Develop Reference

Smooth WPF animations on Remote Desktop to VM

So I'm attempting to make a docking library very similar to the ones used in VSCode and Atom, however I've run into some issues. Basically, for the start, I need to make a box starting from width 0 to increase to the end of the screen. I'm able to achieve this:
Rectangle rectangle = new Rectangle();
myCanvas.Children.Add(rectangle);
rectangle.Width = 0;
rectangle.Height = ActualHeight;
rectangle.Fill = new SolidColorBrush(Color.FromArgb(80, 120, 120, 120));
Storyboard sb = new Storyboard();
DoubleAnimation da = new DoubleAnimation(rectangle.Width, ActualWidth, new Duration(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000)));
Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(da, new PropertyPath("(Rectangle.Width)"));
sb.Children.Add(da);
rectangle.BeginStoryboard(sb);
The animation is quite smooth on my dev-machine, but when remote-desktoping into a VM, the animation is VERY choppy. However, VSCodes and Atoms animations are still pretty decent. Is there any way to make this work better?
Thanks.
EDIT:
Is there a way to make a smooth animation for Winforms aswell?
EDIT 2:
So I have this Winforms GDI code sample here:
private void FastTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var x = 1;
if (solidBrush == IntPtr.Zero)
{
solidBrush = CreateSolidBrush(ColorTranslator.ToWin32(Color.FromArgb(120, 120, 120)));
hDC = CreateGraphics().GetHdc();
}
index += x;
int w = x;
int h = Height;
//create memory device context
var memdc = CreateCompatibleDC(hDC);
//create bitmap
var hbitmap = CreateCompatibleBitmap(hDC, index, h);
////select bitmap in to memory device context
var holdbmp = SelectObject(memdc, hbitmap);
RECT rect = new RECT(new Rectangle(0, 0, w, h));
FillRect(memdc, ref rect, solidBrush);
AlphaBlend(hDC, index - x, 0, w, h, memdc, 0, 0, w, h, new BLENDFUNCTION(0, 0, 128, 0));
SelectObject(memdc, holdbmp);
DeleteObject(hbitmap);
DeleteDC(memdc);
}
With the fast timer core being this (Interval is 1000 in testing):
double frequency = Stopwatch.Frequency;
long prevTicks = 0;
while (true)
{
if (!_enabled)
{
return;
}
double interval = frequency / Interval;
long ticks = Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();
if (ticks >= prevTicks + interval)
{
prevTicks = ticks;
Tick?.Invoke(this, EventArgs.Empty);
}
}
However, the animations are still choppy on Remote Desktop. (I know RD cannot use hardware acceleration, but I thought GDI was hardware-accelerated on compatible machines, but I do not see any GPU usage on my dev-machine)
With regards to thatguys answer, how do I make this faster?

These issues are common with WPF and are caused by bitmap remoting, see this Microsoft blog.
Starting with the release of NET 3.5 SP1 (including NET 4), WPF renders the application content using a software rasterizer on the server and then remotes the content as bitmaps in all cases.
This is crucial for animations, due to lots of redrawing. Animations often affect a large area at once, imagine a color gradient. Therefore, large parts of the application need to be invalidated and redrawn. Furthermore, there is a the lack of support for occlusion in WPF that might aggravate the issue, too.
Bitmaps are highly compressed by the underlying RDC stack and only regions that changed are being updated. Also note that WPF does not currently have efficient occlusion support, so for instance animations that are completely hidden behind other opaque WPF elements will still force invalidation and RDP update.
The reason that you might not encouter this issue for eaxmple in native Win32 or MFC applications is that they use GDI or GDI+ for drawing their user interface controls.
When apps use GDI (such as many Win32 and Winforms apps do), only the GDI primitives are remoted. In many cases this can be more efficient than remoting WPF apps since WPF apps remotes bitmaps which typically result in more content being sent over the wire than a similar GDI-based app. The additional data may result in slower performance depending on network bandwidth and the size and frequency of updates.
Atom and VS Code are built on Electron which is based on chromium, not WPF, that is why there are large differences on remote desktop.
In the linked blog you can find hints on how to improve the remote performance in general. Apart from considering to disable animations in remote desktop scenarios because there are no guarantees on factors like bandwidth or latency for your clients, the essential parts for improving animations are:
Adapt the DesiredFrameRate to reduce the animation frame rate, which in turn reduces traffic
Turn animations off in occluded areas of the application, since they cause redrawing, too
Reduce traffic by removing animations from default WPF control templates for ProgressBar, Button, ComboBox and others, as well as all of your own non-essential animations
Improve RDP compression efficiency by simplifying other areas of the application, like replacing color gradients with solid colors
Avoid anything that is slow to render in software like bitmap effects or 3D views
Use a WPF performance profiling tool like Perforator to identify the critical areas that are invalidated frequently to optimize them

