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Thread: Random unresponsive cursor areas (case 2931)

  1. #1

    Random unresponsive cursor areas (case 2931)

    Hi, I'm having a very strange problem when using the mouse cursor. I've established 6 cursor areas using the cursor.txt file, like this:

    ID X Y W H
    1, 340, 110, 340, 340
    2, 340, 450, 340, 340
    3, 760, 110, 340, 340
    4, 760, 450, 340, 340
    5, 550, 425, 340, 50
    6, 550, 575, 680, 50

    so they'll act as responses for my experiment. 1 to 4 define 4 corners which are the possible responses, and 5-6 are "continue" buttons. The thing is, I've realized that sometimes, one of the 1-4 corners won't react when being clicked once, but it will react when clicking twice, or clicking, moving slightly the mouse and clicking again. This doesn't happen with all the areas, just with some of them; let's say area 4. Everything else works fine, but sometimes area 4 won't react after being clicked. This situation seems to be random, and I don't think it's related to any error on the instructions. If I create a new area, area 7, with the same attributes than area 4, and use it instead, suddenly the corner works. That's really weird, but at least this way I used to be able to keep on working.
    The problem is, lately I had to change the screen resolution, and modify the file according to it. After doing it, my previous solution stoped working. Now, when I create a new area in the way I've stated, the continue buttons linked to areas 5 and 6 start showing the same weird, erratic behaviour: sometimes they work, sometimes they don't react to the first (or firsts) click. If I try to fix it by creating new areas with the same attributes, then is the new corner area which starts to show problems. And so on. I've ended up with areas up to 20, trying to fix it, but everytime the corner OR the buttons area get this weird problem and don't respond as they should.
    It has to be something related to the software, because not changing the instructions or the attributes, different areas work or not deppending on the change I've made.
    I've tried using the cursor.txt included on the sample directory: it works well as soon as I don't modify it. After editing it, the same problems appear. I have no clue as to what to do, and this is stopping me from going on with my research.
    Any idea about what could I do? It is really frustating!

    I hope I managed to explain myself properly. As you could probably see, English is not my native language, and the problem is quite strange.

    P. S. This issue happens with DirectRT 2008 and our newly updated 2012 version, both on windows 7 and windows XP.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Posts
    75
    Could you take a look at the attached regions pic and let me know if this is correct as well as the resolution you have set in the "options" of your style (.drt) file--i.e., the resolution you are running your session in?
    Attached Images Attached Images

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Posts
    75
    The reason I ask, BTW, is that it appears that the buttons you have created overlap with the primary "corner" regions you have created. Am I getting that right or am I mapping them incorrectly? I'm also going to attach here an excel file that I used to create that map image. That way you can edit it and re-attach it here if you like. Never done this before--seems like a useful way to visualize the regions. (?)
    Attached Files Attached Files

  4. #4
    Wow, thanks for such a quick answer

    The regions are those indeed, although region 6 is horizontally centered, like region 5, just wider. If you need me to use the excel file, I'll have to do it tomorrow, as here it's late at night and I should be sleeping

    The regions do overlap, but they are never used simultaneusly, for that matter.
    The experiment presents a pair of stimuli, randomly distributed among the 4 "corners", and only the 2 respective areas in which images appear are active each time; so the participant can click on one of the 2 images. When selected, the chosen image is shown alone and disappears, and it's then when a "continue" button appears, being the only active area (the only allowed answer). This is region 5. Region 6 is only used once thorough the whole experiment, and when this happens, it offers an alternative option to the one of region 5, with which it appears.

    Could the problem be that they overlap when being declared, even if they are never used together in an overlaping way?

    The resolution used is 1440x900. On an erlier version, I used 1920x1200 on a different computer. The regions where located proportionally (they where still 340x340, but distributed so they would appear centered on such resolution). I had the same problem as now, but it got solved after I renamed region 5 to 7 and region 3 to 8 (that's it, when I added a new area called 7 with the same attributes as 5, and a new area called 8 copying region 3). I don't know why, but it worked.

    It was when I adapted the areas to the 1440x900 screen that the problem started again, this time not being fixed by any renamig trick, as I've tried to describe.

  5. #5

    Fixed it :)

    Thanks to Jarvis comment about the areas overlapping, I got on the right track and fixed the mystery problem; which was, as a matter of fact, that you shouldn't create overlapping areas on the cursor.txt file. I think the manual is a little misleading here, as, at the end of page 69, it states that "you can define as many rectangles of any size and location as you like".

    It's also weird, because overlapping area do work sometimes. I started building the experiment with just one area, the continue button. After that, I added the four corner regions, which made the first area stop working, as they overlapped with it. When I created a new area with the same attributes as the first one, but listed after the 4 corner areas, everything went back to working fine. It seems the problem has to do with the size of the area that is blocking the underlaying one; and that Direct gives priority in a reversed order, from last to first, to the areas declared in cursor.txt.

    I also had less problems working on a higher resolution (or with smaller areas). With 1920x1200, I could just keep moving the troubled area to the last position, and everything would end up working fine. But when setting 1440x900 on a different computer, the problem kept reocurring.

    In short: while overlapping areas seem to work sometimes, the larger the areas or the lower the resolution, the most likely it is you'll end up with unresponsive areas. The way to fix it is to avoid declaring areas that overlap in cursor.txt; which might limit your design, but ensures that everything will work as it should.

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