virtualbox.org

Hi,

I'm trying to run this application: spacegroup DOT info SLASH html SLASH space_groups DOT html (please replace the characters, the forum won't let me post a link)
in a Windows guest, but it does not seem to accept mouse input in its 3D view; it draws a 3D widget, and on Windows you can rotate the view by clicking and dragging, but in VirtualBox that won't work (clicking and dragging simply has no effect). It looks like the program does not register any mouse events at all while the pointer is over the 3D widget.

I tried several versions of Windows, including Win7 32bit, 64bit and WinXP 32bit, the behaviour is exactly the same everywhere (except it's a bit slower on XP). The host system is Arch Linux x64. DirectX and OpenGL seem to work fine in the guest system, at least some benchmark application I tested runs fine in DirectX, and Blender (which uses OpenGL) runs okay too. I tried both absolute and relative mouse input (that checkbox in the settings).

I don't have any further ideas what could cause this; did anyone encounter a similar issue before?

Best regards,
Sven

AFAIK there is nothing magical about a 3D view of an object. It's a rendered image, like any other. Therefore I think it unlikely there's a VM bug which would cause the mouse events to fail when you hover over a 3D image, but be fine elsewhere. More likely the actions which would be invoked by the mouse are not supported by the VM, but the crummy app doesn't actually check capabilities.

mpack wrote:More likely the actions which would be invoked by the mouse are not supported by the VM, but the crummy app doesn't actually check capabilities.

So you suspect that the mouse input is in fact registered correctly, but the API calls which would then rotate the view are not implemented by the VM?
On the bottom of the window there's a text view. When moving the mouse over certain elements of the 3D view, the text there changes on Windows native. It doesn't in the VM. That's why I suspected it might be the mouse input. This can easily be wrong, tough. Oh, also, the cursor isn't drawn in the 3D view (it is in Windows native).

I'm don't at all know how DirectX works through the VM. Depending on that, couldn't there also be some fancy DirectInput function which is not implemented?

Thanks for your time,
Greetings

The mouse doesn't need any fancy treatment. When the mouse moves, the underlying window gets a movement event. When you click it gets a click event. It has been ever thus. I don't see why it matters to the mouse - or the virtual mouse hardware - what the app is doing with those events.

Okay.

So, the likely reason for the problem is unimplemented or buggy draw calls? What could eventually be done about that (or, what could I do to verify this explanation)?

Greetings

scummos wrote:So, the likely reason for the problem is unimplemented or buggy draw calls?

That would be my guess. I would raise the matter at the first port of call - the people who wrote the software. They will be in the best position to debug it. Only if a VirtualBox problem is pinned down would you come back here are raise it on the VBox BugTracker.

Okay. I thought I'd ask here, because I don't think the people who wrote the software will be very easy to contact. Still, thanks for the advice. I'll report back in case I find out something.

Greetings