The eleventh preview build of the new in-development Desktop+ version is now available. Still alive.
These builds are supposed to give a glimpse into the ongoing development process.
The NewUI branch should be fine for daily use if you can live with the missing features. Don't treat it as stable, however, as it just isn't.
While bugs are to be expected and there are a few known issues already, feel free to report anything you find in the NewUI Preview Build bug report thread.
What is Desktop+ NewUI?
Desktop+ NewUI is what eventually will become Desktop+ 3.0.
See the announcement post for the NewUI Preview Build 1 for more details.
What's new in Desktop+ NewUI Preview 11?
Browser Overlay Improvements
Browser overlays now support rendering pop-up widgets on top of the page. This refers to form elements such as drop-down lists or picker elements, which were previously not visible, but otherwise working.
Over-Under 3D is now also supported for browser overlays.
Revamped texture submission strategy from the browser process should lead to less flickering, improved responsiveness and fix missing last frame updates on static pages.
Incorrect pause state and cropping values after duplicating a browser overlay were fixed as well.
Desktop+ Browser is considered feature-complete for Desktop+ 3.0 now. While there are certainly things that could be addressed in the future, such as popup pages or opening links as new overlays, they are not part of the current scope (a full browser is not the goal, rather than a tool to display pages).
That being said, please report if you find any issues with browser overlays. Chromium is a wide target so I'm bound to miss things in testing.
Adjustments for 3D Overlays
The aspect ratio of the laser pointer surface now matches the overlay when 3D is enabled (would previously go past it or be only cover half). Note that this means half of the overlay is inaccessible, as both halves cover the same space, only differing in visibility for each eye.
New Cropping Adjustments
The promise of more adjustment options for overlay cropping has been replaced by a new drag-able rectangle widget. It can be dragged in the center to move around the available overlay space or at the sides and edges for resizing (scroll wheel input also works for this).
A more gesture-based VR input method was considered, but wasn't really that practical for precise adjustments with how cropping changes affect the overlay sizing.
The cropping width/height now also jump back to their previous value during manual adjustments of the cropping X/Y values when possible.
Transparency Returns for Desktop Duplication
Space not covered by any desktop on the combined desktop is now transparent again. Transparency on the texture used to be disabled after reports on some system having translucent pixels on the duplication output.
These cases are now detected (if they even still happen) and handled accordingly, bumping anything above 0% alpha to 100% (so visual result is the same).
For systems behaving normally, there should be a slight performance improvement as the extra render pass is skipped, but it's likely not noticeable.
In addition to that, laser pointer input is now masked to the desktop layout. Unused space in the combined desktop will be pass-through for the pointer.
Enhanced Logging
Things go wrong sometimes and troubleshooting can be tough without the right information. Desktop+ has been doing a little bit of logging on fatal errors, but it wasn't really much.
It's long overdue, but it now logs a little bit more.
Logs include some basic VR system info, as well as the detected desktop layout, capture capabilities and information on critical initialization events. Outside of that there's no active logging if no errors occur, so it does not affect overall performance.
This will probably be expanded over time, but for now this covers the bases that are likely to fail.
Logs are stored in the application install directory, "DesktopPlus.log" and "DesktopPlusUI.log" respectively. If the files are older than 7 days, they'll get renamed with a "_prev" suffix, and after another 7 days the older logs get overwritten.
The files aren't massive so there's no need to worry about them taking up too much space after a while.
It shouldn't need to be said, but the logs stay where they are and aren't sent off anywhere automatically. Please include them when reporting issues if you feel they'll help, though, as the information will save some back and forth.
Other Changes
- Added button to reset Performance Monitor cumulative values to Floating UI
- Added option of removing the overlay instead of hiding it by long-holding the Floating UI Hide Overlay button
- Gaze Fade: Always use maximum opacity when the overlay is being pointed at
- Gaze Fade: Smooth out abrupt opacity changes
- Fixed output enumeration differences in different parts of the applications to improve multi-GPU behavior Note that Desktop+ still doesn't support capturing desktops spread across multiple GPUs via Desktop Duplication at this time, however.
- Fixed incorrect mouse coordinates when pointing at 3D-enabled overlays
- Fixed default desktop crop not applying for Over-Under 3D modes
- Fixed pass-through laser pointer on new overlay when using "Add Active Window as Overlay" button in Floating UI
- Fixed desktop switches changing overlay cropping values when cropping is disabled
- Fixed infinite loop when ignoring virtual WMR screens
- Fixed crash when no outputs are found
- Fixed silent crash during startup when checking for Graphics Capture support fails on Windows 10 This can happen when running Desktop+ as a different user than the one the desktop session belongs to. The check still fails now, but Graphics Capture will just be unavailable instead. Other Windows versions are affected the same way, but they didn't crash in previous builds. There may be other ways to trigger this, but this rare old issue is finally resolved.
- Various other minor UI fixes and adjustments
The NewUI Preview branch also includes all changes of the stable branch up until now (v.2.7).
Browser overlays are available in the separate NewUI Preview + Browser branch, as explained in the initial browser overlay announcement.
A collection of smaller changes. Troubleshooting some of the issues held me up, but it's good to have that stuff fixed.
11 is a big number for a "preview" build, but there's no point changing the naming scheme this close to the finish line. There's still big chunks left, but not many of those.