Can you make a Winform draw on top of full screen DirectX layer?

Question

I have a native C++ application that is rendering 3D using DirectX. The app can switch between windowed and fullscreen using IDXGISwapChain::SetFullscreenState().
However some of my UI is in a .Net Winform in a managed dll.

In windowed mode I just call into the .Net dll and that opens the secondary Winform, so two windows, the main native MFC/DirectX and .Net Winform control.

But when the DirectX is in full screen, can I get the Winform to be show above the Direct X layer? Is it even possible?

Merely setting the Winform property this.TopMost = true; is not sufficient. The winform is under the Direct X layer. I just want "my" WinForm over the full screen.

I'm pretty sure that this is not possible. That's the whole point of the "full screen" mode—to allow the application to own the entire screen. — Cody Gray

Motes Motes · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-19T23:19:30

You could copy your WinForm's DC onto bitmap in memory and copy that onto a DirectX rendering surface and pass messages back to the WinForm. It might be slow thow though, if you try to do very much.

Can you make a Winform draw on top of full screen DirectX layer?

1 Answers