What happened to the "VST windows get keyboard focus" option?

[househoppin09]

Reason 9.5 had a "VST windows get keyboard focus" option in the Options menu, from what I recall. It seems to have been removed for Reason 10. How the heck are we supposed to route keyboard input to a VST now? Reason 10 seems to be trying to "intelligently" figure out where to route keyboard input on the fly, which actually works pretty well most of the time, I guess. Even so, I often run into situations where I can't get a VST to see my keystrokes, and there seems to be no way to force it to anymore since that option is gone. What am I missing? Is there seriously no longer any way to perform this extremely basic and essential function?

[WongoTheSane]

VSTs now get keyboard focus when they are in focus themselves (if you have clicked in the sequencer for instance, the VST has lost focus even if it's still visible; in this case, you have to click on the VST to give it back the focus). If you find a VST where it doesn't work, you may want to submit a ticket to their support.

[househoppin09]

Yes, but that only seems to apply to the alphanumeric keys. I can't seem to figure out any way to get VSTs to see, for example, F1-F12. Is that no longer possible due to the removal of the option? If anyone here can get any VSTs to see F-keys, I'd like to know which VSTs, and whether you're doing anything in particular to make it work. I certainly don't seem to be having much luck--for example, all of the F-key shortcuts in Kontakt are completely non-functional for me. Anyone?

[WongoTheSane]

Yes, but that only seems to apply to the alphanumeric keys. I can't seem to figure out any way to get VSTs to see, for example, F1-F12. Is that no longer possible due to the removal of the option? If anyone here can get any VSTs to see F-keys, I'd like to know which VSTs, and whether you're doing anything in particular to make it work. I certainly don't seem to be having much luck--for example, all of the F-key shortcuts in Kontakt are completely non-functional for me. Anyone?

You're right, function keys aren't passed to the plugin, they're still handled by Reason. Design choice I guess?

[househoppin09]

Must be, thanks for the confirmation. I guess there's simply no way to get VSTs to see those keys now? Very unfortunate. There are plugins out there (admittedly not many, but still) with functions that can ONLY be triggered from the F-keys. A "pass all keypresses to VST window" option or similar really is a necessary thing here, unless there's some alternate way to do this that we're missing. I guess it's not something a lot of people are running into as it doesn't seem to get brought up here much? Still, it'd be such an easy thing to fix and it's a serious problem in the few cases where it does come up.