Sound Loss on MSFS Focus Loss

[Guest JamesDoebbler]

Hi all, This is my first post here, but I've been browsing for a long time and this site has been a great resource for me. Now onto my problem. ;] I'm using dual displays for an engineering simulation. FS2004 is running in a maximized window on the main display and I have a custom HDD application running on the secondary display (touchscreen LCD). The HDD application requires user interaction, but whenever FS2004 loses focus, the sound also stops (although the simulation continues and the aircraft is still controllable). I would like to have sound in FS2004 even when I use my addon program. I searched but did not find any information on this. I saw no options for this, but surely you must be able to get sound out of MSFS even when it doesn't have the focus. Thanks in advance for any help.James

[John_Cillis 2,406]

The short answer is no--as soon as MSFS loses focus, sound is lost.Why would it be coded this way? Someone leaves MSFS to surf the web, watch an online video, listen to online music, etc....Interesting that I can run media player and MSFS and still hear the media player sound even if Media Player has lost focus. Essentially it seems a programming choice by the MSFS designers to mute the sound on lost focus.In very rare cases, I'll task switch and the MSFS sound will still be there, then slowly fade away.-John

[Guest JamesDoebbler]

Hi John, thanks for your quick reply. That's really too bad that they chose to do things this way. I was really hoping there was some obscure option in an ini file or something that I just didn't know about.As for it being a programming choice, it seems like they are not being consistent. If you are doing something where you want the sound to be muted when you switch, you probably want it paused. And indeed, the default behavior is to pause on task switch/loss of focus. Also, any of the functions you mentioned above like watching a video, etc would most likely be used with the pause function, which mutes the sound anyway.However, I don't believe the programmers were being consistent because you can have MSFS keep running even when focus is lost and it keeps responding to joystick commands (I haven't tried keyboard). So it seems as if they do want you to be able to fly it even when the application doesn't have focus. However, despite the allowance of flight when focus is lost, they limit the actual flying experience by eliminating the sound. I would have expected another option similar to the pause toggle where the sound could be muted or not on loss of focus.Thanks again.James