Take screenshot of external OpenGL game C# with BitBlt (CopyFromScreen)

I am trying to create some kind of antycheat for counter strike (hl) game. Of course funcionality of making a screenshot in-game is built-in, but exploited (detected) by antyss applications, so every time screenshot is taken from the game, antyss is disabling the cheats (so that no cheats are visible on the screenshots)
For the last few days, I've read dozens of threads regarding this topic. Most of them are outdated and are using libraries, that are obsolete right now.
I've read about the approach with mirage driver (which is not working on windows 10), about injecting to the application (of course application/game is not part of my code) and using/incjeting some code with OPEN GL/D3D library (to read backbuffer). Probably this could be in the end the only solution.
But right now I have almost a working solution. I write "almost" because it is working but giving me only some kind of "cached" data. It is giving me a correct screenshot, but if I take another screenshot - still the same screenshot is taken as last time. If while being in-game I minimize the application (full-screen mode) and then get back to the game, the new screenshot taken will have up to date screenshot, but then again, the next screenshot would be exactly the same.
I don't know if it is "by design" or is it "some sort of bug" Nevertheless my question is: Can I force somehow this "reloading" without having to programmatically call some kind of "alt+tab" and then focusing on the application once again?
In this topic:
How to take screenshots of a game with OpenGL
#Andon M. Coleman wrote:
Are you on Windows? In fullscreen mode starting with Windows Vista, there is trouble with anything that tries to capture the front-buffer (including the built-in Alt + PrintScreen). The easiest solution is to change your buffer swap behavior to Copy Swap (PFD_SWAP_COPY, slower but guaranteed to work). Often if you Alt+TAB out and back in after making the fullscreen mode switch that will fix it too; though I have never been able to explain that ;) If you did not write the game in the question, then the second solution may be your only choice if you want to use that code.
This is exactly the problem I am facing. As he wrote: "Alt+Tab" is fixing the problem (although he did not know whether it is a feature or a bug) He proposed to change the buffer swap behavior to Copy Swap(PFD_SWAP_COPY) Any tips on how to change my code with that will also be most welcome (I can try this one) But if I understood correctly, this approach is the viable solution only if you can change this in the game (and this is not my case)
Here is my working code (which in topics about such scenarios was claiming that in this approach the screenshot is BLACK. But it is working for me)
private const int SW_RESTORE = 9;
public void TakeScreenShot()
{
var guid = Guid.NewGuid();
string procName = "hl";
Process proc;
try
{
proc = Process.GetProcessesByName(procName)[0];
}
catch (IndexOutOfRangeException e)
{
return;
}
// Focus on the application
SetForegroundWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle);
ShowWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle, SW_RESTORE);
Thread.Sleep(1000);
Rect rect = new Rect();
IntPtr error = GetWindowRect(proc.MainWindowHandle, ref rect);
while (error == (IntPtr)0)
{
error = GetWindowRect(proc.MainWindowHandle, ref rect);
}
int width = rect.right - rect.left;
int height = rect.bottom - rect.top;
using (Bitmap printscreen = new Bitmap(width, height, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb))
{
using (var graphics = Graphics.FromImage(printscreen))
{
graphics.CopyFromScreen(rect.left,
rect.top,
0,
0,
new Size(width, height),
CopyPixelOperation.SourceCopy);
printscreen.Save($#"{Path.GetTempPath()}\{guid.ToString()}.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
}
}
}
I want this application to work on Windows7, Windows8, Windows 10. The best would be to cover full screen and windowed mode (but fullscreen is probably more important)
Any advice how to proceed (or why I am getting the "cached" data) would be nice :)
Of course if someone will say (with full authority), that what i want to achieve is impossible with CopyFromScreen (and there is no hack to fix that, apart from minimizing and maximazing the screen) i will consider option with injecting the code. But normally i would want to stay away from this one, as this could be treated as cheat and can lead to VAC ban.
====== UPDATE ======
You can try reproduce the process of taking screenshot by downloading the game (is small one, 260 MB):
https://cssetti.pl/Api/GameDownload.php?GameDownloadId=v43
Then you can copy-paste my code to Linqpad (or any other editor) and run the code. The application after launching will launch the HL process which is then use to try to grab the screenshot.
====== UPDATE 2 ======
In windows mode everything works correctly (the printscreens are ok)

