How do I get rid of the mouse cursor in full-scree

Question

I'm working on a simple 2D game engine in Java, and having no trouble with FSEM, buffer strategies, and so on; my issue is with the mouse cursor. In windowed mode, I can hide the mouse cursor, no problem, by using setCursor() from my JFrame to set a wholly-transparent cursor. However, after a call to device.setFullScreenWindow(this) to go into FSEM, the mouse cursor comes back, and subsequent calls to setCursor() to set it back to my blank cursor have no effect. Calling device.setFullScreenWindow(null) allows me to get rid of the cursor again - it's only while I'm in FSEM that I can't get rid of it.

I'm working under JDK 6, target platform is JDK 5+.

UPDATE: I've done some more testing, and it looks like this issue occurs under MacOS X 10.5 w/Java 6u7, but not under Windows XP SP3 with Java 6u7. So, it could possibly be a bug in the Mac version of the JVM.

Answer 1

I think I've finally found the solution:

System.setProperty("apple.awt.fullscreenhidecursor","true");

This is an Apple-proprietary system property that hides the mouse cursor when an application is in full-screen mode. It's the only way I've found to fix it.

Answer 2

Try Creating a custom invisible cursor:

    Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
    Point hotSpot = new Point(0,0);
    BufferedImage cursorImage = new BufferedImage(1, 1, BufferedImage.TRANSLUCENT); 
    Cursor invisibleCursor = toolkit.createCustomCursor(cursorImage, hotSpot, "InvisibleCursor");        
    setCursor(invisibleCursor);

Answer 3

If you're running only on Windows, it looks like you'll need to call ShowCursor(FALSE) through JNI. At least, to make the cursor hide complete.

Here's some code which creates the 1x1 cursor. It works for me, though I still get a 1x1 cursor.

 Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
 Dimension dim = toolkit.getBestCursorSize(1,1);
 transCursor = toolkit.createCustomCursor(gc.createCompatibleImage(dim.width, dim.height),
     new Point(0, 0), "transCursor");
 ((Component)mainFrame).setCursor(transCursor);

Answer 4

Specifically for your Mac problem, through JNI you could use the following:

Quartz Display Services Reference - CGDisplayHideCursor

Answer 5

One developer found a way around it by creating a one pixel cursor out of a transparent GIF.

http://sevensoft.livejournal.com/23460.html

I know you tried that, but his is specifically addressing the issue of full-screen mode, exactly as you say, so perhaps there's something he's done that you haven't.

Answer 6

Here's what has been working for me:

Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();

// get the smallest valid cursor size
Dimension dim = toolkit.getBestCursorSize(1, 1);

// create a new image of that size with an alpha channel
BufferedImage cursorImg = new BufferedImage(dim.width, dim.height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);

// get a Graphics2D object to draw to the image
Graphics2D g2d = cursorImg.createGraphics();

// set the background 'color' with 0 alpha and clear the image
g2d.setBackground(new Color(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f));
g2d.clearRect(0, 0, dim.width, dim.height);

// dispose the Graphics2D object
g2d.dispose();

// now create your cursor using that transparent image
hiddenCursor = toolkit.createCustomCursor(cursorImg, new Point(0,0), "hiddenCursor");

Granted, I haven't tested it on Mac (yet), only Windows. But when I used the common methods I was getting the cursor as black box, so I use the code above the create a transparent box and set it as the cursor instead. Of course you have to use the setCursor method on an AWT object (such as your app's Frame) to set this hiddenCursor. Here is my hideMouse method ('fr' is my Frame):

public void hideMouse(boolean hide) {
    if(hide) {
        fr.setCursor(hiddenCursor);
    } else {
        fr.setCursor(Cursor.getDefaultCursor());
    }
}