Changelog

On a multi-seat licence, every machine after the first was refused with “fingerprint is not activated” even though seats were free — and on any licence, a hardware change (new drive, Windows reinstall, new motherboard) would have locked the owner out for good. Both are fixed, and DirectRT now recognises a machine whose hardware has shifted instead of spending another seat on it. If you were blocked on a second computer, just relaunch — it will activate itself.

The progress page names the destination (C:\Program Files\DirectRT), so if you’re used to 2020 living in C:\DirectRT you can see where the files are actually going.

A row (or line) is a whole trial as you see it in Excel; an element is one stimulus/location/time triplet inside that row; a line is an electrical wire. The guides had used “row” for both senses, which invited putting a TTL on its own row and expecting it to fire with the video on the next one — the ITI lands in between. Added the missing TTL-with-video example.

The sample studies are now a numbered, work-through-in-order set — each with a plain-English READ-ME, an on-screen intro, modern styles, and full-HD layouts. Classic demos have been re-themed onto neutral topics, and the handful not yet refreshed are parked in clearly-marked “not yet modernized” folders so you always know what you’re looking at.

Leave your input file or last data file open in Excel and DirectRT tells you exactly which file to close, instead of failing partway with a cryptic error — or worse, running the whole session and then being unable to save the data.

A page that declares its own size is shown at that size, centred; a fluid page fills the screen. You can still force a size from the input file when you want one.

If you use those prefixes, re-check any affected studies — the first key is now registered correctly.

The open-ended answer box looks like a proper dialog again, in a readable size, and sits above the stimulus instead of covering it.

The Session Options tab was effectively invisible in light mode — it renders correctly now.

directRT, Style Editor and executeDRT are back in the DirectRT folder itself (as shortcuts), alongside a Utilities folder, so old desktop shortcuts and shared-drive habits keep working now that the program files live in bin.

The end-of-session results now lead with a link to the study folder, and the other files are listed relative to it, so the report is far easier to read.

Setup now shows the file it’s copying and a percentage, so the long step no longer looks like it has frozen.

Setup used to delete every shortcut and put an identical one back; now it leaves the ones it’s about to reinstall alone. On a test upgrade this took the install from just under two minutes to under ten seconds.

If DirectRT 2020 is still on the computer, setup now stops and asks you to remove it rather than uninstalling it for you. The two versions share program names and the .drt file type, so they can’t coexist — but which of your programs to remove is your call, not ours.

The user guide has been rewritten against the shipping software — corrected throughout, with screenshots, a three-level contents sidebar that follows you as you scroll, and coverage of a dozen features the old manual documented but the 2027 guide had dropped.

Installing DirectRT 2027 now automatically removes an older DirectRT 2020 if it’s on the machine, so the two can’t clash over .drt files or over which version MediaLab launches. If DirectRT 2020 can’t be removed, setup stops instead of leaving both installed.

The installer has a new look — a branded side panel and a cleaner license page — matching the Empirisoft website.

Your samples folder now opens the first time you run DirectRT, and if you already had it installed, any newly shipped sample studies are merged into Documents\DirectRT Samples automatically on the next launch — nothing you already have is overwritten.

Double-click a .drt style file to open it straight in the Style Editor — and you can now have several Style Editor windows open at once.

The end-of-session report now includes a clickable Event log folder link, alongside your data and log file paths.

Your samples folder now opens the first time you run DirectRT, and if you already had it installed, any newly shipped sample studies are merged into Documents\DirectRT Samples automatically on the next launch — nothing you already have is overwritten.

Double-click a .drt style file to open it straight in the Style Editor — and you can now have several Style Editor windows open at once.

The end-of-session report now includes a clickable Event log folder link, alongside your data and log file paths.

The end-of-session report now shows your Data file and Log file paths, and file paths in the console log are clickable — double-click one to open the file or its containing folder.

Import a new or renewed license from the Help menu even when one is already active — it re-validates online, so there’s no need to reinstall to pick up an updated license.

On modern Windows the legacy display engine could black-screen a running session, and if you used parallel-port TTL its kernel-level driver (NTPort) was refused by Windows 11’s security (Memory Integrity / core isolation). DirectRT 2027 is built on modern Windows graphics and drives TTL over USB, so a session runs cleanly on a stock, locked-down machine. Same study files, current operating system.

Hardware triggering no longer needs a parallel port or the NTPort kernel driver — it runs over a USB serial device, which works with Windows 11’s Memory Integrity / core isolation turned on (the setup that previously blocked the driver from loading). Pure keyboard studies never needed the driver either way.

Present a designed HTML page as a stimulus — richer layouts and styling than plain text or a single image, timed to appear on an exact screen refresh.

Use PNG, JPEG, GIF and more directly as stimuli. Existing bitmap studies still work exactly as before.

Name a trigger device once and refer to it by name in any study, and fire a timed sequence of TTL markers at exact moments — for example, at set points during a video — so recordings line up with what’s on screen. (Basic EEG/equipment triggering already worked in 2020; this adds named devices and timed marker lists.)

Activate online in seconds, with a 30-day offline grace period so a dropped connection never interrupts a session. A standard user can install the license without admin rights.

A single signed installer sets everything up, with an MSI for silent, managed deployment across a lab — and no special hardware drivers required.

Video already played in 2020; now it’s more reliable — line up multiple clips, prepared between trials so playback starts cleanly at onset. Prefer MP4/H.264.

Spoken-response timing was already supported; setup is now easier — pick your microphone and check input levels before you run participants.

Text stimuli existed before; now any script — including right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew — renders properly, with no workarounds.

Each stimulus is drawn in a single, tear-free flip locked to the monitor’s refresh, and media is prepared between trials so onset stays clean. An optional per-session report shows refresh rate, onset accuracy, and any dropped frames so you can trust your numbers.

Each response is timestamped with a high-resolution timer on its own dedicated thread, so DirectRT adds virtually no delay of its own. Your keyboard’s USB polling still sets the floor — for the tightest millisecond precision, pair DirectRT with a button box over TTL.

DirectRT now runs at your current desktop resolution by default and looks crisp on modern and high-resolution monitors. If an older study needs a specific screen size, you can switch resolution for that session in the Style Editor.

A modernized style editor and hardware tester, plus an input-file checker that catches mistakes before you run participants.

In a response list with a port listener, the numbers you write are now matched as the raw TTL values — a TTL of 2 satisfies rt:2. Previously the digits went through the keyboard number-row remap, so an author had no way to know what value to send. Keyboard responses are unchanged.