that activates it?

Once I got it setup, seems to work so far.
 
Convert
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Topic Author
Posts: 3452
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2003 6:47 am

Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:19 pm

Oh man I can't wait to try this out when I get home! Thank you for letting me know! :)
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renelarch
Gerbil In Training
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Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2019 3:54 pm

Re: Multi-Monitor Mouse Transitions

Thu Jan 03, 2019 4:05 pm

Hi,
Like Mgth I wrote my own tool for that.
You can find it hier:

MouseTrap
github.com/r-Larch/MouseTrap/
I'm not allowed to post links, sorry.

or install it with chocolatey:
# install the package
choco install mousetrap --version 1.0.0

# running it
mousetrap

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