Hello everyone! Thank you for your feedback!
This issue is not something that I can reproduce either despite many hours of trying to do so. The logic behind maximizing the panel is not within our control, it is entirely handled by the simulator in the exact same way that all the other items in the toolbar are handled. I couldn’t affect the behavior if I wanted to.
If this really only happens with our panel, I am puzzled as to how it does not affect me or my colleagues who all run multi-monitor setups. I have verified our code against the default (built-in) toolbars/panels and I could not see anything that has changed since SU5 at least.
I do, however, find it interesting and surprising that anyone would run the panel in detached mode, for the following reasons:
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The panel runs inside the same process as the simulator which means that the panel will, inevitably, have an effect on the performance of the sim. This is unavoidable due to how the simulator is built.
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Running the panel (or any other toolbar for that matter) in detached (“maximized”) mode increases the performance hit. In the past, the degradation was so severe that the sim was unplayable but I believe that is mostly fixed now.
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Our desktop Charts application provides the same interface while being more performant. It also does not use any resources from the simulator process, improving its performance.
If you have multiple monitors and you’re going to detach the pane, the only reason to use the panel would be to utilize the import/export features that are directly related to MSFS and thus only available in the panel. If this is your scenario, I apologize for the inconvenience but at the moment there does not seem to be anything I can do.
With all this said (I’m sorry for the wall of text), I have seen cases like these that have been totally unrelated to the sim or our software at all. I believe most such cases have been closely related to re-arranging monitors and/or turning them on & off through GPU control panels. My understanding is that this can cause windows to be placed off-screen, depending on the software of course.
In those cases, it has often been easy to track down the window in the taskbar and then manually move it using keys until the window was visible on a screen again. In the case with MSFS however, a detached panel does not become a separate window for some reason.
If anyone manages to find out more about this issue, whether it be related to our panel specifically or to the issue as a whole, please reach out and we’ll do what we possibly can to relieve the issue!
Kind Regards,
Malte