Question Some games do not behave as expected in "Windowed Fullscreen" ?

[Aoife Althoff]

I like to watch YouTube when playing games, specially the ones that don't require much attention. Since I don't have a second monitor, I do this by using Firefox's Picture-in-Picture while running the games in borderless window/windowed fullscreen. Some recent games that I've played like this with no problem are Crime Scene Cleaners and House Flipper 2.

However, there are a few games where this doesn't seem to work, such as Slay the Spire, Balatro and Noita. For whatever reason, even setting them as borderless, they still act as exclusive fullscreen.
I almost thought this was just a case of poor implementation on their engines, but I very distinctively remember playing like Slay the Spire like that years ago.

For context, my GPU is an AMD 580 with the latest drivers.

 

[KingLoki]

What OS do you have?

 

[Aoife Althoff]

What OS do you have?

Windows 10, latest build.

 

[KingLoki]

Something to try....
I remembered something from years ago, where if you go into the specific game directory and Right-Click on the .exe game file that starts the game, you get a menu.
Then go into the Compatability tab and tick the "Disable Fullscreen Optimizations" setting, then click on Apply then OK. Exit that and try running the game.
Worth a try. Cheers.

 

[Aoife Althoff]

Something to try....
I remembered something from years ago, where if you go into the specific game directory and Right-Click on the .exe game file that starts the game, you get a menu.
Then go into the Compatability tab and tick the "Disable Fullscreen Optimizations" setting, then click on Apply then OK. Exit that and try running the game.
Worth a try. Cheers.

Thanks for the help. Unfortunately that did not work. I also tried out the "high DPI" settings just to be sure, but got nothing. Still, I appreciate the help.

 

[KingLoki]

After ticking the disable optimizations box, can you then open the game and set the window type manually? Borderless, fullscreen etc. That might work ?

 

[Aoife Althoff]

After ticking the disable optimizations box, can you then open the game and set the window type manually? Borderless, fullscreen etc. That might work ?

Yes, I have tried setting them to a different window mode then back to borderless, but no dice.

 

[KingLoki]

Have you tried another browser?

 

[gamerk316]

I might know what's going on.

I had a similar problem for the longest time, and eventually narrowed down the issue: Vulkan. Everything that ran Vulkan ran like it was Exclusive Fullscreen, even when set to Borderless.

Now, I have a NVIDIA GPU, and eventually tracked down the setting in the Control Panel necessary to change that behavior. I see you have an AMD GPU, but I wonder if you are maybe seeing something similar happening.

 

[Aoife Althoff]

I might know what's going on.

I had a similar problem for the longest time, and eventually narrowed down the issue: Vulkan. Everything that ran Vulkan ran like it was Exclusive Fullscreen, even when set to Borderless.

Now, I have a NVIDIA GPU, and eventually tracked down the setting in the Control Panel necessary to change that behavior. I see you have an AMD GPU, but I wonder if you are maybe seeing something similar happening.

Hey, sorry I never responded. For some reason I wasn't notified of your comment.
I actually don't have any Vulkan-based games installed right now, so I can't test them. HOWEVER, I checked the games I had listed on my original post, and found that they're all rendered with OpenGL, so there might be something to your theory. I'll look around to see if anyone has a solution to this.
Thank you very much for the tip!

 

[gamerk316]

I believe OpenGL falls under the same umbrella. Here's the setting I had to change for my NVIDIA card to get Borderless to work right:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/yf6hiw/psa_you_can_now_elevate_openglvulkan_games_to_a/

Can't speak to AMD, but it sounds a lot like you are running into a similar problem.

 

[Aoife Althoff]

I believe OpenGL falls under the same umbrella. Here's the setting I had to change for my NVIDIA card to get Borderless to work right:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/yf6hiw/psa_you_can_now_elevate_openglvulkan_games_to_a/

Can't speak to AMD, but it sounds a lot like you are running into a similar problem.

Awesome, I'll look more into it when I have the time. You've been incredibly helpful, thank you!

 

[gamerk316]

TBF, I was confused by this myself across two PCs for years before I figured it out. I was *really* confused why Vuklan in particular wasn't honoring borderless window fullscreen.