Windows 10 Desktop manager

Dear All,

We are currently designing an experiment at my lab, using Psychtoolbox. Our OS was recently upgraded to windows 10, which led to timing issues of visual stimuli presentation. Psychtoolbox is warning that in the newer windows versions, the window desktop manager (WDM) cannot be shut down. The issue is that if it is on, the command to present a stimulus on the screen is not directly executed, but is processed first by the WDM which in turns presents the screen. This can lead to issues such as delays, as the command is not directly executed. I have been asking around and there is apparently no way to get around this issue, as there is absolutely no way to shut the WDM down. At our facility, several researcher are using psychtoolbox. We were therefore wondering if Psychtoolbox uses a workaround for this issue, or it the delays are also unreliable with newer windows versions.

Kind regards,

Alex

Hi @AlexLepauvre, just checking if this is a question about PSychoPy, or PsychToolBox?

My question is whether the issue faced in Psychtoolbox is also problematic in Psychopy. Since the DWM cannot be shut down, this might imply that any stimuli presentation software will be impacted. My question is how does psychopy deals with DWM?

Thanks @AlexLepauvre. PsychoPy will also suffer the Win10 DWM issues that affect PsychToolBox, since it cannot be switched off. However, we see that the effect on visual stimuli latency is minimised if you ensure that scaling is off.