Feature Request - Vertical / Horizontal swapping with a hotkey, or sensor
Issue #6220
new
I haven’t used Launchbox myself, but I’m told it does not have this feature, so I’ll suggest it.
Concept - arcade cabinet with a flat screen monitor on a rotating mount (to switch between vertical and horizontal modes)
Feature - add an option to swap between vertical and horizontal modes with either a hotkey/button, or with a script / physical sensor. Note that I’m referring to switching the main UI/theme, not the game itself (which I know MAME supports in it’s menus)
Comments (5)
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reporter
Good question. Since I haven’t built it yet, I’m open to either option.
The end goal is to be able to do this easily, without meeting a mouse/keyboard or reboot.
It seems easiest to not involve Windows, if possible, but I have no idea how hard that would be in Launchbox, as it may be dependent on Windows' orientation.
If Launchbox/Bigbox is dependent on the orientation in Windows, then perhaps a feature to just toggle between 2 installed themes with a user-defined hotkey would work. (e.g. Horizontal and Vertical)
I wonder if it’s possible to design a theme that can adjust based on orientation (e.g. has both horizontal and vertical “modes”)… -
reporter
FYI - I found a small program to change the screen orientation with a hotkey, which I’m sure I can map to a button on a control panel.
Now I’m just wondering how to swap themes in Bigbox/Launchbox -
reporter
I purchased a license today and installed it, to play around with how it works.
It appears that some themes can support multiple aspect ratios or orientations, to a degree, but if I switch the monitor orientation while Big Box is running, it gets “confused” and the font/layout looks bad, until I close Big-Box and re-open it.
I suspect this would have to be resolved before swapping themes with a hotkey is useful. Switching themes after switching the monitor orientation didn’t help.It’s an amazing product though and I look forward to using it on a real arcade cabinet.
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I would like the same feature for Big Box. I have a Samsung TV that supports a mechanically rotating wall mount. I’d like to play MAME games in a vertical orientation using overlays like this: https://www.verticalarcade.com/. But for other emulators and modern games I would want the screen to be in landscape mode. I believe I can automate this function with an IR Blaster and StreamDeck, or even configure launchbox to perform the switch for me automatically via a batch file associated with each emulator, but I would need Big Box to support the concept for it to work properly.
I’m open to any suggestions. Also, I’d love to know if you had any luck setting this up Peter, and also what the name of the small program was that you are using to switch orientation.
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In your scenario is your monitor changing it’s orientation in Windows from Landscape to Portrait (or vice versa) or you just hoping the UI rotates despite the fact that the OS doesn’t know the monitor was physically rotated?