Displaying a text directly on graphics card.

[Guest]

Hi everyone.
We're trying to diplay a message on the screen, and we want it to be always
there, regardless of whether a new application is run, which may occupy that
portion of the screen.
Put another way, I want a text (or other types of graphics) to be always
visible, even if a fullscreen game is run.

We realized that we need to write some data directly to the system (or
Graphics Card) memory, but the question is how we can access that memory
through .NET , say, C# for example.

Maybe we are wrong, please guide us if you thing there is another suitable
solution instead of wrting to the memory.

 

[Ben Voigt [C++ MVP]]

Hi everyone.
We're trying to diplay a message on the screen, and we want it to be
always
there, regardless of whether a new application is run, which may occupy
that
portion of the screen.
Put another way, I want a text (or other types of graphics) to be always
visible, even if a fullscreen game is run.

I think a video graphics overlay is designed to fill that function.

However:
I've seen this exact question asked before, and the answer is, the
requirement produces a paradox. You want your graphics to be topmost no
matter what application runs. What if the other application has the same
requirement?

 

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi,

You cannot do that, all you can do is use the driver provided by the card,
which I doubt provide this feature.

As to where to look for info, I do not know, maybe in some GUI ng.

 

[Guest]

Thanks.
Could you provide any additional information about "Graphics Overlay," and
how we can use it using .NET?

 

[Ben Voigt [C++ MVP]]

Thanks.
Could you provide any additional information about "Graphics Overlay," and
how we can use it using .NET?

A search found an IOverlay COM interface, part of DirectShow, and I know
nothing more about it.

 

[not_a_commie]

My Soundblaster RemoteCenter software does this with like the volume
thing. I've seen keyboard drivers that can do it as well. I confess
that I don't really like it. I think if it's important to the user,
they should have the option of keeping your application on screen.
Alerts can be handled through tray-icon popups or some other window
pop-up.