Background input problems

[MrEntity]

Hello,

So my friend and I race a lot. We generally do it on two simultaneous emulators on 1 computer. For quite a while this was not an issue, although we had to have one version of SNES9X in the foreground even if it had "background input" enabled - usually 1 would simply refuse to accept input for reasons unknown.

Recently, however, the problem has become infinitely worse. No matter what combo of versions or controllers we use, we cannot get SNES9X to accept background input anymore. I have no idea what the problem is, and recently we had to switch to using one versions of SNES9X (1.58, but not for usability reasons) and one version of Higan (an emulator I didn't even know existed until we kept failing to get SNES9X to work) to be able to have background input work.
We load the two versions (or copies of the same version), ensure all the buttons work, ensure "background input" is on, and ensure the "run in background" is on, but no matter what it seems like only the emulator in the foreground will accept input - we can even switch back and forth between them, and they're clearly accepting input, just never in the background.

Any solutions to this known?
Any assistance is appreciated.


If anyone is wondering I'm running Windows 10 64 bit, using (for preference) 2 XBOX 1 controllers (wired), and I have an Nvidia 750 gx or some such.

[BearOso]

This depends on the joystick driver. If it’s programmed as a “global” driver, background input will work. If it’s not, it only sends events to the focused application. Some controllers have separate drivers for directinput and xinput. You’ll have to try them each to see if they have the desired behavior.