BitBlt failing on window rendered by OpenGL

I'm making a program to take a screenshot of a game while I'm streaming, so it take a screenshot and save it automatically, but when I set the game to use OpenGL my function fail, it keep saving the same image over and over again, it just change the image after I restart the game.
It seems it works in the first run, but on the next ones it keep saving the first image.
Here is what I'm using:
public static Bitmap PrintWindow(IntPtr hwnd) {
try {
RECT rc;
GetClientRect(hwnd, out rc);
IntPtr hdcFrom = GetDC(hwnd);
IntPtr hdcTo = CreateCompatibleDC(hdcFrom);
//X and Y coordinates of window
int Width = rc.right;
int Height = rc.bottom;
Bitmap bmp = null;
IntPtr hBitmap = CreateCompatibleBitmap(hdcFrom, Width, Height);
if (hBitmap != IntPtr.Zero) {
// adjust and copy
IntPtr hLocalBitmap = SelectObject(hdcTo, hBitmap);
BitBlt(hdcTo, 0, 0, Width, Height, hdcFrom, 0, 0, CopyPixelOperation.SourceCopy);
SelectObject(hdcTo, hLocalBitmap);
//We delete the memory device context.
DeleteDC(hdcTo);
//We release the screen device context.
ReleaseDC(hwnd, hdcFrom);
//Image is created by Image bitmap handle and assigned to Bitmap variable.
bmp = System.Drawing.Image.FromHbitmap(hBitmap);
//Delete the compatible bitmap object.
DeleteObject(hBitmap);
bmp.Save("saving.png", System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png);
}
return bmp;
}
catch {
}
return new Bitmap(0, 0);
}
If I change the game graphic to use DirectX it works good, it's just happening while using OpenGL, so not sude if it must be different for openGL windows or if it's impossible to capture those kind of window.

Using double buffered OpenGL is mutually exclusive with using GDI operations¹. Use glReadPixels to take a screenshot.
¹: Well, technically if you know what you're doing and take the right precautions you can mix them. But it's more trouble than it's worth doing.

After a recent windows 10 update, DirectX rendered windows now suffer from the same problem. I found a workaround, but you're not going to like it...
If you set hwnd = 0, the BitBlt now refers to the whole screen, instead of just one window. Then you can change BitBlt's source offset values to grab only the target window.
Although this works, its much slower than the original way you had it. :(
On my laptop, grabbing a 1080p window used to take 3ms, but now, using this workaround, it takes 27ms, which really ruins the streaming performance. :(
Still, its better than nothing.

Screenshot of the main WPF window under second monitor/TV

I use my application on the second monitor and sometimes at the primary monitor of the computer.
How I can get screenshot of the second monitor?
The following code doesn't work for the second monitor...
Graphics gfx;
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Width, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Height);
gfx = Graphics.FromImage(bmp);
gfx.CopyFromScreen(Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.X, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Y, 0, 0, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Size, CopyPixelOperation.SourceCopy);
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
bmp.Save(ms, ImageFormat.Jpeg);
byte[] bitmapData = ms.ToArray();

Use Screen.AllScreens[1].Bounds isntead of Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.
Or more reliable to get the first non Primary Screen.
var secondScreen = Screen.AllScreens.Where(screen => !screen.Primary).FirstOrDefault();
check for secondScreen == null to know if you have a secondScreen.
Edit:
You might also be interested in Screen.FromControl that gives the screen that the application is currently running on.

That code does not work for your second screen because it is explicitly using Screen.PrimaryScreen.
If you want to pull from the second display explicitly (ignoring the case where you have 3…n displays), you can replace PrimaryScreen with AllScreens[1].
Keep in mind that this will break if you ever disconnect that second display.
It sounds like maybe you want to be capturing your application window instead of the screen, in case the application isn't taking up the whole screen or straddles two screens. WPF has this capability natively: Get System.Drawing.Bitmap of a WPF Area using VisualBrush

Taking Screen shot continuously without slow down the PC - C#

I have to capture a screen shot continuously after every 250 milliseconds for my program (Similar to Netmeeting). I used the following code:
Image CaptureScreenShot()
{
bmpScreenshot = new Bitmap(Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Width, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Height, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb);
gfxScreenshot = Graphics.FromImage(bmpScreenshot);
gfxScreenshot.CopyFromScreen(Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.X, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Y, 0, 0, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Size, CopyPixelOperation.SourceCopy);
return bmpScreenshot;
}
To capture the screenshot but it slow the performance of the PC. Where, Netmeeting do not.
Is there any way to get screen shot without slowing the PC?
Code sample will be appreciated

You won't find a basic answer here. They use much more involved mechanisms for detecting changes on the screen and sending them.
Check out how terminal svcs work -
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755399%28WS.10%29.aspx
ideally you are hooking into the GUI and monitoring events, etc. much more advanced than simply screen scraping. If you want to look at less advanced code check out http://www.tightvnc.com